Thank you so much for not keeping your teaching ability behind a paywall. You find a way to explain high level philosophy to amateur philosophers that is unprecedented in my life. You rock and you roll. Much love Todd.✊✊
You’ve helped me think about the right/phallic form of enjoyment as a desiring of enjoyment and the radical left/feminine form as an enjoyment of desire.
@@user-fh2md8pt8d as far as I can tell, it implies that politics itself is a form of enjoyment that societies reproduce through how they arrange their relationship to contradiction. Radical left politics(feminine enjoyment)has historically organized itself around the contradictions of the social order while conservative politics(phallic enjoyment)articulates those same contradictions as mere oppositions.
24:21 *psychoanalysis and the feminine* “So from its inception I think, psychoanalysis challenges the structure of phallic authority. I think this is absolutely clear to me that Freud’s whole point is _phallus is a fraud,_ that that’s the starting idea of psychoanalysis. So it recognizes that phallic authority is inevitably caught up in what Jennifer Friedlander calls _the logic of man’s imposture from which it cannot escape._ So that is the basic psychoanalytic idea. And yet I think that as long as Freud, and Lacan following him, identify jouissance with the phallic signifier (even if it’s the signifier of the missing jouissance) they limit in a certain way the radicality of the psychoanalytic project and it’s tie to a radical egalitarian politics. So I think they successfully deflate the phallus but they don’t dissociate it from jouissance, and this kind of blurring between social recognition and jousisance remains and I think that’s something that changes with the fourth paradigm [objet a].”
Hi, thoroughly enjoyed this one. I just watched as well some of your recent conversation about psychoanalysis and Marx on the theory plebe channel and I just wanted to propose one simple (ok maybe too simplistic) way of integrating these is to start by mentioning the most basic way that marx differs from what he constantly refers to over and over again in capital vol. 1 as the 'bourgeois economists'. In some ways I think its so basic that its easy to miss. It's just simply that capitalism is simultaneously a totality and that which produces both great wealth and great poverty as its two animating poles and most beourgois economists before him focused on the useful/utilitarian aspects, wealth creation, freedom, dynamism etc. What this means apropos being a subject of capital is that one can never fit because one can only either be tending toward wealth or poverty and you can never be both but to actually 'fit' the totality would require being both. The ideology of being middle class tries as much as possible to obfuscate this basic contradiction which is probably why most americans consider themselves to be middle class regardless of what their actual status is. Thus because the basic dream of the capitalist subject is to be both because this is what the system both requires and makes impossible. Instead we just constantly live the contradiction which creates ripe conditions for jouissance as I see it.
I guess relatedly if there is a crisis moment here it relates to the fact that capitalism in this way DOES in effect systematize not fitting so that no contradiction can ever be contradictory enough. The full paradox here would then be to see that the one contradiction capitalism can’t metabolize is indeed the fact that it CAN systematize contradiction leading to a crisis of endlessly diminishing returns on enjoyment or a sort of spiral of decaffeination… maybe? Does this make any sense to anyone?
Thanks, Todd. I've been meaning to read this essay for some time. Perhaps this will give me the necessary kick in the pants to do so. I am intrigued a bit by the off-hand remark you made on the last podcast episode that some these paradigms contradict, and I wonder to what degree, even if they seem to contradict, that we can recognize multiple modes of jouissance that, perhaps in a Hegelian sense, become what they are precisely because they contradict. In other words, cannot phallic jouissance take its distinctive quality as a kind of enjoyment only because it contrasts so sharply with the transgressive enjoyment or that of the objet (a)? And conversely, the radicality of either Antigone or the jouissance of the objet (a) only finds its strength in contrast to phallic jouissance. It seems as though Lacan was trying to fit these all together in the Borromean knot in the places where the rings overlap, so you have JΦ, JA, Joui-sens, and the (a) itself in the center. I had not thought of the (a) in the center of the knot as being itself a type of enjoyment, but this makes me wonder, and could Lacan not be returning to this paradigm in an even more radical fashion in his last teaching? Could not this form of jouissance, that of the (a) be at the root of all others insofar as something has been lost that sets everything in motion?
Hi Eric, thanks for this. I think you're on to something here, but I don't think that enjoyment can be divided up into phallic and feminine in the way that the later Lacan wants to. That said, I do like your claim about the last formulations returning to that of the middle period.
