Jouissance

Definition

Jouissance is a French term which translated means "enjoyment" and is contrasted with plaisir. In every sense of the word it is whatever "gets you off". Something that gives the subject a way out of its normative subjectivity through transcendent bliss whether that bliss or orgasmic rapture be found in texts, films, works of art or sexual spheres; excess as opposed to utility. It is a popular term in postmodernism and queer theory used by Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler, and others. Leo Bersani considers ‘‘jouissance’’ as intrinsically self-shattering, disruptive of a 'coherent self'.

For Barthes (1977, p.9) plaisir is, "a pleasure...linked to cultural enjoyment and identity, to the cultural enjoyment of identity, to a homogenising movement of the ego." As Richard Middleton (1990, p.261) puts it, "Plaisir results, then, from the operation of the structures of signification through which the subject knows himself or herself; jouissance fractures these structures."

The French ‘’jouissance’’ means basically ‘’enjoyment’’, but it has a sexual connotation (i.e. ‘orgasm’) lacking in the English word ‘enjoyment’, and is therefore left untranslated in most English editions of Lacan.

Lacan develops an opposition between ‘’jouissance’’ and pleasure. The pleasure principle functions as a limit to enjoyment; it is a law which commands the subject to ‘enjoy as little as possible.’

At the same time, the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go ‘beyond the pleasure principle.’

However, the result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure, but pain, since there is only a certainamount of pleasure that the subject can bear.

Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this ‘painful pleasure’ is what Lacan calls ‘’jouissance’’: ‘’’jouissance’’ is suffering.”

The term ‘’jouissance thus nicely expresses the paradoxical satisfaction that the subject derives from his symptom, or, to put it another way, the suffering that he derives from his own satisfaction.

The prohibition of ‘’jouissance’’ (the pleasure principle) is inherent in the symbolic structure of language, which is why ‘jouissance’’ is forbidden to him who speaks, as such.” The subject’s entry into the symbolic Is conditional upon a certain initial renunciation of ‘’jouissance’’ in the castration complex, when the subject gives up his attempts to be the imaginary phallus for the mother.

The symbolic prohibition of enjoyment in the Oedipus complex (the incest taboo) is thus, paradoxically, the prohibition of something which is already impossible; its function is therefore to sustain the neurotic illusion that enjoyment would be attainable if it were not forbidden. The very prohibition creates the desire to transgress it, and ‘’jouissance’’ is therefore fundamentally transgressive.

The death drive is the name given to that constant desire in the subject to break through the pleasure principle towards the Thign and a certain excess ‘’jouissance’’; thus ‘’jouissance’’ is ‘the path towards death.” Insofar as the drives are attempts to break through the pleasure principle in search of ‘’jouissance,’’ every drive is a death drive.

There are strong affinities between Lacan’sconcept of ‘‘jouissance’’ and Freud’s concept of the Libido. In keeping with Freud’s assertiont hat there is only one libido, which is masculine, Lacan states that ‘‘jouissance’’ is essentially phallic; “Jouissance, isnofar as it is sexual, is phallic, which means that it does not relate to the Other as such.”

However in 1973 Lacan admits that there is a specificially feminine jouissance, a ‘supplementary jouissance’, which is beyond the pahllus’. A ‘‘jouissance’’ of the Other. This feminine ‘‘jouissance’’ is ineffable.

In order to differentiate between these two forms of jouissance, Lacan introduces different algebraic symbols for each; Jd designates phallic jouissance, whereas JA designates the ‘‘jouissance’’ of the Other.

Dictionary

In his seminar of 1959-1960, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (L'éthique de la psychanalyse), Lacan developed the concept of jouissance (enjoyment) while discussing Civilization and Its Discontents.

In that work, Freud had articulated a contradiction inherent in the concept of pleasure:

This endeavor [of striving for happiness] has two sides. . . . It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. . . . The task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background.

For Lacan, these two aspects of pleasure were irreconcilable, and he argued that Freud connected the pleasure and reality principles under a no-displeasure principle. This is the very principle that blocks the path to jouissance .

Lacan asks:

Who is there who in the name of pleasure doesn't start to weaken when the first half-serious is taken step toward jouissance?

