Jouissance

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English: enjoyment

Translation

There is no adequate translation in English of the word jouissance.[1] "Enjoyment" does convey the sense, contained in jouissance, of enjoyment of rights, of property, etc., but it lacks the sexual connotations of the French word. (Jouir is slang for "to come".)

"Pleasure"

In 1960 Lacan develops an opposition between jouissance and pleasure ("plaisir").

"Pleasure" obeys the law of 'homeostasis that Freud evokes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, whereby, through discharge, the psyche seeks the lowest possible level of tension.

The pleasure principle thus functions as a limit imposed on enjoyment; it commands the subject to "enjoy as little as possible."

"Jouissance" transgresses this law and, in that respect, it is beyond the pleasure principle.

Transgression

However, the result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure, but pain, since there is only a certain amount 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."[2]

Symptom

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 on satisfaction.

Prohibition

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."[3]

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.

"Castration means that jouissance musst be refused so that it can be reached on the inverted ladder (l'échelle renversée) of the Law of desire."[4]

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 prohibiton creates the desire to transgress it, and jouissance is therefore fundamentally transgressive.[5]

Death Drive

The death drive is the name given to that constant desire in the subject to break through the pleasure principle towards the Thing and a certain excess jouissance; thus jouissanceis "the path towards death."[6]

Insofar as the drives are attempts to break through the pleasure principle in search of jouissance, every drive is a death drive.

Jouissance and Libido

There are strong affinitites between Lacan's concept of jouissance and Freud's concept of the libido, as is clear from Lacan's description of jouissance as a "bodily substance."[7]

In keeping with Freud's assertion that there is only one libido, which is masculine, Lacan states that jouissance is essentially phallic.

Master and Slave

In the seminars of 1953-4 and 1954-5 Lacan uses the term occasionally, usually in the context of the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave: the slave is forced to work to provide objects for the master's enjoyment (jouissance).[8]

See Also

References

  1. It is therefore left untranslated in most English editions of Lacan.
  2. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.184
  3. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 319
  4. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 324
  5. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. ch.15
  6. Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XVII. L'envers de la psychanalyse, 19669-70. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1991. p. 17
  7. Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XX. Encore, 1972-73. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1975. p. 26
  8. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Trans. John Forrester. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. p. 223; Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p. 269