Why did Trump win? The passion for ignorance…
some notes
“It is a passion for ignorance” (Lacan 1999: 121).
…..
Why did Trump win the election? Let us approach this question through the first “paradox” that seems to strike many liberals and people on the progressive left: how can the republicans and conservative voters support a candidate that seem to have so little in common personally with ‘christian values’? Trump made a lot of money in real estate and television. He has had many affairs and he openly talks about his own obscene enjoyment, as in the famous “grab them by the p….”.
The psychoanalytical answer is: there is no paradox. We should not be duped by the many calls for ‘return’ to ‘make America great again’. On the fact of it, Trump and his supporters seem to call for a return to the symbolic order supported by paternal prohibition. Today, for these conservatives, it seems there is no one in charge. No authority. This means, that in a way they do react against the superego commandment to enjoy. Lacan says in seminar 20 (famously): “The superego is the imperative of jouissance — Enjoy!”. (3). They are bombarded with ‘perverse’ enjoyment through the superego and it seems that the only answer, since there is no alternative to the society of enjoyment and the market, is only a return to the paternal prohibition (a strong ‘father-figure’ in charge, that can take care of the economy).
But it is the opposite that is the case. The return to a paternal prohibition is such in name only. It really only obeys the superego-commandment to enjoy. That is why, it is no paradox that Trump, as the obscene jouisseur, who quite openly displays his enjoyment can ‘incarnate’ the most ‘christian values’. Usually the republican christians try to explain this through the religious motif, that “God chooses the least virtuos for his plans”. In this sense they can explain why they as a christians can support a candidate that has openly exclaimed his passion for pornstars, something that should run counter to the ‘christian family values’, they portray. However, this is only rationalisation. In fact, it shows that even in the most ‘conservative camps’ there is nothing conservative, in the sense of going back to the paternal prohibition. Trump does not represent the society of prohibition. He represents the society of enjoyment. In this sense he is the perfect candidate for them. The motto “we are not going back” that feminist campaigned with, serves equally well for the conservatives. They are going back in name only. The true psychic investment in Trump is through his obedience to the commandment to enjoy.
Perhaps the best description of Trump as ‘paternal figure’, came through the youtuber and blogger Milo Yiannopoulus, who referred to him lovingly as a “daddy” and called “conservatism” the new punk. The use of the word daddy suggest a call to enjoy, not a strict paternal prohibition.
The problem of the society of enjoyment is that it commands everyone to enjoy. You must publically show your private enjoyment. The subject, however cannot follow this commandment to fully and completely enjoy. In this sense it runs up against its own lack over and over. Bombarded with images of enjoyment, the subject feels frustrated with its own lack. This is what causes aggression and the outburst of violence. Trumpism skillfully uses this contradiction in contemporary capitalism: that one is commanded to enjoy, but that the subject also constantly fails in this commandment and thereby runs up against its own deficit. The liberal and progressive left often complain about the way the Trump-voters ‘vote against their own interest’, and that the lack of education (or knowledge is the problem). But the problem is not a knowledge-deficit, but an enjoyment deficit. Lacan coined the expression “passion for ignorance”. This shows the psychic investment in not knowing, or acting against one’s own interest. It is not that one is ignorant and thefore has a ‘passion’ (enjoyment). This presuppose that knowledge could correct this. It is rather that the passion comes first and this renders knowledge impotent. It is not an epistemological problem, but a problem of enjoyment deficit. In other words, it doesn’t matter if the 1 percent gets more tax cuts under Trump and outsource the jobs of the american working class to developing countries, since the problem is not that people do not know, but that we find a contradiction in enjoyment: between the commandment to enjoy the imaginary object (and the real partial enjoyment that the subject ends up with).