Even an animal, he added, “has an economy: it acts so as to produce the very least possible jouissance. That's what we call the pleasure principle.”

It is true that once we start down the path of jouissance , we do not know where it will lead: "It starts with a tickle and ends up bursting into flames" (Lacan, 1991, p. 83).

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud had already noted that "the most painful experiences . . . can yet be felt . . . as highly enjoyable.”

On the basis of this text, Lacan made a connection between ‘‘jouissance’’ and repetition. He drew support for his argument from the hysterical symptom of repetition and defined repetition as a trace, a kind of writing, that commemorates "an irruption of jouissance.” ‘‘jouissance’’ (Genuss) is involved when the pleasure principle yields not necessarily to pain, but to unpleasure. The term was already present in Freud, but Lacan developed it as a concept. Still, he complained of never having had the time to outline its parameters, which he would have likely called "the Lacanian field. In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan emphasized that Freud posed the question of ‘‘jouissance’’ in terms of drive.

The energy of the superego derives from the libido of this unsatisfied drive; the more the subject fails to feel jouissance, the more libido]] there is to feed the superego, and the more the superego will demand new renunciations. Lacan believed that in Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud was stating that "everything that is transferred from ‘‘jouissance’’ to prohibition gives rise to the increasing strengthening of prohibition."

Thus the guilt triggered by masturbation can be understood as an increase of libido in the superego, brought about by a short circuit in masturbation that achieves only a brief and stifled satisfaction instead of jouissance.

What is involved here is not the satisfaction of need, but of the drive.

Lacan posits a basic opposition between need and drive.

In fact, Lacan placed the two in radical opposition to one another: "And if the social bond is established by renouncing the satisfaction of the drive, it is because this satisfaction implies the enjoyment—in the juridical sense of the term—of objects that could either belong to others or deprive them of their jouissance."

