Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 20:04:04 +0200 (EET)
From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT <fhertzbe-AT-ra.abo.fi>
Subject: jouissance


I'd like to ask about the concept of 'jouissance' - throughout Zizek's 
work (checking The Zizek Reader, e.g.) it seems to be used i various 
ways, sometimes simply (it seems) to designate (female) enjoyment, at 
other times just to speak of enjoyment in general, and then in ways which 
are more interesting to me, it is used to point to some kind of material 
kernel which reinvests ideology with enjoyment. I'm thinking 
here especiallyof the essay "The Undergrowth of Enjoyment", e.g. the 
section "Rendering the Real", and then the discussion of voix 
acousmatique (p 16f), discussing Terry Gilliam's Brazil, in which the 
protagonist whistles the 'stupid song' Brazil (which 'serves as a support 
for totalitarian enjoyment') he reinvests the song with fantasy and desire 
and escapes his torturers. Zizek writes: "When we go crazy in our obsession 
with mindless _jouissance_, even totalitarian manpulation cannot reach 
us." (16) What is this 'mindless jouissance? Is it something which is 
inherent in the song from the beginning, but repressed by its strict 
totalitarian function, and brought out (or liberated) by the 
reinvestment? Or is it the context which determines the quality of 
jouissance? Interesting parallels to this case would then be how songs 
are used and reused, say Madonna's American Pie, or parodic reworkings 
(I'm thinking here of the cases described by Linda Hutcheon in A Theory 
of Parody). My primary interest here is in translation, which could be 
said to always change an "original" text - and sometimes to save the 
features that are "permeated with the substance of enjoyment" (p. 25) In 
other words, the materiality of the text. Is there such a link between 
jouissance and materiality in Zizek (Lacan)? And/ or What's the difference 
between Zizek's /Lacan¨s use and other uses (Kristeva, etc)? I'm not 
very well read in this field so I'm thankful for any help

Fred