This is also why all the court cases against Trump fail to take away his charisma. This is because, all the “corruption” might be a flaw if we viewed the political process about knowledge, but not if we view it as a result of the commandment to enjoy. That Trump paid a porn star “hush”-money is precisely a testimony to his own private ‘right to enjoy’ (and that he has a knowledge about this enjoyment). People sometimes talk about Trump’s knowledge of finances (he knows about businesses). But if this was the case many other candidates would have been better. The true is that the knowledge that gives Trump his charisma, is the projected knowledge of enjoyment. Ronald Reagan was called the “Teflon President” (see Joan Copjec). But Trump is much more a Teflon president, in the sense that the court cases do no get to him, but in fact support him, because it shows that he enjoys (like taking confidental papers with him to his own private home), like his repeated gesture of swinging a golf club.
This commandment to enjoy can be seen even on the level of his syntax. Trump, when he speaks to voters is not simply that he can “explain” his economical program in a way that most people can understand. “We have a great country. What a great country. It is great. The greatest ever” (etc). It is much more that he repeats the same words over and over, as if the enjoyment of words themselves, emptied of any argumentation, show that knowledge is worth little compared to the commandment to enjoy, he speaks, not so much as Lacan says, to convey some ‘message’, but show words in their enjoyment: “And it is from that alone that psychoanalysis emerged, namely, the objectization of the fact that the speaking being still spends time speaking to no avail. (en pure perte).” (Lacan 1999: 86).
We find the same tendency in Trump’s many anecdotes and what he himself calls his ‘weaving’ (see or listen to the podcast with Joe Rogan). In this interview Trump ‘reveals’ many private details about his time as a president. For example, he tells about his personal conversations with various generals and the pilots on Airforce One. The effect of this is a pseudo-concretization. Difficult political topics is rendered as dialogue (Trump stages the talk: “they said to me, Sir, we can finish it in 3 weeks, I said, well in Washington they told me five years, but you say 3 weeks…”. The effect of this kind of anecdote is to give reduce the distance. It is like a reality-show, which promises to show us the ‘real thing’, behind the scenes. Reality tv offers us a look into what we cannot ordinarily see, what usually remain hidden from our view. On a reality show, we can see ‘ordinary’ people doing what is usually too private to be shown: sleeping, masturbating, brushing their teeth, gossipping. We are drawn to this, because it promises us to expose the hidden, the secret of their enjoyment. This inevitably disappoints, because exposing the most private parts of a person’s life, does not deliver the promised enjoyment. This object is constitutively hidden or outside of reach. Whatever object is within reach is never ït’.
Trump’s rhetoric therefore has the promise of going directly to the thing. In terms of enjoyment, Lacanian psychoanalysis, of course postulates that the thing of enjoyment, the object a, is impossible. The object of desire, that seems to harbour the ultimate enjoyment, is always outside our grasp, behind a veil, or barrier. Reality tv, promises to give us insight into the real life of people, behind the scenes, the most private. The same with Trump, he talks as though we get a glimpse of the ‘real life’ of politics. The problem is that when we go behind the barrier, or remove the veil, when we get behind the secret, we do not get the enjoyment promised. We get simply a trivial object. This causes an even more frenetic search. This is why the more Trump ‘reveals’ such anecdotes, of getting to the secret enjoyment, the more compulsively, the voter or listener will ask for more. No empirical object ever is objet petit a. Lacan says, “it is the object that is never there, that is always situated elsewhere, that is always something else.” It is like that special car, that they do not produce anymore, that you are looking for in all veteran car shops. When you finally find it, you might treasure it more than other cars, but it looses its transcendent value. In order to remain object a, it must be out of reach. The object of the complete enjoyment, that the superego commands that we search after is purely imaginary. Richard Boothy, Lacanian philosopher, writes: “the result of the ‘show it all’ strategy is to create even more intense hunger for the the that cannot be imaged: the object a. The more you see, the less you find what you are really looking for. The ‘proof’ of the Lacanian view lies in the compulsiveness with which the consumer of pornography moves from one girlie image to another, to another, and so on.” (Boothby). THis is the effect of Trump’s rhetoric: the more he reveals, the more ‘direct’ he proposes to go to things, the more compulsive is the voter or viewers hunger for getting there, to get the real thing. This is why the rhetoric with the many anecdotes is able to ‘hook’ to the subject: the constant act of exposure promises to give us the object of enjoyment, but it also always leaves us empty, which in turn intensifies the search for it.
