The Transplant Organ As an Extimate Object

Abstract

In the case of a faltering organ, a particular kind of gap or void emerges, somewhere in the intimacy of our body, an emptiness which Lacan refers to as a vacuole. Medical diagnostic equipment may point out that something is indeed absent or dysfunctional inside. Special contrivances are developed to compensate these deficiencies, turning humans into “prosthetic gods”, as Freud phrased it. Today, however, transplantation medicine entails the promise that we may bypass such ersatz solutions to focus directly on the thing (the replaceable organ) itself. The one thing that would allow us to put an end to our chronic deficiencies, making us whole again (the transplantable organ), is not simply available in the outside world, however, in the sense of ready-at-hand. It can only become available as an artefact procured and produced by transplantation medicine. The thing on which our life and well-being (as craving subjects) depends, may still be hidden inside the intimacy of the other’s body (either living or brain-dead). Partial objects (such as kidneys) suddenly stand out from the rest of the body. They become detachable from the body as a whole.