This situates ‘‘jouissance’’ in another field and simultaneously introduces the question of religion, moral precepts, and the law. In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan based ‘‘jouissance’’ on the law. If ‘‘jouissance’’ consists in breaking the barrier of the pleasure principle, if it can only be attained through a transgression, then only a prohibition opens the path toward it. As for the "other," he is already implicated in Freud's analysis of sadism: when we inflict pain on others, "we enjoy by identifying with the suffering object." From his reading of Civilization and Its Discontents, Lacan concluded, "Jouissance is evil . . . because it involves suffering for my neighbor" (1992, p. 184). Moreover, he noted that love of one's neighbor seemed absurd to Freud. Each time that this Christian ideal is stated, "we see evoked the presence of that fundamental evil which dwells within this neighbor. But if that is the case, then it also dwells within me. And what is more of a neighbor to me than this heart within which is that of my ‘‘jouissance’’ and which I don't dare go near?" (Lacan, 1992, p. 186). In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire" (2002), Lacan inscribed ‘‘jouissance’’ in the topography of his graph of desire. At the upper level of the graph, ‘‘jouissance’’ is indicated by signifying lack in the Other, S(A̷). This is phallic jouissance, which is related to castration as lack. Traditionally, the erectile organ, the phallus, represents the object of jouissance, not so much by itself, but rather as the missing portion of a desired image. Phallic ‘‘jouissance’’ is inscribed in the diagram at the level of a vector that starts out from S(A̷), the Other's lack, and goes toward (S̷ ◇ D), the drive as articulated by the subject and the demand of the Other. Thus ‘‘jouissance’’ is "of the Other" and at the same time operates on the level of the drive. Recognizing the Other's lack produces a fantasy in the subject's unconscious. In this fantasy, the object represents what the subject imagines that the Other is deprived of. In everyday life, the mother, as primordial Other, is prohibited from making up for her lack with her child. Thus the Other remains prohibited. In his diagram, Lacan located ‘‘jouissance’’ at the place of the barred Other, S(A̷) this is also where Lacan inscribed the superego that orders the subject to enjoy, "Jouis!" To this command, the subject can only respond, "J'ouis!" ("I hear!"), for such ‘‘jouissance’’ is structurally prohibited. Lacan repeated that while the superego prohibits and punishes, it also requires that the subject experience jouissance. For Lacan, the requirement to enjoy is directly related to a taboo. But what is prohibited, what must remain unsatisfied, is only the subject's jouissance. Giving the Other an experience of ‘‘jouissance’’ does not seem to be prohibited. The Other is barred in the diagram only by being marked by the loss of object a. Thus if a subject assumes the position of the Other's missing object and if this can make the Other whole, then "It would enjoy," as Lacan said (2002, p. 311). He thus introduced a ‘‘jouissance’’ outside the phallic order, a mystic jouissance, which he defined as a nonphallic, feminine ‘‘jouissance’’ (1998). For being not whole, a woman "has a supplementary ‘‘jouissance’’ compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouissance. . . . Y]ou need but go to Rome and see the statue by [Gianlorenzo] Bernini [the Ecstasy of St. Teresa] to immediately understand that she's coming. There's no doubt about it" (1998, pp. 73, 76). But what did Lacan mean when he said that a woman, for being "not whole," was capable of a supplementary, nonphallic jouissance? With the "formulas of sexuation," he proposed dividing subjects not according to their biological sex, but according to their relation to the phallus. On the masculine side would be those subjects who take object a as the cause of their desire and depend upon their phallic nature to attain it. Subjects on the feminine side have one eye on the phallus and one eye on the ‘‘jouissance’’ of the Other, S(A̷). The male or female mystic—a designation independent of biological sex—is situated on the feminine side. Supplementary jouissance, strictly speaking, is feminine. But to attain it, the subject must stop looking both ways—toward phallic ‘‘jouissance’’ and ‘‘jouissance’’ of the Other—and become devoted only to the latter. Such an experience was attained by St. John of the Cross, for example, who was familiar with a mystical ‘‘jouissance’’ "outside sex," and thus beyond the mark of difference and beyond lack. The moment of ecstasy arrives when the mystic, entirely desubjectified and merged with object a of the Other's desire, becomes one with the Other, who in turn no longer lacks. The result is that to represent the Other's jouissance, "A" is rewritten as unbarred, S(A). In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud referred to the "oceanic feeling" of being at one with the greater Whole. Such is the feeling of mysticism, and also of trances and ecstasy. Whereas Freud discussed the dark relationship between mysticism and suffering with great hesitation, Lacan spoke of them more positively by remarking that on the cultural level, adoration of Christ suffering on the cross naturally sustains jouissance. If certain mystics directly experience ‘‘jouissance’’ by looking at the Other's face—by looking at the face of God—others can attain it only by allowing the ever so broken body of Christ on Calvary to sustain it. They partake of a vicarious ‘‘jouissance’’ from Christ's mutilated body offered up to God. Commenting on Catholicism, Lacan wrote, "That doctrine speaks only of the incarnation of God in a body, and assumes that the passion suffered in that person constituted another person's jouissance" (1998, p. 113)

Kid A In Alphabet Land

Kid A In Alphabet Land Jumps Another Juicy 'Jaculator - That Jerk-Off, Jouissance! You Displease Me, And You Think I Gain Pleasure From That! Heh! You Must Take Me For Some Masochistic Francophile! And You're The Substance I'm Paid With By My Lack Of Substance? You're Impossible! I'm Coming To Get You! - Fuck You, Jouissance!

See Also

• Autism
• Castration of the subject
• Dark continent
• Formula of Fantasy
• Fetishism
• Graph of Desire
• Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses
• Kantianism and psychoanalysis
• Masochism
• Matheme
• Narcissistic elation
• Object a
• Phallus
• Phobias in children
• Repetition compulsion
• Formulas of Sexuation
• Subject's desire
• Subject of the drive
• Suffering
• Symptom
• sinthome
• Voyeurism

References

1. Freud, Sigmund. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
2. ——. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145.
3. Lacan, Jacques. (1991). Le séminaire. Book 17: L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969-1970). Paris: Seuil.
4. ——. (1992). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 7: The ethics of psychoanalysis (1959-1960) (Dennis Porter, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
5. ——. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 20: On feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, encore (1972-1973) (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
6. ——. (2002). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. In his Écrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1960.)