@@toddmcgowan8233 I wonder to what degree he may have backed off of the notion of a "feminine" jouissance as he articulated it in Seminar XX, because you don't see any sustained discussion of it from then on, iirc. All you get is this symbol JA that appears in the knot in the overlap of the imaginary and the real. In other words, there is a jouissance where the imaginary covers over the real, a jouissance of the body. He notes in R. S. I. that jouissance is what always ex-sists, and I wonder if that is how we are to read this "JA" as it ex-sists outside of the symbolic. Is this not something similar to Antigone's jouissance, insofar as it stands outside of Kreon's symbolic law and insofar as she forms an imaginary identification with her brother? Similarly JΦ ex-sists relative to the imaginary. So, putting aside terms like "phallic" and "feminine", can we determine some mode of jouissance simply in terms of RSI, in terms of how jouissance ex-sists on or another register? (I am probably misinterpreting a lot of this, and I know you are not a fan of the knots, but I find some possible fecundity in simply holding to the coordinates of RSI.)
@@IgnatiusEPJ JA is his new way of describing feminine jouissance--jouissance of the Other. I think it's different from Antigone because he no longer ties jouissance to transgression, which he absolutely does in Seminar VII. I don't think that this is through the brother as such but through her defiance of the symbolic law for the sake of her desire. I think the overlap of imaginary and real as the site of this jouissance is an almost exact duplication of Kierkegaard's idea that one arrives at the religious (real) suspension of the ethical (symbolic) through the aesthetic (imaginary).
it's the first time I listen to you (came throgh youtube suggested) and I like to share some tips to simplify things. 1) Translating jouissance with enjoyment can be misleading. Lacan wanted to see "drive satisfaction" from a different angle. He uses the term joui as it's used in law. Probably the closest english term is "benefit". I can say "I benefit from the water system" beacuse I got the license from the county. I don't own the water nor the land but I benefit from them thanks to the license. Part of the profit is mine if I sell it or distribute it. Who owns the "drive"? nobody. The Phallus is a license to articulate a desire to earn a "plus de joyssance" that's the result of the articulation between Subject and Other. 2) missing jouissance refers to a mythical Subject before castration. The only time Lacan writes Subject of jouissance is in seminar X meaning a human still fully connected with nature, like Adam in the garden of Eden. 3) the Phallus is an aspect of the S1. the problem is this: while the penis is part of the narcissistic self image, the erected penis is NOT! it's something beyond the Imaginary level. The erection can be integrated to the body (and self) only thanks to the symbolic system (the Phallus is that operator). In clinics it is very clear: an hysterical can't have an orgasm with someone whom she desires, someone with ocd can't have an orgasm with someone whom he loves! So Castration, refers to a mythical jouissance that's missing but we need this myth to invest libido in the world. The best seminar from Miller that point out these topic are "comment on seminar x" and "Lacan's biology and events of the body" (but probably it doesn't exist in english)
Hey Todd, great stuff here. I wonder what the relationship is between the last paradigm you discuss, enjoyment in the objet a, and the observation you've made elsewhere that people in a position of power are haunted by the fantasy of the Other's enjoyment. Would you say that when, for example, racists are upset by their sense that Black people are experiencing some (excessive) enjoyment that's inaccessible to them, they're basically right? That seems like a more or less necessary consequence of defining enjoyment in that way, which seems to me like maybe a point where we have to problematize that paradigm.
Very good question. Yes, but this enjoyment of nonbelonging is universal insofar as nonbelonging itself is universal. So when someone sees enjoyment in the other, that is this subject's own nonbelonging being manifested. It is other to the person that seems to be enjoying as well. This is the mistake of racism: to see nonbelonging only in the other and not in itself.
@@toddmcgowan8233 That makes sense, thank you. Perhaps this displacement of nonbelonging (and thus enjoyment) onto the other also allows one to maintain the fantasy of full enjoyment? If I construe nonbelonging as exclusive to the other, then I can at least imagine that *someone* has access to an enjoyment that's 'fuller' than my own partial experience of it--a bit like Freud's primal father.
Could you do a video essay on the limits of Object Oriented Ontology? From what I know, I think it neglects the subject’s status as a kind of “surplus-object” that makes all other objects intelligible; which seems like it is just as much of an important distinction as the one Marx makes between money’s status amongst a world of other commodities.
That's a great way to see it. I'll try to do it. I have had a debate with Graham Harman that is online and where i hash out what I see as the basic problems.
You could have spent an hour just on the joke at the end. At first I thought, the illusory nature of the phallus is only made clear on the deserted island where symbolic authority is meaningless. Therefore, his wife would cheat on him. But then I remembered that women always see the illusory nature of the phallus. And in truth, we are always living on a deserted island. It’s just hard to see it.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Might one then suppose that unconscious jouissance is non-phallic, and it may become phallisized by the signifier and the objet a, such that the little bit of jouissance the subject may encounter would be phallic? Would the objet a stripped of its imaginary content and enjoyed as a lack then be 'feminine'?