Let us take Lacan’s slight variation on envy and ressentiment. For Lacan it is not so much a question about power. It is not, as Nietzsche claims, that the weak in order to get power invent a moral system that favours weakness, humility. It is rather, that the subject is bombarded by an image of enjoyment and feels its own failure to enjoy. It therefore believes that the other enjoys in its stead (and that perfect enjoyment would be possible without this other). The society of enjoyment commands enjoyment, but the subject, since this enjoyment is impossible, constantly faces its own lack. This is why the image of the enjoying other, like the ‘undocumented immigrant’, triggers such aggressivity. Lacan says in seminar XI:
“Such is true of envy — the envy that makes the subject pale before the image of completeness closed upon itself, before the idea that the object a, the seperated a from which he is hanging, may be for another the possesion that gives satisfaction.” (Lacan 106/116).
In the wake of the commandment to enjoy, the subject experiences “true envy”. Lacan makes clear we are not dealing with ‘material goods’ (it is not that the other has something, which I don’t). It is much more that he seems to have a perfect relation to enjoying this good, that makes me envious. Lacan uses the image, taken from St. Augustin, of two infant twin brothers (Book 1, chapter 7). The one older brother, already fed by the milk of the breast, should be satisfied. But he looks back at his brother now enjoying the milk and imagines that this image has something which he doesn’t (even though in terms of ‘materials’ he is satisfied). He is faced with an image of enjoyment and faces, in contrast, to the enjoying twin brother his own lack. This is also the truth behind all the talk of inflation and so on (how prizes on gas, milk and eggs have gone up). It is not merely that things are more expensive. It is that this image is contrasted with people that seems to be enjoying all the time. It seems like the other is enjoying in my stead. In the beginning of the counting of votes, before Trump looked like he would win, he immediately started talking about a massive fraud. The phrase stop the steal (from last election) is the perfect paradigm of the way that the subject experiences, not simply its own lack, but that the other (the thief) enjoys in his stead. The storm on the congress (with all the carnivalistic clothes was precisely such an event, where it seemed like the subject could enjoy, was free to enjoy, without limits, including the ‘limits’ of congress). This is why there was nothing odd in the mob and their clothing: they did look exactly like republicans in a society that commands enjoyment (because it is not about the paternal prohibition to enjoyment, but about displaying one’s private enjoyment publically, as in the individualistic DIY-costumes). Even in the most public of places, the congress.
This is also why Trump can both target the “elites of washington” and at the same time undocumented immigrants, women that need abortions. What all these have in common is not a shared political program, but that they seem like they are “thiefs of enjoyment”. Reagan coined the term “wellfare queen” (the single mother ‘living’ on benefits) as if this “well-fare queen” was enjoying in the subject’s stead. It is the same with the “undocumented immigrant”. Even though they support the economy much more than many ‘legal citizens’, and that they have even less money to buy goods for, the simple fact that they are “undocumented” suggest to the subject that they enjoy in his stead. They seem to be able to enjoy the even the simply things that the subject cannot (this is why paradoxically, even if they have less they seem to enjoy more). The very fact that they risk their lives crossing the border illegally, shows to the Trump-voter how far they are willing to go to ‘enjoy’ (in other words it seems like they are enjoying in the subject’s stead).
The ‘swamp’ in Washington is the same. It seems like the state itself is the thief of enjoyment, taking people’s “private enjoyment’ (through taxes) and wasting them on inefficient government programs. The swamp is a powerful image because it connotes the lack of private and individual enjoyment, something that might ‘swallow’ the subject. This confronts the subject with lack and thereby triggers aggression. The fact that abortion is human right also triggers aggression, because it to the Trump-voter suggest, that ‘promiscious’ women are ‘enjoying themselves too much’. It is a bombardment of the image of enjoyment and this is what triggers the aggression.
