{"id":11715,"date":"2013-08-16T16:56:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T21:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11715"},"modified":"2013-08-19T11:32:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T16:32:51","slug":"mcgowan-on-stavrakakis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/08\/16\/mcgowan-on-stavrakakis\/","title":{"rendered":"mcgowan on stavrakakis 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis<\/em>. 2013.<\/p>\n

The main thrust of Yannis Stavrakakis\u2019s The Lacanian Left<\/em> involves forging the link between democracy<\/span> and enjoyment<\/span>. He sees that this is a link that most advocates of democracy \u2013 even radical democracy \u2013 have insufficiently emphasized because they fail to see the possibilities of an enjoyment<\/span> derived from the experience of failure or of the not-all.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He says: \u201cFar from being antithetical to jouissance<\/span>, democratic subjectivity is capable of inspiring high passions. … They mobilise a jouissance<\/span> beyond accumulation, domination and fantasy, an enjoyment<\/span> of the not-all<\/strong> or not-whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Severing democracy<\/span> from the image of the social good requires emphasizing its scandalous dimension \u2013 the location of power in an entity (the people) that does not substantially exist.<\/p>\n

Democracy<\/span> emerges not through the expression of the popular will in institutionalized forms<\/span> but when we experience the ultimate groundlessness of political power itself, when we experience the absence of any foundational social authority making itself felt.<\/span><\/p>\n

The democratic impulse is tied to the absence at the heart of the social orde<\/strong>r, but the association of democracy<\/span> with capitalism and the good has had the effect of filling this absence with the myth of the sovereign substantive people. The contemporary geopolitical universe has broken this association and returned the scandal to democracy, placing it in the position of the lost object<\/strong>. 194<\/p>\n

But we are already seeing the enjoyment<\/span> that derives from contemporary invocations of democracy<\/span>. The enjoyment<\/span> that surrounded Barack Obama\u2019s presidential campaign and the enjoyment<\/span> that the 2011 Arab revolutions evinced are but two examples of this phenomenon, which becomes possible when the status of <\/strong>democracy<\/span> shifts from being central to the capitalist order to being excessive.<\/strong>194<\/p>\n

Identifying democracy<\/span> with enjoyment <\/span>can also change the way that we articulate its appeal.<\/p>\n

We can make evident the contemporary disjunction between democracy<\/span> and the good and emphasize the necessity of sacrificing the good for the sake of<\/strong> democracy<\/span> and the enjoyment<\/span> it provides.<\/p>\n

If democracy<\/span> becomes recognized as a lost object<\/strong> among contemporary subject and the advocates of democracy<\/span> can marshal the enjoyment<\/span> that it might engender, they will have a chance to triumph over the reign of the universalized service of goods that is global capitalism.<\/p>\n

The political project of psychoanalysis is fundamentally democractic<\/span>, but it envisions democracy<\/span> as an excess<\/span> that we can enjoy<\/span>, though we cannot reconcile it with our enlightened self-interest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is not more knowledge that will bring about our emancipation but more<\/span> <\/strong>enjoyment<\/span>. 195<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. 2013. The main thrust of Yannis Stavrakakis\u2019s The Lacanian Left involves forging the link between democracy and enjoyment. He sees that this is a link that most advocates of democracy \u2013 even radical democracy \u2013 have insufficiently emphasized because they fail to see … Continue reading “mcgowan on stavrakakis 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jouissance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11715"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11780,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11715\/revisions\/11780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}