Triebschicksal und affektive Lebenspassibilität. Zur Frage der Nachträglichkeit von Bedürfen/Begehren

Abstract

Drive Destiny and Affective Passibility of Life: On the Question of Apres-Coup of Need/Desire

Questions of origin are considered undecidable in metapsychology, since the constant transformations of drives result in a decentred subject whose fate can only lead to a certain relaxation of conflict through subsequent rewriting. For a radical phenomenology, affect denotes the reality of all appearances and is therefore still ahead of the instinctual unconscious. This article reflects upon the modality in which affect/drive destiny can beunderstood in relation to an original desire that knows no final drive goal, but refers back to the unnamable unity of an immanence of life in every feeling and action. In this respect, pure affect knows no death drive, but makes possible the sublimation that, for freud, allows a certain synthesis between the pleasure and reality principles. Since this possibility is particularly evident in aesthetics, the connection between affect/pathos as the originality of fiction and the imaginary can be demonstrated at the same time. Overall, the relationship between drive, affect and art allows an understanding of culture that acknowledges more space for the creative imagination than the one allowed by the modern concept of objectivity.

Keywords: affectability, originality of life, chain of signifiers, fate of instinct, primal repression, theory of seduction