Surplus-jouissance
Surplus‑jouissance (French: plus‑de‑jouir) is a technical concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, designating an excess of jouissance — a form of enjoyment or subjective “enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle” — that cannot be fully assimilated into conscious experience or linguistic representation. Emerging prominently in Lacan’s later seminars, particularly in Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, the concept plays a pivotal role in his account of desire, the structure of the subject, the economy of the unconscious, and the relation between psychoanalysis and social or political theory.[1]
The notion of surplus‑jouissance situates pleasure and enjoyment within a structural economy that complicates classical Freudian models of libido and satisfaction, articulating how the subject is constituted through lack, desire, repetition, and an unassimilable remainder that propels repetition and fantasy. It has influenced contemporary psychoanalytic theory, continental philosophy, feminist theory, film theory, and political critique, especially through thinkers such as Slavoj Žižek, Joan Copjec, and Alain Badiou.
Background and Conceptual Definition
Jouissance: The Lacanian Context
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, jouissance is a specialized term denoting a form of excessive enjoyment that exceeds the traditional psychoanalytic pleasure principle. Unlike pleasure, which integrates with homeostatic regulation of excitation and tension, jouissance involves a paradox in which enjoyment can become painful or disturbing as it transgresses regulatory boundaries.[1] Lacan’s engagement with jouissance challenges the Freudian assumption that pleasure is the sole economy guiding the psyche, suggesting instead that enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle plays a formative role in subjectivity.[1]
Surplus‑jouissance (plus‑de‑jouir) is understood as the remainder of jouissance that persists after the symbolic order and the economy of drives have operated; it reflects an excess that cannot be fully represented within language and the symbolic structures that govern the psyche.
The "Economy" of Surplus‑Jouissance
Lacan’s use of surplus‑jouissance draws a structural analogy with Karl Marx’s concept of ‘‘surplus‑value’’: just as the capitalist production process generates surplus value beyond the laborer’s compensation, psychoanalytic structure generates an excess of jouissance beyond the subject’s regulatory pleasure economy.[1][2]
This analogy is structural rather than economic in a literal sense: where Marx identifies surplus value as the hidden product of capitalist labor, Lacan locates the ‘‘product’’ of the signifying operation in objet petit a — the cause of desire and the locus of surplus enjoyment that cannot be fully integrated into the symbolic system.
Objet petit a and the Remainder of Jouissance
The psychoanalytic concept objet petit a (object a, the object‑cause of desire) is centrally related to surplus‑jouissance. Introduced across Lacan’s mid‑ to late work, objet petit a designates the remnant left after signification operates, the ‘‘leftover’’ that both elicits and frustrates desire. This remainder is not an object in a common sense but a structural residue of the subject’s entry into language, producing a surplus of jouissance that eludes full symbolic capture.[3]
In Lacan’s later seminars, the objet petit a is increasingly understood as the site of surplus‑jouissance — the unassimilable enjoyment that remains when the subject’s symbolic demands have been articulated and partially satisfied.
Historical and Theoretical Development
Freudian Roots: Pleasure, Repetition, and Economic Models
Although Lacan’s usage of surplus‑jouissance is a distinctly post‑Freudian innovation, its roots can be traced to Freud’s early ‘‘economic’’ models of psychic life. Freud’s pleasure principle posits that psyche tends toward minimal excitation and tension, regulating drives and seeking ‘‘the maximum pleasure with the least unpleasure.’’ However, Freud also notes that drives do not always conform to this regulatory model — for example, in phenomena like repetition compulsion and the death drive — suggesting an excess that resists integration into simple pleasure economy.
Lacan reinterprets and radicalizes this insight: jouissance, and particularly surplus‑jouissance, reflects these excesses that cannot be reduced to regulatory pleasure states. For Lacan, such excesses are structurally tied to the formation of subjectivity, language, and the symbolic order.
Lacan’s Later Seminars: From Seminar XVI to Seminar XVII
The notion of surplus‑jouissance becomes explicit in Lacan’s later work. In Seminar XVI: From an Other to the Other, Lacan explores the emergence of plus‑de‑jouir in connection with the objet petit a, showing how subjective division and the entry into the symbolic entail a gap between need, demand, and desire that produces an irreducible remainder of jouissance.[2]
In Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Lacan elaborates the structural role of surplus‑jouissance in relation to discourse theory, desire, and the economy of the unconscious. In his theory of the four discourses — the Master, the University, the Hysteric, and the Analyst — Lacan formalizes how surplus‑jouissance is generated in relation to signifying structures and positions of agency (such as the Master Signifier, knowledge, and the cause of desire). Here, surplus‑jouissance operates as a by‑product of the signifying economy that cannot be fully appropriated by the subject or the Other.[4]
Pleasure, Repetition and the Death Drive
In relation to Freud’s death drive (Thanatos), Lacan’s conception of surplus‑jouissance underscores the paradoxical nature of enjoyment as bound up with repetition and the return of what should be repressed. This ‘‘excess’’ manifests not as pleasure but as a form of enjoyment that simultaneously attracts and repels the subject, exceeding the domain of familiar pleasure regulation and subject to the logic of repetition compulsion and structural lack.
