One telling thing concerning Jouissance and the unbearable was a scene in a movie (and wish I could remember what it was) in which a female character was going through some painful medical procedure and in which the camera focused on her feet twisting and contorting much as they would during sex.
2/2/2014
Of course, we can also see Jouissance at work in porn not in the obvious manner of how it gives us visual stimulus, but in the more subtle ways in which it promises satisfaction while never truly satisfying. In it, we are always offered partial objects (the the close up of certain certain acts or body parts), the objet petit a that creates a space around it that must be filled in by the phantasmic support. And this phantasmic support is evident in the fact that it is not just loners who watch porn (those who must seek satisfaction on their own only to go back for more porn), but couples as well who will watch it to supplement the actual act of intercourse through fantasy –that is, as Zizek points out in the appendix chapter “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: The Sexual Act in Cinema”, since the act, essentially and objectively, is comical, awkward, and ridiculous. This is why mainstream movies, in the obligatory sex scene, will utilize the phantasmic supplement (the same one that couples use when actually having sex) in the way they present sex as more fluid and poetic than it actually is. Compare, for instance, the first time sexual encounters most of us have had with those we have formed intimate relationships with and the first time encounters displayed in movies.
And in this sense, we have to give a little credit to amateur porn in that the act is presented in all its awkward rawness while still resorting to the phantasmic supplement of certain mannerisms: the large penis, the perfectly willing female who is willing to allow the male to shove themselves into the back of her throat while she makes choking sounds (usually eastern European which only adds to the phantasmic supplement by hinting at the desperation that would arise in such distressed economic environments: the perfect Libertarian fuck fantasy as concerns their view on the legalization of prostitution in forcing women of lesser means to become their whores), and the objet petit a of the gaze she gives the camera as she is engaging in fellatio. Still, the awkwardness of it is too obvious as well as the phantasmic supplement and appears to be the product of conflicting fantasies in the observer: the phallic fantasy of being larger than usual, and therefore more attractive to prospective sexual partners, and that of actually being satisfied which would involve the female being able to go down deeper than those in amateur porn seem to be able to do. Still, it provides the (non)satisfaction of promising satisfaction while never truly satisfying (Jouissance) by turning to mannerisms that have evolved in the industry: the very awkwardness of it, the heavy handed dirty talk, the momentum the female tries to represent through an affected and heavy handed passion (the speed of her bobbing head, the slobbering, and the spitting on the penis (as if she were giving the man’s sperm back), and the money shot which consists of the man’s climax being spilled on the woman’s face –that is when real (non)satisfaction consists of the climax being a little more out of view (think: the female climax which can’t be represented so easily).
But a real sense of Jouissance (the unbearable of the push/pull nature of it) comes with the occasional slap on the buttocks –a technique, BTW, often used in strip joints in which the patron is exposed to the reversal of having the stripper takes his belt and whip him on the buttocks while the rest of the patrons cheer. What act could more summarize the mix of raw awkwardness and (un)fulfilled promise that constitutes Jouissance: the unbearable?
One telling thing concerning Jouissance and the unbearable was a scene in a movie (and wish I could remember what it was) in which a female character was going through some painful medical procedure and in which the camera focused on her feet twisting and contorting much as they would during sex.
But enough about sex!
let’s talk about that favorite song
(the one: that makes you want to fold into
…your (self
note K’s dream girls:
the way they would fall into his arms
then slip away
just as easily
Jouissance (the sweet unbearable(plays a part in pretty much everything we could possibly do.
But it gets more interesting when you consider the less then sweet unbearable from the perspective of one committing cruelty:
take, for instance, the push-pull tension you tend to see in cinema sociopaths. In the later version of Last House on the Left, the leader of a gang of sociopaths chastises his victims when they “act up” by seeking to escape. There is something hysteric in his tone as if he seeks to make himself seem human (the paternal male) while being anything but.
And it can be seen, as well, in Son of Sam, in his letter sent to the New York Times in which he claims, despite all assumptions about him, to love humanity.
I’m just writing notes here: but in order to understand the Jouissance involved in cruelty, you have to imagine the ways in which you, yourself, could engage in it:
the pleasure of power disrupted by guilt in a thousand little ways.
