#33: The Hunger That Never Ends: Lacan on Desire: Todd McGowan

Have you ever achieved something you desperately wanted — and felt empty almost immediately after? That restlessness isn't a flaw in your character. According to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, it is the very structure of being human.In this episode of The Prometheans, host Ali sits down with Professor Todd McGowan — philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and author of over fifteen books including Capitalism and Desire, Embracing Alienation, and The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan — to explore one of the most radical and liberating ideas in modern thought: that satisfaction is not merely difficult to achieve. It is structurally impossible.Together, they unpack why desire can never be finally satisfied, what the objet petit a actually is and why it functions as the cause of desire rather than its object, how jouissance (excessive enjoyment) operates in repetition rather than arrival, why capitalism is so powerful precisely because it exploits — rather than resolves — human dissatisfaction, the crucial distinction between desire and drive, why the pursuit of authenticity and wholeness may itself be a source of suffering, and what it genuinely means to live ethically in the face of an irreducible lack.Along the way, the conversation draws unexpected bridges between Lacanian psychoanalysis and the Islamic mystical tradition — from Ibn Arabi's restless qalb to the apophatic theology of the via negativa — revealing that the deepest traditions of human thought have long circled the same unanswerable question: What is it that we are really after?This is not a conversation about giving up on desire. It is a conversation about finally understanding it — and, perhaps for the first time, making peace with the fact that the longing you carry is not a mistake. It is the most human thing about you.🎙️ Guest: Professor Todd McGowan, Department of English, University of Vermont📚 Books Referenced: Capitalism and Desire | Embracing Alienation | Enjoying What We Don't Have | Pure Excess | The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan🎧 Also Recommended: Why Theory podcast (McGowan & Ryan Engley)The Prometheans is a podcast dedicated to the deepest questions of philosophy, theology, literature, and the human condition. New episodes feature renowned scholars, authors, and thinkers from around the world.