@@asakatali I think, yes, jouissance is inherently non-phallic but becomes phallicized by the phallic signifier. Objet a is what remains on non-phallic jouissance. That's how I would be it.
@@toddmcgowan8233 are you familiar with the recently released book "Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue"? I've done a couple of intro videos on it. Would love to hear your take on it if you're familiar. Thanks for your work, Todd.
Enjoyment. Think serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine is a short burst of high intensity that evolved to reward food and sex and making toilet. Serotonin is enjoyment that comes from long term planing and fulfillment of higher needs. Both these chemicals evolved to have a short metabolic cycle so we keep moving. Keep eating. Keep screwing and making toilet. If enjoyment was meant to last we wouldn't survive as a species. Enjoyment exists as a fleeting feeling almost a constant memory to DRIVE human behavior. .
Not just sexist, but ableist, ageist, and fat-people-hating. Super disappointed and unsubscribing immediately. Or I might wait just a little to draw out my Aries fire. Why are you so jealous of our fire? Are you an Aries too?
Thank you so much for not keeping your teaching ability behind a paywall. You find a way to explain high level philosophy to amateur philosophers that is unprecedented in my life. You rock and you roll.
Much love Todd.✊✊
Huge thanks for this one, Todd! I wish I could’ve gone to Disneyland with Baudrillard.
You’ve helped me think about the right/phallic form of enjoyment as a desiring of enjoyment and the radical left/feminine form as an enjoyment of desire.
What is the political implication of this? Trying to figure it out myself.
@@user-fh2md8pt8d as far as I can tell, it implies that politics itself is a form of enjoyment that societies reproduce through how they arrange their relationship to contradiction. Radical left politics(feminine enjoyment)has historically organized itself around the contradictions of the social order while conservative politics(phallic enjoyment)articulates those same contradictions as mere oppositions.
@@jeanlamontfilms5586 thanks for the clarification.
@@user-fh2md8pt8d no problem!
Still waiting for the book to come out. Come on Doug/Sublation Media, releases it already!
Thanks for these. I'm studying for my PhD and I find Lacan's concepts to be much clearer once parsed through others' understanding.
just finished 'Enjoying What We Don't Have"
interesting stuff!
Hi Todd, please consider setting up a podcast feed! Would love this material to listen to on my walk, and I don't have TH-cam premium.
ytmp3
He already does one with Ryan Engley called “why theory” give it a listen I personally
am a big fan
@@loukastroll4925 Yep, already subscribed to that! Thanks for suggestion.
24:21 *psychoanalysis and the feminine* “So from its inception I think, psychoanalysis challenges the structure of phallic authority. I think this is absolutely clear to me that Freud’s whole point is _phallus is a fraud,_ that that’s the starting idea of psychoanalysis. So it recognizes that phallic authority is inevitably caught up in what Jennifer Friedlander calls _the logic of man’s imposture from which it cannot escape._ So that is the basic psychoanalytic idea. And yet I think that as long as Freud, and Lacan following him, identify jouissance with the phallic signifier (even if it’s the signifier of the missing jouissance) they limit in a certain way the radicality of the psychoanalytic project and it’s tie to a radical egalitarian politics. So I think they successfully deflate the phallus but they don’t dissociate it from jouissance, and this kind of blurring between social recognition and jousisance remains and I think that’s something that changes with the fourth paradigm [objet a].”
14:00 where can I find more on Bataille on Jouissance and Human Sacrifice? Thank you 🙏
Hi, thoroughly enjoyed this one. I just watched as well some of your recent conversation about psychoanalysis and Marx on the theory plebe channel and I just wanted to propose one simple (ok maybe too simplistic) way of integrating these is to start by mentioning the most basic way that marx differs from what he constantly refers to over and over again in capital vol. 1 as the 'bourgeois economists'. In some ways I think its so basic that its easy to miss. It's just simply that capitalism is simultaneously a totality and that which produces both great wealth and great poverty as its two animating poles and most beourgois economists before him focused on the useful/utilitarian aspects, wealth creation, freedom, dynamism etc. What this means apropos being a subject of capital is that one can never fit because one can only either be tending toward wealth or poverty and you can never be both but to actually 'fit' the totality would require being both. The ideology of being middle class tries as much as possible to obfuscate this basic contradiction which is probably why most americans consider themselves to be middle class regardless of what their actual status is. Thus because the basic dream of the capitalist subject is to be both because this is what the system both requires and makes impossible. Instead we just constantly live the contradiction which creates ripe conditions for jouissance as I see it.
