Concept
Desire
Appetite transformed by social prohibition — the conversion of need into sign
“Desire is generally understood in distinction from need, and in that way its specifically human quality is brought out—desire implicates us in the other, which for mimetic theory means those we imitate or, more broadly, are bound to through a web of models.”
From the Archive
“The originary hypothesis would place desire on the originary scene, with the accelerated rush to the center constituting the imminent mimetic crisis that calls forth the sign.”
“We could say that desire is a demand made to the center—ultimately, a demand to be cradled and protected by the center, to have the attributes of the center conferred upon oneself, however that might be imagined.”
“And by possession, I mean absolute, unquestioned, permanent possession—which is what desire aims at. To put it in grammatical terms, desire involves the object issuing imperatives to the subject—come and get me; be who you can be once you have me; protect me from all others, etc.”
“In itself, desire is just what it is, the imperative power bestowed upon an object through and in proportion to its possession by some actual or possible normative rival (or rivals).”
“The nature of desire is such that it is not, as assumed by modern liberal anthropology, inherent to the individual and sovereign—the individual does not face society with his own desires to then be satisfied within a marketplace, but learns these desires from others.”
“But all this is just to say that desire can be converted into love: the imperative to support the freedom and signifying power of the object.”
AI Overview
— AI-generated synthesis. The archive passages above are the primary source.The simplest formulation: desire is "appetite for something generated by social prohibition." But this requires unpacking. The prohibition is not an external constraint placed on pre-existing desire. The prohibition constitutes desire. Before the originary scene, there is appetite — the animal drive toward food, toward the desirable object. After the originary scene, there is desire — appetite shaped by the recognition that others share it, that taking would trigger violence, that the object is not mine to take. That recognition is the prohibition; the shaped appetite is desire.
Desire and the sign. The originary sign is the deferral of desire, not its satisfaction. This is crucial: the sign does not give you the object; it substitutes for the act of taking the object. Desire persists through the sign — it is transformed by it, given a shared orientation, directed toward a center rather than toward the object's immediate appropriation. The sign converts desire from a force that converges on the object to a force that circulates around the center.
Mimetic desire. Desire is mimetic — we desire what others desire. This is not a contingent fact about human psychology but the structural outcome of the originary scene. Every participant desired the central object because every other participant desired it. The object's desirability is constituted by the shared orientation toward it, not by its intrinsic properties. This is why desire is so difficult to satisfy: the object of desire is always partly the desire of others, which cannot be possessed.
Aesthetics and desire. Katz follows Gans in defining the aesthetic as the oscillation between desire and deferral — the pleasure of approaching the desired object without the violence of appropriating it. Art is the cultural institution that converts desire into the sustained deferral of the aesthetic: you can have the object in imagination, can circle it indefinitely, can approach it asymptotically, without the crisis of actual appropriation. This is why art has a civilizing function: it channels desire into forms that do not threaten the center.
Desire and resentment. Every desire that cannot be satisfied — every desire whose object is permanently in the possession of another, or permanently occupied by the center — generates resentment. Resentment is the structural consequence of desire under conditions of scarcity and hierarchy. The question is not how to eliminate resentment but how to convert it from destructive (aimed at demolishing the center) to productive (aimed at generating the disciplines that make center-approach possible).
Across the Corpus
How this idea is developed elsewhere in the archive, earliest to latest.
“When the desiring subject makes demands upon the resistant object, the demand that the object remain ever fresh, ever enticing, and ever yielding leads to madness—or to another demand, for further imperatives guiding the subject in possessing the object. These imperatives are invocations, and result in new imperatives from the center proposing…”
“Thus the act of representation, however brief, must lead to a nonviolent communal division or sharing of the object. (Gans 20; emphasis in original) Thus, representation holds the group together in two interrelated ways: to avoid conflict and to bind together in signifying practice. If we jump a few steps we understand the central position of narrativity…”
“A more synthetic term for this combination of appetite and the frustration occasioned by its (sacred) object’s withdrawal is desire . The above schema provides the means both for understanding and discounting the element of desire in linguistic intention, although the participants in the originary event neither possess nor have need of these means, given…”
“I think I'm accounting for desire through what I am calling the "imperative exchange," for which I am also very dependent upon that same E of C. Desire is both socially constructive and socially constructed--we can't treat it as "natural" and "spontaneous" any more than we can treat it as epiphenomenal or mere symptom. The way to take this into account is…”
“On the originary scene the center doesn’t “speak,” but for the members of the group the center is repelling their desire—that is, a kind of intentionality is attributed to the center, and registered in the sign, but this intentionality cannot be given “voice.” This becomes possible with the imperative. It becomes possible to make requests of the center, and…”
“Those on the periphery of the scene can be said to resent the sacred central object, but they gradually lose their fear of it as the pacific nature of the scene becomes patent, motivating the transition to the sparagmos which supplies alimentary reinforcement to the community. But the resentful tension between appetite and non-fulfillment remains a…”
“Desire and the Sign In the previous Chronicle , I avoided speaking of desire in order to anchor the notion of paradox in the phenomenon of representation. Yet desire, as opposed to mere appetite, participates in the same paradoxical relationship as the sign between “horizontal” appetite and “vertical” deferral. In both cases, the object of what was an…”
“Since the gesture was presumably successful in avoiding conflict, its sign-function will be retained, not merely as the residue of an aborted act but as an intentional gesture—which it will already have become in the course of its first, repeated, use. That the gesture designates something appetitively attractive but for the moment interdicted allows us…”
“Our sentences are scraping the data field for demands to be converted into commands. Our bodies, for example, are comprised of a vast set of demands for pleasure, comfort, space and therapy, including anticipatory therapy or potential therapy, while all those demands made from throughout our metabolism are registered by data control centers which use them…”
“Desire is generally understood in distinction from need, and in that way its specifically human quality is brought out—desire implicates us in the other, which for mimetic theory means those we imitate or, more broadly, are bound to through a web of models. The originary hypothesis would place desire on the originary scene, with the accelerated rush to the…”
Key Texts
The most focused treatment: defines desire against need, places it on the originary scene, and maps desire/resentment onto the demand/command poles of the imperative.
Develops desire as the drive to absolute possession, the object issuing imperatives to the subject, and the transition from the grammar of desire to that of resentment—and how desire can be converted into love.
Frames desire as a demand made to the center, to have the center's attributes conferred on oneself—linking desire to the structure of the declarative sentence.
Pins down desire as the imperative power a rival's possession bestows on an object, sharpening the mimetic (rival-mediated) account of desire.