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Death drive is some times understood as negativity (negative inherence, self-relating negativity) in Zizek as well as a type of excess/surplus. How are we to square these two seemingly incompatible characterizations? By factoring in the concepts of jouissance and drive. Zizke suggests that it is libido, or (in more Lacanian terms) the traumatic encounter with jouissance, which results in the subject being ’out of joint’, in a type of ’ontological derailment’. We explain references to ’surplus vitality’, ’libidinal animation’, and the ’bodily agitation’ of the drive, that is, the compulsive insistence to attain jouissance despite the costs involved. We emphasize - a crucial fact - that in thinking the death drive we should highlight the role of the unending, increasing DRIVE rather than becoming fixated with literal, organic imagery of death and demise.
