Enjoying through another

I've been working on a paper for the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. It has been hellish, not least because the 2 other panelists sent their papers in early or because my paper has ended up having nothing at all to do with the panel theme. At any rate, a version of it will become the basis for the first chapter of Zizek's Politics, the book I'm working on. Anyway, I post an excerpt here not because it's good but because it isn't. That is, I expect that there are problems I've ignored and illegitimate slips and short circuits. Constructive criticism will be appreciated.  This section, by the way, is not the beginning of the paper. Oh, one more thing--because of weird formatting issue some possessives do not appear as such.

Enjoying through another

I’ve been discussing enjoyment as a kind of fixity insofar as it provides the place of the subject. I now approach this fixity from a different direction, that of substitution and displacement, of doing something through another (plague 105). I do so in order to bring to the fore the intersubjective dimension of enjoyment. Enjoyment is not a private ecstasy rupturing the subject. Nor is its intersubjectivity simply a matter of the overlap of the lacks of the subject and the other. Rather, Zizek emphasizes that one can enjoy through another, that another can enjoy for us, in our stead. This idea of a primary substitution, of our displacement of our enjoyment onto another, helps account for the way the externalization of enjoyment also fixes the subject. We can be active to the extent that we displace our passive enjoyment onto another. 

How does one enjoy through another? A first example might be Santa Claus. I go through elaborate efforts at Christmas to ensure that my children are thrilled and delighted. I enjoy Christmas through their delight, their enjoyment. At the same time, if I think about it, I can also recall a particular kind of agony I experienced as a child. I didn’t want to let my parents down. I didn’t want them to think that they had disappointed me, that I wasn’t completely ecstatic every minute of Christmas day. I had to hide the little let down that occurs when the packages are all opened and it’s time to clean up. Yet, now as an adult, I find myself repeating the same pattern. Christmas seems to focus on the children, but this very focus involves my enjoying through them. I’m actually now relieved of the burden of enjoyment; I don’t have to enjoy for my parents anymore. Now, my children enjoy in my stead. “I differ jouissance to the Other who passively endures it (laughs, suffers, enjoys . . .) on my behalf” (plague 115). They enjoy so that I don’t have to.

 This example can be extended to clarify Zizek’s point that “the open display of the passive attitude of ‘enjoying it’ somehow deprives the subject of his dignity” (plague 115). I don’t want to be caught again in the child’s place of mindless, unself-conscious absorption in wanting to know what’s hidden behind the wrapping paper, opening packages, and confronting the actuality of their contents. Ripping through the ribbons and bows seems somehow savage, excessive, materialistic. And, what if my desire is exposed, my lack, the fact that no possible content will fill it, will be it? That vulnerability is more than I can bear. If the children enjoy Christmas for me, I am saved from this incapacitating enjoyment and can happily go about my business of wrapping, decorating, preparing good, hosting friends and family, that is, the basic activity of the holidays.

 For Zizek, the externalization of enjoyment in another is a necessary feature of subjectivity: “in order to be an active subject, I have to get rid of—to transpose on to the other—the inert passivity which contains the density of my substantial being” (plague 116).  Actually encountering the other enjoying for us, moreover, can be nearly unbearable insofar as it confronts us with our own passivity. The enjoying other is holding, is the location of, the enjoyment we have deferred to it. Our encounter with this other thus involves an encounter with the object in ourselves, with our absorption in enjoyment, with “the passive kernel” of our being (116). “I see myself in the guise of a suffering object: what reduces me to a fascinated passive observer is the scene of myself passively enduring it” (116). There is a kind of transfixed repulsion when we come upon the other to whom we have transferred our jouissance enjoying in our stead. We confront our own ultimate passivity, the enjoyment that fixes us in our place. The concept of enjoyment, then, can thus enable political theory to recognize the disavowed passivity that enables activity.

 We can get a clearer sense of this link between our fundamental passivity and the displacement of enjoyment onto another by considering two examples: Alex Baldwins performance in Glengarry Glen Ross and George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. Zizek holds that the most libidinally satisfying part of the film is Baldwins appearance. He writes: “It is the excessive enjoyment elicited by Baldwins demeanour in this scene which accounts for the spectator’s satisfaction in witnessing the humiliation of the poor agents. Such excessive enjoyment is the necessary support of social relationships of domination . . .”  (plague 51). Initially, I was puzzled by Zizek’s remarks. Was the enjoyment Baldwins or the spectators? Is he eliciting enjoyment in us or for himself? Figuring this out seems important if we are to understand his claim about domination. Is Zizek using the scene analogically: the relationship in which the poor agents are stuck is like ours? Or, is he saying that insofar as we as spectators are enjoying we are involved in relationships of domination?