The particular manouver made by Trump and Trumpist is that it provides the sense of transgression through obedience to the law. As psychoanalysis has always shown: perversion is not against the law, it is not obedient, but in conformity with the law. The subject can, by voting Trump, pay obedience to the commandment to enjoy, but at the same time this does not seem like obedience but transgression (one is not respecting the ‘mainstream’, the ‘liberal political correctnesss’ and so on). This is why, as I said, the more Trumps obscene enjoyment is revealed, the charismatic he seems, because it combines the commandment to enjoy with the image of transgression. This is only an image, in reality, the subject is even more conformist than ever since it follows the commandment to enjoy (even if this ‘ideal’ can never be met in reality). In reality the subject will always end up with its own lack again and again, which sparks the compulsion to repeat.
This is also why Trump always engages in kind of simplified, amateur dancemoves on stage. The point is not that they should look good. The point is that they show private enjoyment and this they can do better if they look a bit unrhythmic, not very professional. In this sense it can illustrate the ‘right to enjoyment’ even against the ‘political correctness’ or ‘mainstream’ (that for example you have to have some rhythm to dance on stage as a president, or perhaps that the dignity of the office should prevent dancing as public display of private enjoyment). This is one of Trump’s most effective keys to success
This is also why Trump constantly emphasizes in his “MAGA”-movement that it is about taking America back. In this way he can not only provide the nostalgic image of a lost enjoyment, an enjoyment that would be whole or complete (his preferred words are “so beautiful”). He can also position the voter as a constant outsider and a rebel (‘taking America back from Washington). It is of a paramount important, that he can signal that this is a transgression and a rebellion. In this way it conforms to the superego injunction which is a law that takes on the form of a ‘transgression’ (of the mainstream, ‘political correctness’…).
The problem with many analyses of the society of enjoyment is that the widespread image of enjoyment results as a consequence from the disappearance of authority. When there is no paternal prohibition in charge, people can do what the h… they want. This leads to a state of anarchy. It seems that few respect the civility and codes of renunciation of traditional societies. This leads to the call for a return to paternal prohibition, the “make America great again”-motif. But the problem with this is that images of enjoyment, that is rampant today, is not the result of disobedience, of transgression, but of obedience and conformity. Not obedience to the paternal prohibition, but the obedience to the superego injunction to enjoy.
The problem is, therefore not, as many conservative critics sees it, that respect for authority is gone, and that everyone is free to indugle in their own private enjoyment. The problem is that people respect the commandment to enjoy too much, they are too obedient, they are not truly transgressive at all. When we transition from the society of prohibition to that of commandment to enjoy, we get a new kind of authority. Subjects that follow the laws of the market and the superego-injunction to enjoy, (even if this injunction to enjoy can never be adequately met. As Freud says, it is the most ‘virtuos that feels the most sinful’ vis-a-vis the command of the superego.
We can translate this, so that it is the one’s that have the most need to display enjoyment, that have the least of it. All things being equal, a truly private enjoyment is, hypothetically speaking, would not be problem for other subjects. The problem is the public display of private enjoyment. If we really could indulge in a private enjoyment, if we were satisfied with ourselves as we are, the enjoyment of others would not disturb us. We would simply be indifferent to it. But the image of others’ enjoyment confronts the subject with the fact that it fails to live up to the commandment to enjoy. It feels like it is missing out on what it should be doing. And this is our societies’ replacement of a public duty. We are failing our public duty in so far as we do not enjoy.
The need to campaign against other’s enjoyment is instead a testimony to the fact that the subject feels its own lack vis-a-vis the commandment to enjoy. Stephen Carter writes in his treatise Civility of exatling this ‘return’ to the paternal prohibition.
“Civility is possible only if members of a community bind themselves to obey a set of rules of behaviour not because the law requires it but because they understand the virtue of sacrificing their own desires — their own freedom to choose — for the good of the larger community of which they are a part.”
