protect us from what we want

is to be read as to accept fully the inconsistency of our desire... in other words, to accept that it is desire itself which sabotages its own liberation.

What, however, if we read the imagined Balkan call 'Protect us from what we want!' in the opposed, second way' To accept fully this inconsistency of our desire, to accept fully that it is desire itself which sabotages its own liberation, is Lacan's bitter lesson. (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 33)

is to be read both as 'protect me from my self-destructive desire' and also 'protect me from the desire that is already the 'others' (i.e. The desire that is already formulated in me) at the core of my being.'.

Jenny Holzer's famous truism 'Protect me from what I want' renders in a very precise way the fundamental ambiguity of the hysterical position. (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32). It can either be read as an ironic reference to the standard male chauvinist wisdom that a woman, when left to herself, gets caught in the self-destructive fury, so that she must be protected from herself by the benevolent male domination: 'Protect me from the excessive self-destructive desire in me that I myself am not able to dominate.' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32). Or it can be read in a more radical way, as pointing towards the fact that in today's patriarchal society, woman's desire is radically alienated, that she desires what men expect her to desire, that she desires to be desired by men. In this case, 'Protect me from what I want' means 'What I want, precisely when I seem to formulate my authentic innermost longing, is already imposed on me by the patriarchal order that tells me what to desire, so the first condition of my liberation is that I break up the vicious cycle of my alienated desire and learn to formulate my desire in an autonomous way.' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32)

protect us from what we want, n.Definitions

protect us from what we want