Childish Desire … or Worse! – Cecilia Naranjo

I want a child

I want a child

I want in my womb

To feel the blood, the life in it, I want a child.

(By the duo Brigitte)

This fifth issue of OMBILIC, following the example of the lyrics of the Brigitte song, sheds light on the unconditional drive demand that inhabits wanting a child.

Disruptive jouissance, experienced in the body, the child-event, as Damien Guyonnet proposes in his text “Jouissance in All Its States,” does not take on the innocence of a pink baby face. Etymologically, the adjective “pregnant” is the right one. From this, in English, like a true false-friend, the whole lexical field of pregnancy will unfold.

Among the consequences of the decline of the symbolic order, this headless will that has reached its zenith – more caprice than decided desire – finds today satisfaction thanks to the new procreation technologies offered by science.

Paola Francesconi tells us that “the drift of the whole, of the absolute, is the fold that the discourse of science can take today, especially with regard to the Name of the Father and filiation.” With the possibility of dispensing with the father in short by substituting the biological letter of DNA, the empty place of desire is abolished in favour of the absolutisation of will. When we want, we can … when we can, we or worse!

Yet the persistence of loss, underlined by Lacan in the conclusion of Television, is an opportunity that obliges contemporary subjects to decomplete the One of pure genetic transmission by reintroducing the singularity of family inventions.

It is in the aftermath, P. Francesconi tells us, that desire can reappear. It is also retroactively, stresses D. Guyonnet, that the subject, which disappeared when it acts on a whim, can be reintroduced on the occasion of meeting an analyst: going back to the singular coordinates that saw this “I want” emerge in order to approach what I desire.

Enjoy your reading!

Tr. Janet Haney

Photography: ©Rolet Christian – www.christianrolet.com

Bibliography:

“Gennie Lemoine has shown how ‘the child at any price’ wanted by hysterical desire is just one more sign of her fantasy of phallic omnipotence: her desire for the child-penis without having to go through sexuality is nothing other than a refusal of the body and of castration. Wanting at any price means that desire is not there. Will and desire are in fact incompatible: will proceeds from the superego, while desire arises from lack. Cloning will allow us to push the fantasy of the all-woman even further: we will witness the advent of the virgin mother, symbol of matriarchy and the denial of the other sex.”

Liart, M., “La filiation dans la modernité”, Quarto, No. 72, December 2000, p. 66.