As Carter sees it, the problem is that, unlike the society of prohibition, where the subject knows how to sacrifice its own private enjoyment, the society of enjoyment fails require this. There is a lack of symbolic authority, the Lacanian Name-of-the-Father, that needs to be restored in Carter’s view. But this diagnosis is wrong. Lacan says in one of his slogans: père ou pire: father or worse. The Father’s prohibition is bad enough, but abandoning it to the society of enjoyment is even worse. It is, unlike what Carter thinks, not disobedience that is the problem, but obedience. Obedience to the commandment to enjoy.
Carter, back in the 90ies, sees the encounter with the other’s enjoyment, for example through what he sees as the rising noise level of American society. There is just too much noise in the public space: noise from cell phones, car alarms, radios, music from private homes etc.
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“The sound, the noise, the sheer unrelenting loudness of our world combines to make civility difficult to achieve. The challenge of contemporary life is not so much that we are busy as that we are blasted around the clock with the sounds of our society, raucous music, insistent telephones, cynical newscasts, angry traffic.” (Carter’s emphasis, 287, see also Mcgowan, 179).
I am supposed to simply enjoy myself, but the other constantly gets in my way with his enjoyment. In the society of enjoyment, the other only appears as a threat and a disturbance, someone who has stolen my enjoyment from me (for example by listening to his ‘raucous music’). But Carter fails to see the cause of this problem is not lack of authority, of a master, but a too-much of authority, a too relentless power in the authority of the superego and its commandment to enjoy. While this master is not as visible as the Father, he is much more effective.
The problem is not, again, private enjoyment (if it was really possible), but the public commandment of it, the fact that it is an image that the subject is constantly contrasted with. One of the liberal lefts’ criticisms of Melania Trump was the tactlessness when she visited a refugee camp for children, but wore some fancy fashion jacket with the slogan “I really don’t care do you?”. Liberals thought this was a big problem, but it did not give Trump any less charisma. Why? Because it showed precisely the “passion for ignorance” that the society of enjoyment commands, it showed the “carefree” enjoyment, even in the face of children’s suffering in a detention camp. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44570688). It seemed like Melania Trump did hold the knowledge to such enjoyment (in the way it combines ‘transgression’, here tactlessness with the obedience to the superego).
The major success of this superego that crystallizes with Trump can also be seen in the way the state itself is seen as a “thief” of enjoyment. If we are bombarded with the commandment to privately enjoy, it seems as is the subject and its family comes first. From here the state is only a usurper that has “taken” this private enjoyment (through taxes). Families come first and the state consists of the collection of families. This is why Carter, for example, refuses to give his children an education in a public school, since this would be handing over paternal authority to the state.
In contrast to what Hegel claims, namely that the family and the private individual only exists through the State (and its protection of this family unit). Without the state we do not get family simply effectively running on their own, but no families at all, since they can only function with the protection of the state. Much of american ideology, right or left, is on the contrary, focused on the liberal dream, that family can exist withou the state ina meaningful way. Trump, for example, can then claim ‘the right of the family’ (to defend itself, for example through the ‘right to incivility’ (Trump supporters parading with weapons for example). The state is, in this view, not the guarantor, the mediator of the mutual sacrifice for subjects, but itself a potentiel thief of enjoyment that the superego and the market laws are commanding.
This is why, we have the paradoxical equation of the many politicians that are deeply involved with the state at the same time constantly seeing (and selling) themselves in opposition to to the state (for example through the ‘deep state’-conspiracy). The most effective image is here that that of the ‘swamp’ and the ‘inefficient bureacracy’ (a bureacracy that enjoys its own waste and therefore ‘take’ enjoyment from the subject). Bush also talked about the ‘ways of washington’ etc.