We live for chaos
…while seeking order:
Jouissance:
the unbearable push and pull
of something
(struggling with the nothing it could be
2 have things in order
is to have a space(
a nothingness(
around them.
Hence: chaos
In other words: the push and pull tension of chaos and order:
of space (which just stands still
and time:
which seems to move
while not moving.
the outlines of the body as a horizon
to millions of little fractal movements.
It’s a wonder we can think.
The mind is fractal -in a 3 dimensional way.
Think about all the movements of space that occur between your center, that thing looking out, and what it is seeing.
Jouissance is almost the shadow side of the will to power.
Can we define, again, what Jouissance means?
It is the pleasure that isn’t really pleasure, that merges with pain - it indicates the threshold between pleasure and un-pleasure –
it is the will to power that does not actually lead to power, one might say -
It is the prospect of pleasure, that is pleasurable in the mind, but not in the body -it can split the subject in a physical and a psychical entity.
Sex can both be a means to split up the psyche from the physical, and to bring them together. Of course, porn is always a means to split them. What about pornographic sex, when one enjoys the sex act not just in terms of the physical sensations but because of the setting, the context and the idea of it?
So Jouissance the same thing that pleasure is on a scale where pleasure is limited by the ‘good’ it does to the organism, but which keeps going beyond the service of the subject.
One may say that warfare is a result of jouissance. We may even say that religious inspiration is a form of making jouissance attainable to the mind, and that art is a way of preventing pleasure from becoming jouissance, and post-structuralist art is the very expression of this act. It is taming the drive so that it condenses before it becomes jouissance, and becomes a form of death and suffering unto death.
All artforms of the American age tease us into jouissance, they open the world around the pleasure-principle-based subject to a slight degree, create a space circumfering that subject’s “need”-structure, a veritable jungle of excess, of cultivated excess, of “Hollywood”, of that place where one can not enter but with which one is in constant dialogue.
In the world of Jouisscance-disclosed, which is what Hollywood and the music industry have become, man is enabled to transcend his organic subjectivity and participate, for a while at a time, in a world where the subject is not actually bound to his organic limits. It replaces the less potent form that was religion, where man was able to transcend his organic subjectivity via ideals of sexual goodness, of a place where pleasure is endless but abstract and not-yet -attained - religion provides us with a hermetically sealed aquarium of what lies beyond - and this prospect, the idea of our entitlement to it, provides a pleasure that is capable of keeping the organism huddled up in his own reality, content in letting it pass for what it is.
Hollywood (I use this term very generally to indicate the whole desire-culture that was birthed the beginning of the past century) opens up the gates of “heaven” (that which is meant for gods and not mere organic mortals, beasts) just a tiny splintered bit so that the light of what-could-be comes shining through and compels every man to figure out ways to justify his own presence within those walls. It is at once fiercely barbaric compared to religion and terribly brave. Man turns out to be sufficiently plasmaic to, on fortunate occasions, rise to the new horizon. It turns out man is not bound by the “right to pleasure” as given by his parental structure and his organic hermetic identity. His mind is capable of creating such excessive realms that actually do host life.
Many do not yet believe in the validity of this creation, and it is true that it causes more death and entropy than it causes realized joy - but the philosophical issue is that joy that it does allow, and this again relates to the master-slave dialectic, wherein the master makes the slave suffer for his attained-jouissance, for the pleasure that he derives from transgressing the limits of his own hermetic being.
The God Dionysus equals the workings of jouissance on a society brave enough to engage it as part of the world. But this God is embedded in a societal structure in that it outlines this structure, gives rise to the physical limits of this structure by a monthly or yearly festival in which, structurally, all components of the active social body participate in transcending this social body as such in a form of rapture, excess, pleasure beyond identity.
“Our” way of dealing with the predominant role jouissance has come to playing our society, is empowered by the invitation of such a God, and to the obedience t a certain structure within which the attributes of this God is acceptable. The music industry of the 60’s was such a Gd, such a structure, such an entity into which the results of the jouissance could be inscribed, and made visible to those who had not yet tasted it, and rememberable by those who had. But where it serves perfectly in the first case, in the second case it is deficient.
