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Openings of the Object: Values, Gestures, Events

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Being and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Part of the book series: The Palgrave Lacan Series ((PALS))

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Abstract

This chapter elaborates on the three Lacanian registers of the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. It borrows directly from Lacan’s own conceptualizations to construe the role and character of what I call symbolic, imaginary and real objects. These can be in turn described as meaning values, gestures and events respectively. However, this chapter also proposes a theory of objects that dissociates it from ontologies portraying the Borromean triplet as a symmetrical schema. Instead, I argue that Lacan himself reshapes the hierarchy or order between these objects by acknowledging an unavoidable asymmetry that leans on the side of the Real. As such, these different objects that constitute the lived experience of subjectivity have less to do with a harmonious (or flat) system of co-dependent elements than they have to an always unstable tension triggered by the Real itself.

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Di Liberto, Y. (2019). Openings of the Object: Values, Gestures, Events. In: Being and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18476-6_2

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