From emptiness to the object: Das Ding and the sublimation in Jacques Lacan

Abstract

The aim is to clarify the Lacanian formulation that "sublimation raises an object to the dignity of the Thing". The hypothesis according to which das Ding, or the Thing, is what remains irrepresentable in the experience of satisfaction, what suffers from the signifier and can be related to the pure lack is developed and leads us to think sublimation as the construction of an object that express such opacity. To this end, examples from the courtly love literature and from works of art referred by Lacan in his approach of sublimation will be analyzed.