Jacques Lacan, Desire, and Alternative Constitution Day
I want to begin by expressing my profound gratitude for being able to participate in this online symposium, and that I appreciate and encourage continued critique of Constitution Day and the United States Constitution for its inability to adequately protect the rights of marginalized peoples, in turn failing to protect even those that on-face should benefit from its protection from the pernicious effects of a decidedly un-“perfect Union.”
What I am interested in is the desire for rights, and the way these desires manifest psychoanalytically. A desire for rights is nurtured by a refusal to submit to the Constitution’s imperfect protections, and supported by a desire for that which the Constitution does not.
There are two traditional ways to think about Jacques Lacan’s understanding of desire. One is that desire is the urge for the Other’s recognition, and the other is the urge or interest in what the Other lacks. So, for example, one might desire a senior partner or romantic partner’s praise and admiration. Or, using the second understanding, one might desire advocating for one’s own rights because the Other lacks them. This sort of rights rivalry may explain the troubles with putting intersectional theory into practice. Indeed, as many of us familiar with social organizing will attest, it’s difficult to build broad-based coalitions in pursuit of any number of goals. I contend that Alternative Constitution Day meaningfully positions the second understanding of desire against the first, open up increased possibility for political participation, subjective worth, and critical engagement.
Alternative Constitution Day is necessary because it represents a reckoning with the Other’s lack, rather than a desire for the Other’s recognition. That the Other’s lack is our desire should not be seen as a move of consilience, but instead as a radical transformation in rights advocacy. In order to make the Constitution matter, not as some crumbling piece of parchment, something with hollow promises, signed by well-to-do white men, people must recognize its flaws and unfulfilled promises.
Alternative Constitution day seeks the humanity the Constitution lacks, and it is in that fissure that the possibility for rights, legal protections, and politics resides. Rather than desire the Constitution’s recognition, and here Gerald Rosenberg seems to have made an unrecognized psychoanalytic reading of the Constitution when he critiqued the Civil Rights Movement’s hope, marginalized populations should change the framing of their efforts to aggressively pursue the very thing the Other, and here I am indebted to Paolo Freire, lacks. This change in frame encourages an assertive political demand rather than an implicit acquiescence.
In order to gain the Other’s recognition, we should desire it less, and desire the Other’s lack more.
Nick J. Sciullo, J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Affiliate Faculty, Gender and Women’s Studies Program, Illinois College