The "Sexuation" of Sublimation: A Žižekian Approach to John Mighton's Possible Worlds

"The 'Sexuation' of Sublimation" takes a new look [at] Possible Worlds, a highly successful work by Canadian playwright John Mighton. Drawing upon the recent writings of Slavoj Žižek, the article investigates the paradoxes of love, desire, and sublimity that arise amidst the play's shifting worlds. It argues that this highly fantastical play ultimately stages what Jacques Lacan calls a "traversal of the fantasy," modelling a radical reconfiguration of the subject's relation to Symbolic reality. Understood in this way, the play sheds new light on theatre's potential as a site of transformation and gestures toward new modes of configuring - and staging - the sublime.