Subject: Re: Jouissance in the Dark
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 18:14:36 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)


On Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:25:58 -0400 christopher brittain 
<chris.brittain-AT-utoronto.ca> wrote:

> I've asked you this before, Ken, but forget the reply: IF we follow this 
interpretation, I have to ask you: how is Bess' act subversive? How does it 
'disrupt' the system, if those closest to her 'hear what they want to hear'? 
Well, we could answer that it is subversive for the audience, I suppose, and 
you are an example of this. BUT, we both know that many viewers certainly 
missed such a perspective, and talked of Bess as a Christ-figure, etc. 

It is illustratively subversive, not politically subversive (I guess). 
Politically it is up to us to *make sure* that masculinity doesn't have the 
final word (since we've got here an illustration of its psychoses). That is to 
say, if we don't directly either with Jan or Bess, which is discouraged 
precisely because of the presence of the miraculous. So the point, as I see it, 
isn't to take issue with Zizek, rather - to take issue with the idiots who are 
deifying Bess's sacrifice and declaring it to be "a good thing!" In this way, 
von Trier's film itself is a kind of praxis - an engagement with dominant 
cultural metaphors illustrating their ideological affects.

> i will remind you, that it REALLY concerns me that Zizek describes such 
actions as "feminine", just as Von Trier's sacrifical victims are always women.

And the film would have worked more to your approval if Jan have been the 
sacrifical body?

Lacan outlines four discourses that are predominant in 'western' culture: the 
discourse of the master, the hysteric, the university and the discourse of the 
analyst - these are four different ways in which the subject situates themself 
- and four different ways in which we avoid the trauma jouissance - each 
representing a desire and a failure - all of which result in certain social 
bonds.

Master: The discourse of the master founds the symbolic order as such. It 
explains the constitution of the subject in langauge - where the master 
pretends to be one and undivided. In Hegelian terms: it is the slave who 
confirms the position of the master (which is why the master leans toward 
domination, in order to be recognized as master). The only way for the master 
to uphold their position is to remain silent, to avoid signifiers is to avoid 
being divided by them. Which is why Lacan argues that the only successful 
master is a dead one (recall Jan's silence at the end, listening to the bells 
ringing out).

Hysteric: The discourse of the hysteric is that of the divided subject, the 
desire of the hysteric is desire itself - beyond any satisfaction the hysteric 
identifies with non-satisfied desire. Hysteria is a social bond always 
emphasizing the impossibility of desire. This desire, originating in loss, 
expresses itself by way of demand. The Master always tries to provide answers 
to the hysteric, which is why every revolutionary master ends up with their 
head in a place where it is not supposed to be - the answer always misses the 
point: because the true answer concerns object a, the object which is forever 
lost and cannot be put into words.

The point of Zizek's analysis is this: that the patriarchal notion of 
'the good woman,' which Bess does, in fact, live up to, leads to death. Zizek's 
idea here is that the hysteric knows themself to be divided... Bess sacrifices 
this lure, this masquerade, and devotes herself totally to the phallic economy 
- to ecstatic jouissance - which betrays the psychotic structuring of 
masculinity and femininity. The sacrifice (which Zizek reads as psychotic) 
illustrates that the masculine economy can't get what it wants - which is 
precisely what leaves us stranded - the cynical distance (neither Bess nor Jan 
end up 'happy'). The answer, prompted by the film, is to accept castration - 
the fact that the partner merely has the phallus but is not the phallus itself 
- allowing us to fantasize without actually encountering catastrophy.

ken