{"id":14905,"date":"2021-05-14T07:34:22","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T11:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=14905"},"modified":"2021-06-28T14:01:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T18:01:42","slug":"mcgowan-jouissance-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2021\/05\/14\/mcgowan-jouissance-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"McGowan Jouissance and Logic of Enjoyment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why Theory Podcast with Ryan and Todd<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recorded February 6, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jouissance is what is in excess of what is good or useful. Arrived at through the sacrifice of what is good or useful.<\/p>Todd McGowan<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lacan\u2019s Seminar VII and what he says about Jouissance. Jouissance is Transgression. Lacan holds up Antigone as the example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capital Hill Terrorists<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were ordered by the symbolic father (Trump) so if there is jouissance, it was jouissance of obedience to the symbolic father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buying Gamestock and driving it up.  This is left jouissance, and the jouissance of transgression.  You can read this idea of transgression and jouissance in both these events Gamestock and Capital Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Law of the Father, Lacan is adamant where Antigone transgresses is Creon\u2019s Law, she is transgressing the Law of the Father. Capital Hill terrorists obeyed the Father\u2019s law and disobeyed the actual law. Z talks about the permissive father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People in a common sense jouissance but not in a psychoanalytic way, and the Gamestock way, no actual laws were broken, but it was more a \u2018rule\u2019 you peons don\u2019t get to manipulate the market. What was actually broken was the Law of the Father, and more on the side of the Father.  Antigone though says she is obeying the universal law of the Gods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seminar 7: jouissance and transgression.  This is a childish definition. George Bataille was influential, apotheosis of \u2018idiotic\u2019 rebellion, \u2018go beyond Bourgeois society. So in seminar 7 Lacan was too influenced by Bataille.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collective dimension as opposed to invidiualized rebellion. As long as you locate jouissance with transgression then you always need a Creon, somebody to play the heavy in order to get off and transgress and do jouissance. Do I always need to think of the way I need a Creon?  This undermines the whole concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacan abandons Jouissance as Transgression.<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Seminar X (Anxiety Seminar) : The Symptom is Jouissance<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoyment as drive, so jouissance as failure, failure to have the object, the relation we have to objet(a) is the form that our jouissance <\/a>takes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gamestock: People are enjoying the failure, how it fucked with the markets. And the capital terrorists, the enjoyment was in the FAILED coup. They had no plan to run the country. But that the capital hill happened at all was a success. So Ryan is making the point that it could be seen as a success. Todd asks \u201cyou think it could have succeeded?\u201d  There was absolutely a chance for success, if Trump could have stayed in office was on the horizon. The people involved in the riot, power and jouissance are opposed to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Todd: Power and jouissance are opposed to each other. But that\u2019s Seminar 16. Let\u2019s stick to 10 and 11. Jouissance is related to objet(a). Objet(a) is the remainder, the access point to jouissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Thing is the holder  of radical enjoyment whereas objet(a) is a remnant of enjoyment. Seminar 13, Lacan says its on the side of the slave that jouissance remains. The Master takes up power, they lose out on jouissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repetition. Moving away from the singular act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Big Other to the Other Seminar XVI. Cormac Gallagher is available online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surplus Jouissance<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Seminar XVI Lacan is developing surplus value to surplus jouissance. Lacan\u2019s point, is its only we have surplus jouissance, jouissance as EXCESS<\/strong> that we have access to it. If I don\u2019t have this excess then surviving life ain\u2019t worth it. The capitalist has no desire to sell the commodity unless it has surplus labour embodied in it, the same way we can\u2019t go on with life unless there\u2019s a surplus jouissance attached to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your good\/self interest, keeps you going but something in EXCESS of that\u2019s Jouissance.  Capitalism is the first to focus on it, and make this EXCESS central to its survival. Other pre-capitalist societies didn\u2019t make Jouissance central to its survival, but capitalism does. Without Jouissance, no capitalism, that\u2019s what keeps us thinking like hmm, that\u2019s not it, let\u2019s go shopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jouissance is always an EXCESS. But it has no use value attached to it. Surplus value and surplus jouissance think it together. Capitalism is using Jouissance more intrinsically than another socio-economic system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cancel Culture\/Political Correctness: I want to be reduced to pure utility. I don\u2019t want to be associated with the excess that gets pinned on me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the left\u2019s position on Jouissance, so that we\u2019re not just taking things away. Communism has to be more about mere utility.  Think of enjoyment as LOSS. I can\u2019t do it this way anymore cause it\u2019s bad for the environment, so let\u2019s enjoy that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right is better at mobilizing Jouissance than the right. Because it comes off as the LEFT is out to steal our Jouissance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jouissance factor the EXCESS factor, this is why the commie experiment failed. Just producing what people need, is not enough. You felt bereft of enjoyment\/Jouissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is it can\u2019t be DIRECTLY approached, so you can\u2019t purposely make a program. ABBA song, waterloo, you feel you win when you lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Egan, Blackhawk, cigarette smoking is life giving as it kills you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacques Millar skips over this totally. Instead he does his reading of Sem X and XI is drive. Seminar 17 is discursive Jouissance. He is normalizing Jouissance, discursive of Sem 17, and then Jouissance of non-relation in Seminar XX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seminar 14, but really developed in Seminar 20, Female Jouissance is female orgasm, and male Jouissance is enjoyment of the Idiot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Lacan there is only Death Drive. Ryan says the term \u2018multiplicity\u2019 is ideological. That\u2019s why the DSM is ideological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counter argument: Psychoanalysis is totally invested in sexual non-relation. In order to express it you need a (not) two. Expressed as 2 different forms of Jouissance. It\u2019s a way to be dialectical, and to avoid a monistic account of subjectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at drive, looking at it dialectically, but just having death drive, and in the very movement churns up through its own development EROS, which is not an opposing drive, but death drive itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have a thing at odds with itself, and the thing gets generated out of its own opposition to itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacan\u2019s later, Millar is right about Jouissance as non-relation in Seminar XX. But Millar turns away from Jouissance in the middle period. Notion of feminine Jouissance, goes beyond the phallic structure. But Lacan was seeking this in Seminar 7. Woman becomes the figure, (enjoyment of transgression, of the beyond) is what woman becomes in Seminar XX a Jouissance beyond the Phallus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan thinks it might be \u2018literalized\u2019 in female Jouissance, to literal for Ryan\u2019s taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Todd: Woman Jouissance is beyond the phallus but not beyond the Other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan: the formulas of sexuation are not the problem, Jouissance has an object, its what men think feminine Jouissance is like, Ryan has a problem with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This apotheosis of mysticism, what is the mystic? What\u2019s it got to do with Jouissance. A transcendence out of the bind that everyone else is in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The excess is  included within the bind that everyone is  in, a value created imminently. SO TODD IS NOT really comfortable with Lacan equating Feminine Jouissance to mysticism etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yikes, we may be moving into the territory of Jung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hegelian corrective to Lacan: We can access the TRANSCENDENT through the everyday. That\u2019s why Hegel is against mysticism. Lacan\u2019s attaching mysticism to a feminine Jouissance is a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those of us who like Seminar 7, love Seminar 20. Z rarely talks to feminine Jouissance, invested in idealization of female orgasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n