Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 20:11:40 +0200 (EET)
From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT <fhertzbe-AT-ra.abo.fi>
Subject: Re: jouissance



Thanks for the notes on jouissance. For aan amateur like me some of them 
were pretty difficult to chew. Is J1 early Lacan, and J2 late?

> otherwise structure the symbolic universe... this failure leaves one unanchored 
> in language, without a compass reading on the basis of which to adopt an 
> orientation.  This is where Zizek positions postmodernisn.  Postmodernism, for 
> Zizek is psychotic.  It is the assimilation of the real into "reality."

What is 'unanchored in language'? I understand the idea of assimilation 
of a primordial signifier, but how does the unanchoredness appear?

> Traversing of fantasy involves the subject's assumption of a new position with 
> respect to the Other as language and the Other as desire.  A move is made to 
> invest or inhabit that which brough him or her into existence as split 
> subject, to become that which cause her or him.... it is the process by which 
> the subject subjectifies trauma, takes the traumatic event upon her or himself 
> and assumes responsibility for jouisssance.

But how is this crossing over (into a split state) configured, according 
to Lacan? It is a single event, a plural event, does it take place at 
once or over a long period of time? Is it always traumatic, and what does 
trauma mean here?

> When jouissance is sacrificed, it shifts to the Other... it as transferred to 
> the Other's "account" - it is "squeezed" out of the body and refound in speech. 
> The Other as language enjoys this is our stead.  In other words: insofar as we 
> alienate ourselves in the Other and enlist ourselves in support of the Other's 
> discourse that we can share some of the jouissance circulating in the Other.

This is interesting. So it is specifically language which is the site of 
jouissance. But what is this 'sharing' of jouissance? Does it presuppose 
some kind of masochist renunciation, or is it potentially subversive, or 
no more (or less) subversive than shopping, or is it self-destructive and 
malicious?

Fred