The memory of something that has truly fleeted is painful and cause to many a suicide. What we lack is a true reverence for this phenomenon - a valuation of it that compels us to erect societal structures to its apex, gives us the lasting promise of re-attaining it.
Our aim, regardless of where we are in life, is to integrate all that we experience as power/pleasure into the continuing form of our organism. But the only way to do this in the case of the ‘pleasure of the Gods’ which is what we might call jouissance due to its trans-necessary nature, is to sacrifice, to a greater body of pleasure, in the knowledge it will be there when we engage it again - a collective field of ravenous joy that man, as a member of a society that serves itself through the lens of this godly garden is entitled to grow into as he accumulates experience of it and contributions to it.
Zizek has in my mind not given an accurate portrayal of sacrifice and sanctification.
You seem to have a pretty good sense of Jouissance, FC, to the extent that French thinkers like Lacan are pretty vague and obscure in their expositions (they never give it to you straight) and seem to encourage individual interpretations. Lacan, having started off publishing in a French surreal journal, and his term Jouissance, seems to open his thought up to the same dynamic as dreams and abstract art: most of the meaning to be derived from it comes from the discourse around it. And you’ve written more than I can go through in this particular window. So I’ll have to bounce around randomly and respond to what I can.
“Jouissance is almost the shadow side of the will to power.
Can we define, again, what Jouissance means?
It is the pleasure that isn’t really pleasure, that merges with pain - it indicates the threshold between pleasure and un-pleasure –
it is the will to power that does not actually lead to power, one might say -
It is the prospect of pleasure, that is pleasurable in the mind, but not in the body -it can split the subject in a physical and a psychical entity.”
Zizek certainly seems to connect Jouissance and the will to power. And given the essential role that both seem to play in pretty much all of behavior, one would have to assume that there is a connection. Now, it’s just a matter of articulating that connection.
To give you a sense of how I interpret it, I will describe my introduction in and trajectory from Lacan for Beginners. We start with sex. As Lacan describes it, sex is an activity in which we experience pleasure at a conscious level while experiencing discomfort at a subconscious one. The example he gives is that if you cut it off right before orgasm, what you would experience is discomfort. But I consider this a nominal doorway into the true subtlety of it. If you actually think about the act of sex, it is a process of working your way to a threshold that will take you to a place you’re really enjoying at the time. It’s as if you’re being pulled in 2 directions at once. And what results is a kind of push/pull tension that has been interpreted by Zizek as “the unbearable”.
Lacan then goes on to reverse this to point that for the hysteric. What is experienced on a conscious level is discomfort while at a subconscious level they are actually experiencing pleasure. And this makes perfect sense. Why else would hysteric repeat uncomfortable behaviors if they didn’t, at some subconscious level, experience pleasure. To give an example that will make a lot people uncomfortable:
A young man falls in with a woman that he is attracted to because she has that look of sex: buxom, big breasts, slightly rugged features, and an approachable personality. However, she likes to go out a lot without him, and he finds himself during these outings in a state of extreme duress as he imagines her with someone else. Now all he has to do is stop imagining such things and focus on something more productive or even leave her. But he can’t. And the reason for this is that what he was attracted to in the first place was what was, to his mind, a slut. Therefore, the reason he allows the pattern to go on is while he is experiencing extreme displeasure on a conscious level, what he is experiencing at a subconscious one is the pleasure of watching her as if she were in a porn flick.
And it is this complex interaction (or compellation) of pleasure and pain that constitutes Jouissance. And writing about it now, I realize that I have been confusing the terms “pleasure” and “Jouissance” in that pleasure is only a component of Jouissance and that, contrary to the hedonistic assertion, it is Jouissance, rather than pleasure, that actually draws us. And this dynamic underlies a lot of things we do. This, for instance. Think about the immeasurable discomforts we are willing to go through (like reading obscure French philosophy) to get to those moments of self transcendence that only seem so in hindsight and that we never get to experience in the moment: the (non) satisfaction of that which promises satisfaction and fulfills by never truly satisfying. It’s not like just jacking into the pleasure center of the brain and turning up the amplitude. And even that act would seem to have an underlying discomfort to it.
