Coleridge’s Desire for Other Jouissance: A Lacanian Reading of Kubla Khan

Abstract

Summary: This article argues that desire begins Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and moves it forward. Coleridge projects himself onto Kubla’s garden, transcends his pleasure-dome, and wishes to revive the Abyssinian maid’s song in order to build that dome in air and experience a moment of jouissance. Subjectivity is returned in the end by Coleridge’s move from pleasure to jouissance and back to Kubla’s garden to reconcile conflicting desires for Symbolic pleasure and Real jouissance. Although desire begins the quest for the maid’s song as the lost object-cause of desire, the inspired poet returns to the Symbolic order to prove that he is trapped in desire for the maid as an ever-eluding signifier that has a foot in the Real and cannot be articulated by Coleridge. © 2018 JLS/TLW.