The Singularity of Being

This chapter introduces the distinction between desire and the drive, arguing that while subjective singularity partakes of both, it is ultimately closer to the drive, to the province of the real. Explaining that “the immortal,” in a Lacanian sense, has to do with the “undeadness” of the drives, the chapter asserts that singularity activates those parts of the drive that ooze through the various symbolic and imaginary supports that strive to stabilize human life. Arguing that transcendence, from a Lacanian perspective, is not a matter of escaping the world, but rather of experiencing something “other than” the world's most mundane features, it builds a theory of transcendence as a worldly phenomenon.