Abstract
In the 1950s, Jacques Lacan joined the great discussion on the “Ding” and the sublimation of art within the framework of psychoanalytic ethics and aesthetics. This discussion began with Martin Heidegger's reflections on the nature of the “Ding” and art, and could be traced back to the theoretical history originating with Immanuel Kant's doctrine of the “Ding-ansich”. Building on his own early theory of the Real, Lacan takes the positioning of the human vis-à-vis the Real rather than reality as the starting point for ethical inquiry, foreshadowing the mutual opposition and prominence of Kant and the Marquis de Sade. At the same time, he refined a new theory of sublimation based on the characteristics of the inaccessibility and irrepresentability of the “Ding” in the Real, and used courtly love and chivalric poetry as examples of sublimation, which he interpreted by means of “Anamorphose”. His combination of the theory of the “Ding” with the system of the signifier is distinctly contemporary and it can open a theoretical dialogue with the new materialism of the twenty-first century.
Keywords
Ding, sublimation, signifier, chivalric poetry, courtly love
First Page
163
Last Page
170
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Jing. 2025. "Jacques Lacan's Interpretation of the Ding and the Sublimation of Art." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 45, (3): pp.163-170. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol45/iss3/16