“The God Dionysus equals the workings of jouissance on a society brave enough to engage it as part of the world. But this God is embedded in a societal structure in that it outlines this structure, gives rise to the physical limits of this structure by a monthly or yearly festival in which, structurally, all components of the active social body participate in transcending this social body as such in a form of rapture, excess, pleasure beyond identity.”
Excellent, Zizek-like, mythological take on it. In Plague of Fantasies, he actually goes a lot into the little transgressions that a social/political structure will allow in order to sustain its power or hold over its subjects.
But the mythological figure I would offer up as defining of Jouissance is Orpheus as he ascends out of Hades with Eurydice. One can only imagine the “unbearable” longing (Jouissance) he must have felt when he could no longer take it and turned to her only to find her not there. It is in Orpheus that we see the aesthetic aspect of Jouissance, that work of art that makes you want to fold into yourself for longing: the (non) satisfaction of that which promises satisfaction and fulfills by never truly satisfying.
I want to explore the idea that conscious pleasure is coupled with subconscious discomfort. That rings true in many ways. We might see jouissance - being that which draws us almost in spite of our self, in spite of our individual “soundness” - as a kind of meat-grinder, where the meat is our conscious will and idea of identity, and the grinder is “the world” i.e. The Real, that part of the world which transcends our individual, conscious self-identity but to which our organism can not help responding.
We do, as entities, seek out things that bring pleasure on the surface but that cause us suffering below the surface. Almost any extension of the media machine fulfills this function. There is beautiful things on the surface, and ugly questions, matters and doubts below. We consciously identify with the cool and beautiful and sexy things on screen, but subconsciously, we are drawn in by the horrible tensions and conflicts and self-debasing things that underly the very process of exposing those beauties.
For example, I am watching Mad Men, I’ve been at it for years, it’s a fucking struggle, as it’s horrible. It’s extremely well made and beautiful, but the characters go through this meat grinder on an hourly basis, there is absolutely no room for psychological comfort, there is only misunderstanding, hypocrisy, arrogance, humiliation, lies, dominance and submission, disappointment - The Real. Anything that tears at the structural integrity of the subject, will do as a storyline.
Zizeks interest in movies is of course not a side-matter, it goes into the very depths of his subject matter. And I believe his approach (he has made Lacan accessible to me, as to so many others) allows for a more accurate description of what makes movies work, than the standard Hollywood 101 playbook of three acts separated by inciting incident and conflict resolution. What really makes us watch movies is the pain, stretched out across a narrative that conveys a lot of aesthetic values - either that, or the reverse.
The hysteria example touches on the reverse. In some movies, the misery that the characters go through is so blatant and obvious, the discomfort is entirely conscious, and this does indeed allow the viewer a subconscious comfort. I know that when I watch visceral scenes from Breaking Bad, for example, or Deadwood - that my subconscious being is relieved. I can feel it, in retrospect. I can feel the tensions in my body releasing as I wince. A good Tarantino movie will do the same, and I remember watching Se7en about seven times in the cinema, engorged in the suffering, not in the least as endured by the rest of the audience.
What does this tell me? It suggests that the real core of my being is not pleasure-seeking, but rather finding confirmation in conflict, in dissonance, in affirming the limits of this being, which of course must hurt, must have sharp edges, must make me bleed. I suppose one can take two approaches to life, then. Perhaps this sounds very 19th century chauvinist - the masculine approach might be to seek out discomfort and conflict, relying on the subconscious pleasure that this releases, somehow, and the feminine approach is to seek out pleasure, enduring the subconscious suffering that is called “discipline, manners, dear”.
The classical wisdom that too be beautiful one must suffer is unwanted in this world, but it’s true. And the reverse also, that to truly enjoy oneself, one has to ‘be willing to be terrible’, as Nietzsche says, or in less dramatic terms, one has to allow pain and ugliness above the surface. Maybe that notion may serve as a link to the story of the Christ, and the Fragile Absolute, which was the first Zizek book I read. I have not read the Plague of Fantasies, I think I’ll go out into the rain and look for it. It’s been a while since I read Zizek, I notice I missed his ‘savage’, cut-to-the-heart type approach.
