VVVICopjec argues that it is precisely Antigone’s love for her brother that engenders her autonomy, and she turns to Lacan to give an account of love that explicates its autonomy-creating potential. She suggests that Lacan depicts love, in this particular case, Antigone’s love for her brother, as “the coincidence, or near coincidence, of the drive with its object” (Copjec, 41). This account of love develops from Lacan’s characterization of the death drive as always aligned with sublimation. The paradox of the death drive entails that the achievement of its aim (death) would inhibit the drive’s satisfaction. Thus, sublimation, defined as the inhibition of the drive’s aim, is “the proper destiny of the drive” (Copjec, 29). This sublimation occurs, as objects inevitably appear in the path of the death drive and block the drive from achieving its aim of self-annihilation. These objects break the drive into partial drives that then seek to “content themselves with…small nothings…objects that satisfy them” (Copjec, 33). Still, the drive in its partial form, unlike the instincts, remains indifferent to objects. The drive aims not at the objects themselves, but at the satisfaction that it can draw from such objects, as it takes to them in their romanticised form.
VVVISince the drive aims not at objects themselves, but at satisfaction that can be derived from objects, the desire of the lover only “nearly” coincides with the loved object. This aim of satisfaction accompanied by the presence of the object constitutes the “something more” that is always imagined in the act of loving. Lacan calls this “the illusion of love,” when “one believes the beloved is everything one could hope for without recognising the role one’s love for him or her plays in one’s satisfaction” (Copjec, 41). Thus the splitting of the drive is accompanied by the fracturing of the loved object, as “the beloved is always slightly different from or more than herself” (Copjec, 42). The beloved object is thus drawn into a relation characterised by the presence of ineffable excess.
As previously mentioned, Lacan describes this drawing close to satisfaction, this “near coincidence, of the drive with its object” as love, or “the illusion of love” (Copjec, 41). The autonomy in this account of love derives from the indifference of the lover towards the loved object. The sublimation inherent in loving, the “satisfaction of the drive by sublimation,” “testifies to the autonomy of the subject, her independence from the Other” (Copjec, 44). However, this independence or indifference is not directed towards the loved object as beheld in the lover’s eyes, but as the object is defined by external criteria. Antigone’s love for her brother epitomizes this specific form of indifference towards external law and active receptivity towards the loved object. Copjec describes Antigone’s indifference as directed towards what is defined as possible within the community. She states “whereas Hegel focuses on the merits of Antigone’s act of installing Polynices as ‘a member of the community…which sought to destroy him,’ Lacan views the act of the loving sister as a definitive break with her community.” In other words, the deed Antigone undertakes traces the path of the criminal drive, away from the possibilities the community prescribes…”(Copjec, 38). In her actions, Antigone is autonomous; she “is indifferent to external criteria, such as the good opinion of others” (Copjec, 40). While Antigone is indeed indifferent and autonomous with respect to moral laws, she is not apathetic or closed off from the capacity to love.
62