Desire as slip-up in the Short-Story "Peaches" by John Mcgahern

Lacan sees desire as constituting the fundamental dialectics and formation of the unconscious. This idea is developed in a reading of John McGahern's'Peaches'. This short-story explores desire as slip-up in all the ambiguous meaning of this expression. Firstly, it is in terms of the self and the other that the dimension of desire is analysed. The relationship between the man and the woman is presented as not simply scenes from conjugal life but as showing the man's false serenity behind which lurks an anxiety of death. Then, aphanisis or the disappearance of the man's desire is shown and reinterpreted in terms of Lacan's conception of aphanisis as the fading of the subject. This aphanisis is then seen in relation with castration. As contradictions are at work in the characters' speeches, the political aspect of the story is taken into account to show desire as being skewed differently in each character as desire seeks different routes to recognition and freedom. Lastly, Deleuze and Guattari's iconoclastic view of desire is constrated with that of Lacan to explain further John McGahern's complex structuring of desire.