I guess relatedly if there is a crisis moment here it relates to the fact that capitalism in this way DOES in effect systematize not fitting so that no contradiction can ever be contradictory enough. The full paradox here would then be to see that the one contradiction capitalism can’t metabolize is indeed the fact that it CAN systematize contradiction leading to a crisis of endlessly diminishing returns on enjoyment or a sort of spiral of decaffeination… maybe? Does this make any sense to anyone?
I know I am almost an year late, but this was a fantastic tidbit. I am stealing it, thanks!
Banger
where can i get access to the pdf version of this article
Thanks, Todd. I've been meaning to read this essay for some time. Perhaps this will give me the necessary kick in the pants to do so. I am intrigued a bit by the off-hand remark you made on the last podcast episode that some these paradigms contradict, and I wonder to what degree, even if they seem to contradict, that we can recognize multiple modes of jouissance that, perhaps in a Hegelian sense, become what they are precisely because they contradict. In other words, cannot phallic jouissance take its distinctive quality as a kind of enjoyment only because it contrasts so sharply with the transgressive enjoyment or that of the objet (a)? And conversely, the radicality of either Antigone or the jouissance of the objet (a) only finds its strength in contrast to phallic jouissance. It seems as though Lacan was trying to fit these all together in the Borromean knot in the places where the rings overlap, so you have JΦ, JA, Joui-sens, and the (a) itself in the center. I had not thought of the (a) in the center of the knot as being itself a type of enjoyment, but this makes me wonder, and could Lacan not be returning to this paradigm in an even more radical fashion in his last teaching? Could not this form of jouissance, that of the (a) be at the root of all others insofar as something has been lost that sets everything in motion?
Hi Eric, thanks for this. I think you're on to something here, but I don't think that enjoyment can be divided up into phallic and feminine in the way that the later Lacan wants to. That said, I do like your claim about the last formulations returning to that of the middle period.
@@toddmcgowan8233 I wonder to what degree he may have backed off of the notion of a "feminine" jouissance as he articulated it in Seminar XX, because you don't see any sustained discussion of it from then on, iirc. All you get is this symbol JA that appears in the knot in the overlap of the imaginary and the real. In other words, there is a jouissance where the imaginary covers over the real, a jouissance of the body. He notes in R. S. I. that jouissance is what always ex-sists, and I wonder if that is how we are to read this "JA" as it ex-sists outside of the symbolic. Is this not something similar to Antigone's jouissance, insofar as it stands outside of Kreon's symbolic law and insofar as she forms an imaginary identification with her brother? Similarly JΦ ex-sists relative to the imaginary. So, putting aside terms like "phallic" and "feminine", can we determine some mode of jouissance simply in terms of RSI, in terms of how jouissance ex-sists on or another register? (I am probably misinterpreting a lot of this, and I know you are not a fan of the knots, but I find some possible fecundity in simply holding to the coordinates of RSI.)
@@IgnatiusEPJ JA is his new way of describing feminine jouissance--jouissance of the Other. I think it's different from Antigone because he no longer ties jouissance to transgression, which he absolutely does in Seminar VII. I don't think that this is through the brother as such but through her defiance of the symbolic law for the sake of her desire. I think the overlap of imaginary and real as the site of this jouissance is an almost exact duplication of Kierkegaard's idea that one arrives at the religious (real) suspension of the ethical (symbolic) through the aesthetic (imaginary).
it's the first time I listen to you (came throgh youtube suggested) and I like to share some tips to simplify things. 1) Translating jouissance with enjoyment can be misleading. Lacan wanted to see "drive satisfaction" from a different angle. He uses the term joui as it's used in law. Probably the closest english term is "benefit". I can say "I benefit from the water system" beacuse I got the license from the county. I don't own the water nor the land but I benefit from them thanks to the license. Part of the profit is mine if I sell it or distribute it. Who owns the "drive"? nobody. The Phallus is a license to articulate a desire to earn a "plus de joyssance" that's the result of the articulation between Subject and Other. 2) missing jouissance refers to a mythical Subject before castration. The only time Lacan writes Subject of jouissance is in seminar X meaning a human still fully connected with nature, like Adam in the garden of Eden. 3) the Phallus is an aspect of the S1. the problem is this: while the penis is part of the narcissistic self image, the erected penis is NOT! it's something beyond the Imaginary level. The erection can be integrated to the body (and self) only thanks to the symbolic system (the Phallus is that operator). In clinics it is very clear: an hysterical can't have an orgasm with someone whom she desires, someone with ocd can't have an orgasm with someone whom he loves! So Castration, refers to a mythical jouissance that's missing but we need this myth to invest libido in the world. The best seminar from Miller that point out these topic are "comment on seminar x" and "Lacan's biology and events of the body" (but probably it doesn't exist in english)
wow what a comment
sounds anything clearer now? I hope so@@nicholasburch2122
Hey Todd, great stuff here. I wonder what the relationship is between the last paradigm you discuss, enjoyment in the objet a, and the observation you've made elsewhere that people in a position of power are haunted by the fantasy of the Other's enjoyment. Would you say that when, for example, racists are upset by their sense that Black people are experiencing some (excessive) enjoyment that's inaccessible to them, they're basically right? That seems like a more or less necessary consequence of defining enjoyment in that way, which seems to me like maybe a point where we have to problematize that paradigm.
