Is this Real?And if not, what is?

Examining theconcept of the real, we are trying to reach out and touch the paradox of human existence. However, the definition of the Real is the absence of itself from the moment we enter system of language and the symbolic state of Lacan. Words could never capture the Real in its whole and it would never be possible to reconstruct it effectively. The scope of linguistic representation plays a key role in all doomed efforts to achieve perfect understanding of the concept. Language can never tell the whole truth. It is on its basis alienation, a manifestation of the failure and shortcomings of each representation. It causes the loss of any immediacy and contact with our needs, which implies our symbolic castration. After that, all our searches are focused on trying to cancel this castration, take back what was once ours. As entering the social world, we forever lose the order of the real, the raw pleasure of the body.

When enjoyment is lost, desire takes its place.Fantasies are born, as promises to cover a shortage that was created by our castration. We could say that besides a promise it is also a reaction, a defense mechanism. Fantasies are placed on the side of the Real, they support our sense of the real, the construction of the Real (Zizek). And vice versa,this construction becomes of ontological meaning and roots inside an imaginary environment. Inside this environment we continue to try and find the Real through its symbolization, which condemns our effort from the start and makes us lose the Real forever, since the Real can only exist and be defined through the failure of symbolization, any symbolization.

This research is not intended to come to a conclusion and a theory about the Real. Maybe even in contrast, all this search of the Real, always having in mind that this, the Real, whether e are talking about psychoanalysis or political and social criticism, not only does not exist, but is an impossibility, an element which is always in contradiction with our world and with itself. Thus, through a series of narratives of events, theories, thoughts and images, this book is an attempt to navigate in the impossibility of the Real. A journey which has many different sources, case studies and opinions, definitely ups and downs and perhaps many points of confusion, contradiction and maybe even moments of hopelessness.