We can make a parallel to the compelling reading by philosopher Todd Mcgowan and Hillary Negroni of the Columbine shootings. Mcgowan points out that these shootings, from both the right and the left, were interpreted s outburst of senseless violence, due to lack of authority. Two students of Columbine High School, were members of a group they called “Trench Coat Mafia”. They experienced their enjoyment deficit on a daily basis and this led to violence. The powerful point made by Mcgowan is that the victims were both the popular people at the school (‘the elite’), but also students of a minory. This complicates the prevalent political readings of the event. Those who see it as resentment against the elite cannot explain why the minority students were also targeted. Those that explain it as neo-fascist activity conducted against the marginalized can explain why the minority students were targeted, but not the the popular students. As Mcgowan says:
“Both lines of interpretation run into significant stumbling blocks: the variety of targets seems to detract from their power to signify. But there is something that unifies all the targets at Columbine. What both popular and minority students seem to share, at least in the eyes of white students (like Trench Coat Mafia) is a privileged relationship to enjoyment. Both groups seem to be enjoying themselves — and even enjoying themselves at the expense of Trench Coat Mafia. The shooting is a response to stolen enjoymen, an attempt to wreck it back from the other.” (188).
We therefore have to be very careful when reading Freud’s famous account of aggression as opposed to the social. It is not an anti-authority, but instead the most conformist way to obey the authority of the superego. It goes to the point of obedience, to be commanded to enjoy, so that when ‘Trench Coat Mafia” meets its own failure to enjoy, to go on to a horrible massshooting. This is why both responses from the liberals and conservative also got it wrong when they missed this jouissance factor. Rosie O’Donnell claimed, as many liberals, that the gun control needed to be stricter. There needed to be more control on guns. Dan Quale, as a conservative, instead blamed moral decay, the lack of parental authority and a culture of pathological narcissism. What both claimed, was therefore that the mass shootings resulted as a act of disobedience. Instead, it resulted from the conformist obedience of the subject (to the superego). The mass shootings did not occur as a result of people without any “pangs of conscience”, but precisely people heavily invested in the superego logic of commandment to enjoy. The shooters even left some tapes behind, which, as Mcgowan shows, proves, that the suidical passage a l’acte, was precisely an attempt to restore their symbolic status, that they were fully invested in the social fabric and the superego injunction to enjoy.
We can see a very clear indication of the ‘right to private enjoyment’ in the photo from U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, who in response to a school shooting posted a picture of him and his family, celebrating Christmas, all with guns in their hands.
This is a very clear indication of the ‘right to private enjoyment’. The gun represents precisely the private enjoyment, that one refuses to give up for the social order. (in many libraries and town halls, you are supposed to leave your gun at the door precisely to show that there is ‘no right to private enjoyment’). In posting the picture, Massie supports the view, that the proper response to school shootings is more private enjoyment. More commandment to enjoy. When we see reactionary groups, the point is not that they are ‘going back’. They emerge as a way of enjoying, of trying to follow the superego, in the guise of its opposite. They claim to restore limits. But they realize that the command to enjoy bars enjoyment much more effectively than the paternal prohibition does. It is a bit like telling yourself that you have to go to sleep. The more you tell yourself you have to sleep the more impossible it becomes.
The fact that he poses as such in a family photo and with a christmas tree is interesting. It shows perfectly the falsity of the “nostalgic” view, that we need family values and the return to paternal authority in order to protect us against the commandment to enjoy. The typical conservative answer is to want to have one’s cake and eat it to, that is the traditional values of a premodern society combined with the benefits of modern society (here in terms of the guns). This is never a sincere return. It is already mediated through modernity (since it wants to have its benefits). A truly ‘family values’-policy would mean to opt out completely from all modern benefits (and even so this very fantasy is generated by modernity itself). It is therefore always false.
Much more pertinent for our time, is therefore the way that ‘family values’ are simply used to represent the opposite. A refusal of restraint to private enjoyment. While it thinks that it is a right to private enjoyment, it is really a public command of the superego, one fully in tune with the society of enjoyment.