 In the scene, Baldwin plays a sales executive who has come to push or inspire a group of real estate salesmen. It’s a rainy night. The men are frustrated with their inability to sell property to the people whose names and information they’ve been provided, the “the leads.” The only man doing well, Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) doesn’t show up for the meeting. The rest are then subject to the browbeating of this executive, sent from the bosses, “Mitch and Murray.” They are told they aren’t salesmen, they are faggots, pieces of shit. They are given completely irrational injunctions—put that coffee down! They are subjected to a forced choice: they can choose not to listen and be fired. And, they are given sales advice that makes no sense at the level of the enunciated content: attention, interest, decision, action; have you made your decision for Christ? Who is he? When asked, Baldwin answers “Fuck you! That’s my name.” “Your name is you’re wanting.” After he leaves, there is rumbling thunder.

 That  Baldwins character displays excessive enjoyment seems clear enough. But does he elicit enjoyment from us? Or, differently put, how is it that we enjoy through this scene? To the extent that we are transfixed and repulsed by the performance, we are captured, held in place by enjoyment. Like the humiliated salesmen, we passively endure Baldwins obscene tirade, flinching, overwhelmed by the excess. And insofar as this scene is a staging of our own passivity, it can be understood in terms of a fantasy that sustains activity. We imagine the denigrated salesmen as trapped, unfree, as unlike us; they are caught in a forced choice, in a particular economic horror. We are not. In effect, we are then like Baldwin, thinking of these men as, sure, nice guys, but really failures. Conversely, we see the salesmen condition as our own; like them, we are trapped—but, it isn’t our fault. Like them, we could succeed if we only had that extra, the right stuff, or, in the film’s specific version of the object-cause of desire, if we had the right leads. So, the salesmen are just inert objects, instruments of Mitch and Murray’s enrichment and Baldwins enjoyment; or they are victims, not really responsible. The enjoyment in the scene, then, arises out of this impossible, irresolvable situation. It stages the all or nothing oscillation of jouissance. And this impossibility transfixes us. 

We can compare this scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross to Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. In reporting on progress in the war on terror, Bush lists some of those “we have arrested or otherwise dealt with,” specifying some “key commanders of Al Qaida.” He continues, “All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.” I shuddered when I saw this speech. It has stuck with me, particularly because of Bush’s repulsive smirk. For me, it was not simply a matter of what I took to be Bush’s clear allusion to torture. Rather, it was the fact that he enjoyed it. His clear enjoyment in torture and death made the speech compelling and unbearable, horrifying and unavoidable. Does it make sense to consider this speech in terms of displaced enjoyment? It’s too easy to say that I, or other viewers for that matter, transferred a desire for revenge onto the President, wanting him to act in our stead, to do what we want to do but can’t because we lack the power. At issue here is enjoyment, not desire. More fundamental is the way that, as in the Baldwin scene, what we repeat, what transfixes us, is our own disavowed passivity. Bush’s speech enables me to be self-righteously horrified, to write letters to the editor, talk with friends and colleagues, send money to Move On, all while denying the way that I am nonetheless trapped, unable actually to change a thing. I can imagine Republicans all thrilled by the speech, but it is very difficult for me to imagine Democrats and progressives voicing outrage. So, I can talk about it, even as my true, passive position is caught in enjoyment, that is, is trapped by “oh, this is so horrible, but its out of my hands, not my responsibility.”

 

Comments

[Mark Kaplan]

That actually makes a great post, Jodi. Presumably, in the cited cases of Baldwin and Bush, there's a link to your stuff on cruelty? The 'strangely compelling' nature of sadistic enjoyment put me in mind of our relation to Iago in the play Othello. Our real investment in the play is in fact through and with him, although 'officially' of course it's elsewhere.

[Jodi]

Mark, thanks so much. I haven't integrated any of the cruelty material into the paper, although, the thinking is similar. I hadn't thought to look at it again in the context of this paper--now I will. The Iago example is terrific.