HCST Definitions

Definitions jotted down for the final HCST paper.

Yong Ho Kim

The real is illusory as long as it is confined within the borders of the Other. The real is a network of derouted desires intertwined in a stubborn desire, or drive, that guides the individual’s forces towards an arbitrary direction.

In the real, the craving for the objet petit a is manifested within society with the form of need. When this purely theoretical element, is coupled with the desire it formalizes externally influencing the other members of society, in the form of demand. A demand is interdependent of the desire in the shape of continuous feedback, where the external demand germinates need in other individuals, and this growing with the aid of desire causes an external expression as demand. This cyclic sequence of demand-desire turns into a ritual, an entity of its own, becoming a drive.

Hysteria, historically diagnosed as pathological, is one of the ways in which the underlying perception of the Other beneath the Real manifests physically within the individual. An individual showing psychosis, on the other hand, will assume Real is not what it appears to be, but won’t be able to reach the Real because the very beginning of the Real intersects the peripheries of the Other.

Death drive is the most rudimentary expression of the search for the objet petit a beyond the contingent. Every event seems to have a beginning and an end, and for the human mind this termination of his working framework is a mystery object of anxiety. This seemingly endless desire, epitomized into a general motif in the arts and philosophy, is known as death drive.

A sign is a bimodal code pointing at the same time to the signified as the object of desire and the signifier as the source of drive. The signifier initiates drive by transporting the objet petit a to the real, by giving a social edge to its meaning. A sign relates a symbol from the Other to a symbol from the real through the individual; without the individual, the sign turns meaningless.

As primal clan-based human groups develop into more and more complex societies, a particular code of modus vivendi and attitude towards the real arises and consolidates giving an arbitrary identity to the primal society. This arbitrarity is product of pure coincidence, without practicality, and threads an interlaced net of signifieds throughout its dominion.