death drive

depression

extinction

dinosaur

being suicidal

death wish

monster

is a 'will' that exceeds the individual and inspires it to exceed itself, annihilate itself by rewilling itself only in the name of this insatiable power.

For if 'l$e invented this thought in order

is a striving to reduce every living creature to its original condition of inanimate matter. It turns destructive when directed outward onto objects.

As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus it quite seriously deserves to be called a death instinct, while the erotic instincts represent the effort to live. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of special organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. (Freud 'why war' : 5)

is, in fact, its exact opposite. It is a striving for the dimension of the 'undead,' of a spectral life which insist beyond (biological) death.

On the philosophico-ontological level, this is what Lacan is aiming at when he emphasizes the difference between the Freudian death drive stands for its exact opposite, for the dimension of the 'undead,' of a spectral life which insist beyond (biological) death' (Zizek 2003 93).

is not a biological disturbance, but rather, an ontological one.

My basic thesis is, to give as it was almost in this Hollywood, Readers Digest style formula, is to read the central premise of Freudian psychoanalysis, the hypothesis of what Freud calls 'Todestrieb', death drive, to read it not as something biological, whatever, but as an ontological, as it were, disturbance, structure which feeds to what in German idealism they call negativity. This is the thesis.

is, on the level of the id, the self-destructive energy or force aimed to lead organic life back to its inorganic state.

On the level of the 'id', the death drive refers to self-destructive energy or force aimed to lead organic life back to its inorganic state. The death drive shows itself, for example, in the compulsion to repeat trauma, Post-Freud it is often referred to as thanatos to pair with eros [also not Freud's term] or creative, flourishing, life-producing instinct. It is associated with the regulatory pleasure principle or 'the avoidance of unpleasure or production of pleasure'.

is our species-being which lives inside us (or rather through us) and offers us an 'impossible' jouissance (which is far more than us) in contrast to the satisfaction of our own small humdrum desires.

The death drive is what lives inside us by virtue of our existence as living organisms, a fate that has little enough to do with our biographical destinies or even our existential experience : the Thanatos lives through us ('in us what is more than us') ... it is our species-being ... and this is why it is preferable (following the later Lacan) to call it a drive and to distinguish the impossible jouissance it dangles before us from the humdrum desires and velleities we constantly invent and then either satisfy or substitute. (Jameson 2006 : pdf. )

 emerges precisely as result of gap in the order of being between the radical autonomy of subjectivity on the one hand and the threat this poses to the symbolic framework of subjectivity on the other.

Death drive emerges precisely as a result of this gap in the order of being a gap that simultaneously designates the radical autonomy of the subject and is something that constantly threatens to sabotage or overwhelm the symbolic framework of subjectivity' (NET zizek primer)

is a thing having nothing to do with death at all. Its horror lies in its embodiment as life itself, sheer life, indeed, as immortality, and as a curse from which only death mercifully relieves us.

for here the Thanatos has nothing to do with death at all. Its horror lies in its embodiment as life itself, sheer life, indeed, as immortality, and as a curse from which only death mercifully relieves us (all the operatic overtones of The Flying Dutchman are relevant here, all the mythic connotations of the Wandering Jew, or indeed the vampire, the undead, those condemned to live for ever). (Jameson 2006 : pdf)

death drive, n.Definitions

death drive