사물(das Ding)의 품격으로 승화된 예술적 오브제 - 라캉의 미학론

The Artistic Object sublimated to the Dignity of das Ding: Lacanian Aesthetics

&nbsp;&nbsp;This essay is a study of the Lacanian aesthetics with an emphasis on his search for the sublime beauty, as is typically manifested in his reading of Sophocles&quot;s Antigone.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;A particular concern is drawn to the way in which Antigone is so radical in her insistence on the proper burial of the body of her brother, Polynices. Arguably, what she aims at here is nothing other than das Ding, or the Freudian Thring, a jenseits, or an exteriority of the world of human meaning and experience. And Antigone&quot;s desire for the Thing manifests itself as the Todestrieb, death drive that both Freud and Lacan have elaborated on. Lacanian sublime beauty reveals itself in this figure of Antigone, that is, in her tragic confrontation with une seconde mort.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;More specifically, beauty in Lacanian terms is found when an object, or an artistic objet is raised to the dignity of das Ding. This is made possible through the psychoanalytic mechanism of &quot;sublimation,&quot; for it means "nothing else than the possibility of coming into the Thing without losing oneself as a subject." Through this non-destructive relation to das Ding, the human subject comes as closely as possible to a jenseits, away from the world of the social-symbolic network.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;This essay accounts for this search for the sublime beauty in terms of the myth of Eden, for the process of losing the Paradise in the wake of eating the Tree of Knowledge and dreaming a return to the Paradise, closely parallels the way in which the Lacanian subject desires for the Thring of the real achtr？glich, following a falling into this world of meaning and experience through representation and