Relation to Related Concepts
Surplus‑Jouissance and the Pleasure Principle
Lacan distinguishes jouissance from the pleasure principle: the pleasure principle maintains psychic equilibrium and limits excitation, while jouissance transgresses these limits and enters a domain where pleasure becomes indistinguishable from pain. Surplus‑jouissance, then, designates the ‘‘excess’’ that remains once the limit of pleasure regulation has been surpassed.[5]
Subjective Division and Desire
In Lacanian theory, the subject is always divided, inscribed within language and alienated from any immediate access to its own being. This division is constitutive of desire, which always aims at an object that is never fully attainable — objet petit a. Surplus‑jouissance emerges from this structural lack, intensifying the tension between desire and symbolic capture.
The Four Discourses
In Seminar XVII, Lacan’s four discourses provide a structural map of social relations and subjective positions. In each configuration, surplus‑jouissance plays a role in revealing the irreducible remainder of enjoyment that cannot be fully subsumed under the logic of signifiers, knowledge, or mastery. For example, in the Master’s discourse, attempts at totalizing mastery produce an unassimilable object — objet petit a — which is the structural cause of desire and surplus‑jouissance.[4]
Contemporary Influence and Applications
Critical Theory and Marxist Readings
Lacan’s analogy between surplus‑jouissance and Marx’s surplus‑value has been influential in critical theory and psychoanalytic interpretations of capitalism. While the analogy is structural rather than economic, it highlights how subjective structures can mirror social economies of excess and remainder. Works in several traditions — Marxist, feminist, and post‑structuralist — have taken up the concept to explore how enjoyment, desire, and subjectivity intertwine with capitalist social formations.[6][2]
In political readings, surplus‑jouissance has been mobilized to critique consumer culture and the promises of ‘‘more’’ pleasure or happiness that capitalism offers but never fully delivers, producing instead new forms of lack and desire.
Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Interpretations
Philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek have incorporated surplus‑jouissance into their engagements with ideology, subjectivity, and culture. Žižek emphasizes how the gap between enjoyment and its symbolic representation — and the surplus that persists — illuminates ideological dynamics where subjects are caught in loops of desire and interpretation that cannot satisfy their drive toward jouissance.[7]
Feminist and Cultural Theory
While Lacan’s original formulations focused primarily on phallic jouissance and the symbolic economy, later Lacanian theorists have extended and critiqued these ideas in feminist contexts, exploring how surplus‑jouissance relates to gendered structures of desire and social norms. The notion of a ‘‘supplementary’’ jouissance, including feminine jouissance beyond the phallic, remains a subject of debate in feminist psychoanalytic theory.
Film Theory and Ideology Critique
In film and media studies, surplus‑jouissance has been used to analyze how cinematic texts and ideological structures produce enjoyment that exceeds narrative pleasure, revealing how spectators invest in fantasies that promise fulfillment yet yield more desire and structural lack.
Criticisms and Debates
Critics of Lacan’s concept of surplus‑jouissance raise concerns about the dense abstraction and metaphorical extension of psychoanalytic economy into sociopolitical domains. Some argue that the analogy to Marx’s surplus value risks conflating economic and psychoanalytic registers without sufficient empirical grounding, while others question the operationalization of jouissance as a measurable or theoretically rigorous category in clinical settings.
Additionally, attempts to synthesize Lacanian and Marxist frameworks encounter challenges in reconciling the subjective domain of psychoanalysis with materialist analyses of production and social relations, prompting ongoing debate regarding the limits and possibilities of such interdisciplinary engagement.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lacan first developed the concept of “surplus‑enjoyment” (plus‑de‑jouir) inspired by Marx’s notion of surplus‑value, where objet petit a functions as the remainder of jouissance that persists beyond use value and the pleasure principle in signification.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 In Lacan’s Sixteenth Seminar, he proposes a homology between Marx’s surplus value and his own notion of surplus‑jouissance, with objet petit a representing this excess that persists as remainder in subjective economy.
- ↑ Objet petit a is defined as the leftover remnant produced by the symbolic order, a surplus of meaning and jouissance that drives desire.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 In Seminar XVII, Lacan discusses how in the Master’s discourse a surplus is produced — objet petit a — which resists totalization and reveals subjective division.
- ↑ Lacan frames jouissance as an enjoyment reaching an almost intolerable level of excitation, distinct from regulated pleasure.
- ↑ The capitalist system’s generation of surplus value has been compared structurally to the generation of surplus‑jouissance in subjective economy.
- ↑ Surplus‑jouissance involves a ‘‘loss’’ that nonetheless enables a surplus of enjoyment, shaping how subjects relate to law and desire.
- ↑ Commentary on the distinct operational domains of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist political economy notes that fusion may obscure critical differences between subjective and objective structures.