Very cold rain. But the bookstore I went for had it in store. I read the preface, dealing with the obscene shadow of the father, the three modes of objet petit a and other very evocative ideas. It got me most interested in the idea of the human subjectivity as constructed with the knowledge of his own mortality. Zizek compares man to animal, in whom death is fully external, whereas in man it is part of who he is to himself. But, he writes, once the death is made actual, it leads to catastrophe. I want to understand better what he means. He suggests that once the idea of death, which is essential to the human subjectivity, becomes actualized, the subjectivity is destroyed. Not in the simple way of ‘when you die you cease to be subject’ but rather, it seems, when death is experienced up close, something goes awry in the structure of the subject. At least that’s what I got out of it, but I don’t fully understand. What does he mean here, in relation to the subjects own point of impossibility, which defines him - ?
[size=95]“This point is the objet a, that which is subtracted from reality (as it’s impossible) and thus gives it consistency - if it gets included in reality, it causes a catastrophe.” [preface, xvi][/size]
In this context, the object a is the fact of death. I had not thought of it in this way, death as the surplus enjoyment that frames mans reality. I may have misunderstood, but the context the preface provides is minimal.
Reason I ask is I have had a psychotic attack (which I countered but which shook me) after the suicide of my friend in the garden next to my bed. I think that this destroyed my capacity for an objet petit a - it certainly ruined the ‘petit’ part - the objet a had become so omnipresent in my own self-experience that the self did no longer weigh up to the death/resolution apex. Well, I pressed the scales back to normal position by an act of extreme panic/will, but the gap that defines every subjectivity was significantly widened, and I had to gather myself around its edges, and become, after 13 years of reckless adventures and extremely intense meditations, a philosopher. I had to absolutely know that I exist, be perfectly certain of what it is that exists and that I call I, the world, and all things in between.
But as much as I give Nietzsche the credit for bringing about the conditions of my philosophy I was actually in a Lacan/Zizek mode of thought at the point where it dawned on me. I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.
Once again (and not to be condescending since you may be more in tune with the subject than me), FC, you seem to have a good grasp of the subject and make a lot of impressive points. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with the distraction of the latest issue of Philosophy Now and it leaves me less time than I would like to respond. Thankfully, magazines are quickly gotten through and, hopefully, by the beginning of next week, I’ll be able to get back to my focus on the subject at hand.
You mention The Fragile Absolute, which is the next book I plan on going through. And I’m towards the end of the Plague of Fantasies. I look forward, given your familiarity with the work, to our discourses on it. That said, I’ll respond to what I can in my limited window here.
“For example, I am watching Mad Men, I’ve been at it for years, it’s a fucking struggle, as it’s horrible. It’s extremely well made and beautiful, but the characters go through this meat grinder on an hourly basis, there is absolutely no room for psychological comfort, there is only misunderstanding, hypocrisy, arrogance, humiliation, lies, dominance and submission, disappointment - The Real. Anything that tears at the structural integrity of the subject, will do as a storyline.
Zizeks interest in movies is of course not a side-matter, it goes into the very depths of his subject matter. And I believe his approach (he has made Lacan accessible to me, as to so many others) allows for a more accurate description of what makes movies work, than the standard Hollywood 101 playbook of three acts separated by inciting incident and conflict resolution. What really makes us watch movies is the pain, stretched out across a narrative that conveys a lot of aesthetic values - either that, or the reverse.”
This point is profound in that it has brought to my attention the negative Jouissance involved in horror movies –especially of the slasher type. I mean you have to ask what it is that would draw people to something that causes so much discomfort. And in a sense, what you are describing with Mad Men is a more subtle form of horror. As you rightly point out, there is definite discomfort in watching human behavior at its most pathetic. The example that comes to my mind is Steve Carrell’s role the series The Office. There are times when you find yourself cringing for the guy such as when one of his workers encountered a flasher in the parking lot and he joked about it by sticking his finger through his fly; or when he was to do a lecture at a business college and, in an attempt to be some kind of radical guru, took a student’s expensive textbook and started ripping pages out of it. It was like watching a car wreck. You cringed in horror while being unable to stop watching.
