Hello reader who is interested in Lacan,

I’m Neil Gorman, and this is my Lacanian Mojo (LM) email newsletter. If you’re reading these words, I’m assuming you subscribed to the newsletter of your own free will.

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Quick Review -- I don’t want to know anything about it:

In the prior edition of LM, I started to give you some of my thoughts (notes?) on m current reading of Seminar XX: Encore - On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love & Knowlege.
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• As I do this, each edition of LM will share something from a section of the text and tell you what I make of that section of text.
• Please keep in mind this is my reading (which is going to be a reading, probably a misreading at that, not THE reading).
• I’m going to be going through the seminar very slowly.
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The main idea from last time was Lacan talking about how there is something that we all “don’t want to know anything about.” I suggested this something could be called

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• The it (das Es in Freud’s original German, and the id in the standard English translations of Freud’s work.) Another way we could think of this is that we all have a monster (the it!) inside of our body, but we would all prefer to think of ourselves as monster-free “nice people.” We don’t want to know anything about the monster that resides deep inside us, waiting patiently for circumstances to be just right so that it can come out and do what monsters do.
• Or, the unconscious (I feel compelled now to remind everyone reading this -- The unconscious is not merely things that you’re not thinking about. The unconscious is things you can’t think about because they are repressed.)
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Another term for “the it” | the unconscious is Jouissance:

It is important to remember that Lacan’s use of the idea/term jouissance changes a great deal throughout his teachings. (Jacques-Alain Miller has outlined six different paradigms of jouissance that are articulated as the concept evolves throughout the presentation of Lacan’s seminar.) However, for the sake of my reading, I’m going to describe jouissance as:

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• An intense feeling of enjoyment or satisfaction
• Which is experienced in and by the human body
• This experience of enjoyment or satisfaction is something we become addicted to, and like addicts, we are very weak whenever an opportunity to get the “high (i.e., satisfaction) is offered to us.
• Another way to describe it would be to say jouissance is what the it -the monster inside us, which we don’t want to know anything about- really gets a kick out of.
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Let’s look at some bits from the text:

In this section of the text, Lacan introduces a few things that relate to jouissance. IN particular:
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• The law (i.e., the symbolic order)
• A limit (i.e., we tend to enjoy what is beyond our boundaries more than what is within our boundaries.)
• “Usufruct” -- The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property.
• Waste -- The idea that we enjoy totally unnecessary things, things that are just a waste rather than productive. Examples gossip, snacks, slacking off, etc. These are things there are more than what we need. The critical thing to notice here is that we enjoy surpluses more than getting what is necessary.

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I think that Lacan puts all of this together on page three of the text when he says,

I begin with the limit, a limit with which one must indeed begin if one is to be serious, in other words, to establish the series of that which approaches it.

Here Lacan is focusing on the role of the limit in our ability to enjoy. He goes on to say,

A word here to shed light on the relationship between law (droit) and jouissance. "Usufruct" - that's a legal notion, isn't it? - brings together in one word what I already mentioned in my seminar on ethics [Seminar VII]: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis], namely, the difference between utility and jouissance. What purpose does utility serve?

Here we see Lacan bringing up this notion of Usufruct. This is important because it brings up the important idea that what we enjoy the most is the stuff that goes beyond what we need or require. One way we might see this play out in our here-and-now is how people will gleefully try to take something away from another individual or group of people who is enjoying something that we think they don’t have a right to. Some examples would be:
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• How we want to hold those in power (the wealthy, politicians) accountable for their actions, particularly the things they have done, which are seen as misconduct.
• The way that some people enjoy denying others access to things like welfare programs. This is often described as holding the poor accountable for being poor. (Full disclosure: I think this is an idiotic argument, but people make it.)
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I want to point out that we don’t need to deny these others things to meet our own needs. We make a public spectacle of holding others accountable, and we enjoy this spectacle. Part of the reason is that by making a spectacle of making those in power uncomfortable, we take their comfort, we deny them comfort.

As I read the text today:

I think that Lacan makes several points around the concept of usufruct. Is that it is one of the ways to explain what happens when people cross over a line. What line? So glad you asked! The line between substance (existence, survival) being able to live because one has what they require to live, and jouissance (enjoyment) or being able to enjoy life because one has more than they need. Or, to put it another way,

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• People don’t enjoy having enough. Of course, they want enough, but getting enough is not something we enjoy. Having enough allows us to be alive in a bare-life sense of the word.
• Having more than we need is where we can start to enjoy. When we have more than we need, we can relax and begin to enjoy our lives.

Is this somethign we don't want to know anything about? Generally, I would say yes, think it is.
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Fin:

I have more I could write about this, but I’m out of time. So I’m going to stop writing and hit send.

I hope it’s been an interesting and useful read for you.

Till next time: Please, make glorious mistakes.