The Contingent Foundation of Chance in the Destinies of the Drive

Keywords: Chance, Contingency, Drive, Repetition

Abstract

Since Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the concept of drive has been articulated with the compulsion to repeat. Reformulating this concept, Lacan emphasizes that free association, functioning as speech delivered to chance, paradoxically reveals the symbolic determination that organizes the subject. This essay explores the articulation between chance, contingency, and necessity in the destinies of the drive, based on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and Meillassoux's reading of Mallarmé's poem A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance. Meillassoux shows how Mallarmé fixes chance by making opposing alternatives coexist in an undecidable character, but this fixation only becomes possible because an inaugural and contingent act establishes the field of possible alternatives. By instituting the universe of possibilities, absolute contingency also creates the ground upon which repetition is drawn—a repetition that, however, conceals its own contingent and traumatic origin.

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References

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Published
2025-06-06