And I fully agree that Zizek’s interest in movies is not just a side matter. What else could be a better expression of the push/pull tension of Jouissance than what draws us in, seemingly, for no practical function?
That said, I would present another example of Jouissance in movies that has to do with your rightly mentioned dissonance. I think one of the best endings in movie history was that of The Black Stallion. (And I write from the assumption that you have seen it.) But it was mainly a matter of buildup and pacing. First it starts with the awkward pace (in sound) of the horse’s hooves hitting the ground in a race. Then a subtle hum of a synthesizer which is how it builds up until the Black Stallion, and the boy riding him, wins. The thing is there is a kind of discomfort about the whole buildup that gets lost when Ballard compromises it by showing scenes of the boy riding the horse on the beach. And while it, on one level, may seem like a fudge, when you think it through, you recognize that there was nothing else Ballard could do to take you past the threshold and appease the unbearable of Jouissance: the (non)satisfaction of promised satisfaction fulfilled by never being truly satisfied.
Dissonance, it seems to me, is a term that is almost interchangeable with Jouissance. Take, for instance, the work of Stravinsky or Schoenberg. And it can even be felt in the piano sonatas of Brahms: the feeling of longing: the push/pull tension between presence and absence.
Jouissance?
Now you mention the objet petit a, FC. And if I understand the concept right, that is as partial object, it may apply, in a way that fuses with Jouissance, in the movie Cloverfield. If you look at how the invading beast is portrayed throughout most of the movie, you might note that it is presented in a series of partial views or (once again: if I understand the concept right) objet petit a(s). And it seems as if the novelty and effectiveness of it lies in the phantasmic support of the imagination in that by having to fill in the rest, we get the effect of a monster unlike any we’ve experienced in movie history: a subtle amorphous form that seems to reach into the subconscious and is reminiscent of the forms seen in Dali paintings, but with the same depth, intensity, and lightness of touch seen in Francis Bacon’s work.
The thing to note here is how that effect is lost at the end when we are shown the creature face to face. And because of that, it feels like a fudge: that which detracts from the total effect of a work of art. And it becomes evident why this happened if you listen to the director’s commentary to the movie in which he points out that he felt certain external (mainstream) pressures to add the scene. And, in hindsight, I now realize that he might have done better to show the perspective of the camera panning up to capture the objet petit a of the creatures teeth rushing towards it. But that is just a stumble in an otherwise excellent performance.
The main thing to note, though, is that we find here the same dynamic at work as that of Ballard when he broke to flashbacks of the boy riding the horse on that beach: the need to cross a threshold that ultimately proves unsatisfying: Jouissance: the unbearable: that which satisfies by never truly satisfying.
*
“ I had to absolutely know that I exist, be perfectly certain of what it is that exists and that I call I, the world, and all things in between.
But as much as I give Nietzsche the credit for bringing about the conditions of my philosophy I was actually in a Lacan/Zizek mode of thought at the point where it dawned on me. I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.”
First of all: sorry about the experience that led to this revelation. I can only guess that what was gained was little compensation for what was lost.
That said, the desire to know that one exists or that reality exists may be an expression of the push/pull tension between presence and absence: a form of Jouissance. In fact, there may be a kind of longing intertwined in your situation reminiscent of that of Orpheus when he lost Eurydice. What concerns me is this part:
“I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.”
What we have to consider here is the relationship between Lacan’s triad of the Imaginary, the Symbolic (or the symbolic order), and the Real. The Imaginary (a world of pure images) is what we start with before we have a language to put it into words. The Symbolic Order is that which we enter as we become more adapt with the various semiotic systems we are faced with. And the Real is that which has yet to be absorbed into the Symbolic Order: the subtleties and complexities that elude being put into words. And living in a world in which the only thing that seems fixed is the symbolic order, where we have to fumble our way through it, we run the risk of falling into one of 2 pitfalls that lie on both sides of the symbolic: the psychotic (on the imaginary side) in which we create our own semiotic bubble with its own system of rules; or the sociopathic in which we deal with the Real by acting as if it is perfectly absorbed into the symbolic order thereby giving us the illusion of power over the symbolic order: the authoritarian reaction to the elusiveness of the Real.