A Writing of the Real

Abstract

"The Writing of the Real" uses Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory to explore the "failure in representation, a hole in the middle of perception." The author thinks through the problems this hole presents: gaps, fadings, flickerings, and discontinuities in images and words. This hole or objet a cuts us to the quick, cuts certainties and consistencies, and points to a lack and loss in our knowledge, perceptions, and being. This objet a reminds us that wholeness in images, languages, or beings exists only in an Imaginary ordering of the world, and that any explanation of our system of thinking or visual design must include lack as a part of that system. Desire enters the field when we look at what we cannot bear to look at. But, this emergence of desire through the breaks in our epistemological ground loosens rigidities and opens up inventive attempts to re-present the object a as a writing of the Real.