There is something of the same in the typical vigilante at the border. Faced with the “undocumented immigrant” he sees his own failure to enjoy. If he fails to enjoy it must be because the other (immigrant) has stolen it from him (not because the superego commands something impossible). He therefore reacts with incivility, with taking the law into his own hands. This seems to free up enjoyment, because he can now be ‘transgressive’ (shoot undocumented immigrants), hence go beyond the legal system, but at the same time he is a total conformist, since he can ‘excuse’ himself with only protecting his country (and therefore not taking responsibility of the enjoyment that is experiencing). This enjoyment however is total conformist, it needs the image of the enjoying other, that has ‘stolen’ his enjoyment (‘taken America from him’), in order to feel free to enjoy. As Freud says, the superego sees everything even thoughts. Even more ‘vigilant’ than the vigilante, is the superego injunction to enjoy, that he conforms to. We might think that such acts of incivility are testimonies to the social fabric collapsing. That there is no ‘authority’ anymore, that man returns to be a “wolf against man”, that it is everyone for himself. But the opposite is the case. The outburst of violence is the result of a conformist attempt to obey the superego, it is in this sense part and parcel of the social fabric itself. Real enjoyment, enjoyment as partial and not commanded, is on the contrary, what cannot be commanded, what cannot be part of the social order, since it goes beyond the symbolic.
If we go to psychoanalysis, we can make a comparison to what a proper political act would be. The psychoanalytical cure does not turn the subject’s disattisfaction into satisfaction. It does not restore the lost enjoyment to the subject. Instead it tries to cure the subject of its very satisfaction, that is the satisfaction it thinks it has, or could have. This satisfaction is that of the image of full enjoyment. But it is not a real enjoyment, but imaginary.
Psychoanalysis does not try to make the subject content with disattisfaction or turn the subject into a cynic. Instead it tries to open the path for a real enjoyment. An enjoyment of the Real, rather than the imaginary. Such enjoyment is always partial. Unlike the image is never complete or full. It is an enjoyment of bits and pieces.
The partial Real enjoyment also opens up a possibility for a Real transformation in the subject. This is also why the complains that psychoanalysis takes away our political opposition and fervour away is misplaced. According to this view the psychoanalyst is like a priest or a policeman, that make the subject docile. You complain to your analyst, instead of going with banners in the street. But this criticism is, as said, misplaced. It is not about ‘adapting’ to a social system, and be satisfied with ‘what we have’.
Lacan says in Seminar V: “Human desire will always remain irreducible to any form of reduction and adaptation.” (295). The social system cannot give us what we desire, and paradoxically, this is why we cling to it. We participate with a social system, not because of what it gives, but because of what it fails to give us. “The subject does not simply satisfy a desire, he derives enjoyment from desiring, and this is an essential dimension of his enjoyment.” (ibid.). On the contrary analysis works on the subject not to accept the image of enjoyment and the compromise formation they have formed (their symptoms). This is why the logic of the superego is completely different from the way a psychoanalyst (a Lacanian one at least) works.
Today, there is less and less refusal of the capitalist system and its commandment to enjoy. The lack of an alternative to the commandment to enjoy makes subject only encounter each other as possible threats to enjoyment. Since enjoyment is impossible to have ‘whole’ and ‘complete’, the other appears as necessarily a disturbing other, someone who steals the enjoyment (or has stolen the enjoyment) of the subject. This is fertile ground for violence. The proper political move is therefore to try and think of a way to dismante this superego injunction to enjoy. The problem is not disobedience and anarchy. But too much obedience and conformism.
This does not mean thinking up alternatives. It means understanding, not so much the future, as the present. If we understand the present correctly, we can also understand what an alternative might look like. If we think of an alternative, without understanding the present, it means simply repeating the possibilities of the present. This is why only a better understanding of the present enables a shift, that points towards something different.
Bibliography:
Jacques Lacan. Four Fundemental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Norton. 1977. Tr. Alan Sheridan.
Jacques Lacan. Encore. 1998. Tr. Bruce Fink. Norton.
Lacan already sees commandment to enjoyment at work in Christianity itself. That is Christianity also combines perversity qua conformism and enjoyment. In Seminar 20 he says, he just came back “from an orgy of churches in Italy” (113).
Stephen Carter. Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy.New York. Harper Collins, 1998).
Joan Copjec. Imagine there is no Woman. Verso. 2012 (1994).
Todd Mcgowan. The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. State University of New York Press. Albany. 2004.