Very good question. Yes, but this enjoyment of nonbelonging is universal insofar as nonbelonging itself is universal. So when someone sees enjoyment in the other, that is this subject's own nonbelonging being manifested. It is other to the person that seems to be enjoying as well. This is the mistake of racism: to see nonbelonging only in the other and not in itself.
@@toddmcgowan8233 That makes sense, thank you. Perhaps this displacement of nonbelonging (and thus enjoyment) onto the other also allows one to maintain the fantasy of full enjoyment? If I construe nonbelonging as exclusive to the other, then I can at least imagine that *someone* has access to an enjoyment that's 'fuller' than my own partial experience of it--a bit like Freud's primal father.
@@jessicaanderson750 Yes, I think that's exactly right
Could you do a video essay on the limits of Object Oriented Ontology? From what I know, I think it neglects the subject’s status as a kind of “surplus-object” that makes all other objects intelligible; which seems like it is just as much of an important distinction as the one Marx makes between money’s status amongst a world of other commodities.
That's a great way to see it. I'll try to do it. I have had a debate with Graham Harman that is online and where i hash out what I see as the basic problems.
Is the 3H J-AM talk recorded somewhere?
It's an article that you can find called "Six Paradigms of Jouissance"
Has anyone ever been able to explain why Lacan was never able to find the symbolic clitoris? Do we need a new theory or a more powerful telescope?
You could have spent an hour just on the joke at the end. At first I thought, the illusory nature of the phallus is only made clear on the deserted island where symbolic authority is meaningless. Therefore, his wife would cheat on him. But then I remembered that women always see the illusory nature of the phallus. And in truth, we are always living on a deserted island. It’s just hard to see it.
Make the American Lacanian link great again
Sorry Todd - I really think 'jouissance' should NOT be translated as 'enjoyment' - best left untranslated!
Professor McGowan is kind of hot here?
Todd, is the implication here that the libido is feminine?
In the sense that it derives from the non-phallic position.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Might one then suppose that unconscious jouissance is non-phallic, and it may become phallisized by the signifier and the objet a, such that the little bit of jouissance the subject may encounter would be phallic? Would the objet a stripped of its imaginary content and enjoyed as a lack then be 'feminine'?
@@asakatali I think, yes, jouissance is inherently non-phallic but becomes phallicized by the phallic signifier. Objet a is what remains on non-phallic jouissance. That's how I would be it.
Yes, but who died?
From an Orthodox Christian perspective, Jouissance seems like a degraded form of grace- a lost grace inaugurated by the fall. That track at all?
Very nice, yes
@@toddmcgowan8233 are you familiar with the recently released book "Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue"? I've done a couple of intro videos on it. Would love to hear your take on it if you're familiar. Thanks for your work, Todd.
@@JAMESKOURTIDES Sorry, I don't know it
Enjoyment. Think serotonin and dopamine.
Dopamine is a short burst of high intensity that evolved to reward food and sex and making toilet.
Serotonin is enjoyment that comes from long term planing and fulfillment of higher needs.
Both these chemicals evolved to have a short metabolic cycle so we keep moving. Keep eating. Keep screwing and making toilet.
If enjoyment was meant to last we wouldn't survive as a species.
Enjoyment exists as a fleeting feeling almost a constant memory to DRIVE human behavior. .
It pains me as a fellow Midwesterner to learn that you have seen Squid Game but not the Fargo TV series.
Shameful
Not just sexist, but ableist, ageist, and fat-people-hating. Super disappointed and unsubscribing immediately. Or I might wait just a little to draw out my Aries fire.
Why are you so jealous of our fire? Are you an Aries too?
Settle down.
Yes, the point of the joke was to represent a position in order to criticize it
That's reality, sweetie
@@John_Malka-tits BRAAAVOOO!!!