{"id":12253,"date":"2013-11-09T09:52:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T14:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=12253"},"modified":"2013-11-09T10:04:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T15:04:29","slug":"mcgowan-occupy-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/11\/09\/mcgowan-occupy-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"mcgowan occupy interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Once we accept that the good is antithetical to our enjoyment, is a barrier to our enjoyment, it becomes possible to think politics beyond the good. The politics of enjoyment can eschew the good altogether, I think. But we can\u2019t fall into the trap of saying that the world will be better if we adopt a different organization of our enjoyment.<\/strong> No, in some sense it will become worse because we would lose the justifications that accompany our failures to enjoy fully<\/span><\/strong>. What we would gain, however, is what I would call an authentic relation to our enjoyment. I think we have to insist absolutely on the concept of authenticity in order to conceive of politics, just as resolutely as we have to abandon the good. In this way, I would replace the good with authenticity. That\u2019s what we can\u2019t do without in fact, even if it has been discredited by the association with Heidegger.<\/p>\n

What is important about psychoanalysis to me is its theoretical intervention, its discovery of the death drive<\/span> and the role that fantasy plays in our psyche. This is the great advance. And political struggle can integrate these theoretical insights without any help from actual psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n

What allows one to disinvest in the capitalist mode of subjectivity<\/strong> is not, in my view, the psychoanalytic session. Instead it is the confrontation with a mode of enjoyment that ceases to provide the satisfaction that it promises.<\/span> This prompts one to think about alternatives.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to understand how contemporary authority functions without psychoanalysis. Lacan is very clear in his explanation of the superego<\/span> as an agency not of prohibition but of enjoyment<\/span><\/strong>, and nothing is more evident in today\u2019s authorities. We are constantly bombarded with commands that we enjoy ourselves, and we feel guilty not for our sins but for our failures to enjoy as much as our neighbors.<\/strong> Psychoanalysis shows us that this command to enjoy<\/span> <\/strong>is integral to how authority operates and that obedience can feel transgressive. This is the key to the power of contemporary authority. We obey but never experience ourselves as obedient. … We don\u2019t know how obedient we are, and we require psychoanalysis to show us.<\/p>\n

I was completely in support of Occupy Wall Street<\/strong> and even had several students who took part with my full encouragement. That said, there is a theoretical problem, and it is located exactly at the point you bring up. Occupy didn\u2019t identify with the missing binary signifier but involves an identification with the excluded. I have a real problem with the slogan that identifies the movement with the 99%. What happens? Instantly, a new Other is produced that is the 1%, and if we can just eliminate this 1%, then we will achieve the good. That\u2019s the logic at work. In this sense, Occupy, despite its successes (including, I would claim, the re-election of Barack Obama), remained within a very traditional political paradigm.<\/p>\n

Identification with the missing binary signifier<\/strong> would insist, in contrast, would involve an identification with the inherent failure of the Other<\/span><\/strong> or the system itself. It would have to say something like \u201cNo One Belongs\u201d<\/span><\/strong> rather than the two alternatives \u2014 either we are really the ones who belong or we are those who don\u2019t belong. Not we are all citizens but no one is a citizen.<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t give the 1% credit with really enjoying themselves or knowing what they\u2019re doing<\/strong>. Badiou calls these finance capitalists legitimate gangsters. I don\u2019t disagree, but this creates the sense that they are on the inside while the rest of us are on the outside<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t the lesson of Michael Mann\u2019s masterpiece The Insider<\/em> with Russell Crowe that the insider is always an outsider and that enjoyment, despite what we believe, is located on the outside?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. Interview with Tutt October 2013 Once we accept that the good is antithetical to our enjoyment, is a barrier to our enjoyment, it becomes possible to think politics beyond the good. The politics of enjoyment can eschew the good altogether, I think. But … Continue reading “mcgowan occupy interview”<\/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":[125],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-12253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","tag-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253","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=12253"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12259,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253\/revisions\/12259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}