Abstract
Due to transplantation medicine, the procurable organ becomes an object of desire: that which purports to make us whole again, set apart and standing out from the rest of the body of the other, from which the organ is harvested, as an entity in its own right—the one thing we desire more than anything else, that which may compensate our deficiencies, our deprivations, making our destitute body whole again. Lacan explains how the faltering organ creates a sense of emptiness (a vacuole) which the procurable, transplantable organ claims to fill, as something both foreign and intimate, both life-saving and toxic: as an “extimate” object.
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Notes
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Freud already pointed this out: “Die Pathologie lehrt uns eine große Anzahl von Zuständen kennen, in denen die Abgrenzung des Ichs gegen die Außenwelt unsicher wird… Fälle in denen uns Teile des eigenen Körpers… wie fremd und dem Ich nicht zugehörig erscheinen” (1930/1948, p. 423; cf. above).
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Lacan also makes a connection with perversion. The perverse subject discerns that something is missing in the body of the other (for instance, the phallus). This is represented as Ⱥ, the barred Other, who falls short of the imaginary ideal. This deficiency has to be restored with the help of a certain supplement, an equivalent for the missing object a, so that the Other can be brought back to his/her level of dignity again: Ⱥ + a = 1 (2006, p. 19).
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“J’ai désigné comme la vacuole, cet interdit au centre, qui constitue, en somme, ce qui nous est. le plus prochain, tout en nous étant extérieur. Il faudrait faire le mot extime pour désigner ce dont il s’agit” (2006, p. 224).
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The paradoxical concept of “extimacy” may been seen as comparable to Saint Augustine’s famous phrase envisioning God as “interior intimo meo”, more interior than my innermost being (Bracher et al. 1994, p. 76). The new organ is inside the recipient, but he/she remains highly aware of its presence.
References
Bracher, M., M. Alcorn, F. Massardier-Kennedy, and R. Corthell, eds. 1994. Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society. New York: New York University Press.
Freud, S. 1930/1948. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. In Gesammelte Werke XIV, 419–513. London: Imago.
Lacan, J. 1968–1969/2006. Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan XVI: D’un Autre à l’autre. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
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Zwart, H.A.E. (2019). A Lacanian Assessment of Organ Transplantation. In: Purloined Organs. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05354-3_10
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