Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 17:42:30 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Re: Jouissance



On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:08:31 -0500 kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote:

"It [the sharing of jouissance] involves a kind of masochistic 
renunciation. Zizek captures this in the idea of interpassivity.  Take 
canned laugher for instance.  I don't have to laugh, because the TV is 
laughing for me.  Or taping a program, I don't have to watch that movie, 
because my VCR is enjoying it for me - and also with book collections, I 
don't have to read them, because they are quite comfortable on my 
shelf.  As with language, my words speak for themselves, they enjoy 
their own existence, I don't need to pay attention to them.  The sharing 
of jouissance is when we watch the movie, read the book, or laugh with 
the TV."

I'm sorry for responding so late-cat got my tongue - but was meaning to 
ask is it really all there is to it, i.e., watching a movie, rading a 
book, etc. Isn't it - i.e. taking responsibility for one's jouissance - 
something more? Doesn't it involve enjoying the control one has after 
realizing that one has traversed the fantasy - achieved some kind of 
distance to it - I mean to say, isn't this subjectivization of the trauma 
at the same time a "freer", more liberated, relationship to ideology. Not 
just laughing at/ with sit-coms - or not even laughing because one sees 
through them - but enjoying in terms of a kind of 'self-cancelling irony' 
(as Octavio Paz wrote). (I.e. "an irony which destroys its negation and, 
hence, returns in the affirmative.") von Trier's last movie Dance in the 
Dark could perhaps ce read along these lines - I cried more, not less, 
because of the (brechtian epic) 'distance' - precisely the irony was 
what made the film so sad. 

Fred