What kind of enjoyment are we talking about?

[Marilynn Lawrence]

I just finished going through the Lacan and Zizek 101 youtube lectures and I’m left with a question. I was going to ask in the FTKNWTD forum, but others here might have the same question or answers. When the superego has this imperative to Enjoy!, are we talking about jouissance, pleasure, or some combination of both? I’m trying to think of ways this differs in function from the Big Other, and coming up short in separating them. If the Big Other is setting out a certain lifestyle that one should participate in, isn’t there also inherited with that the things one is supposed to take pleasure in (pilates, certain fad foods, etc)?

Discussion

[Michael Downs]

Marilynn, for Lacanians/Žižekians, the superego’s “Enjoy!” commands us to have jouissance. Todd McGowan is helpful on understanding the difference between superego and big Other:

“This Law is embodied in the Name of the Father, the name that symbolizes, in Freud’s myth, the murdered primal Father. “The Name of the Father,” according to Lacan, “founds the fact that there is law [. . .] It is, in the interior of the Other, an essential signifier.” This name—or primordial signifier—indicates the absence of the unrestrained enjoyment of the primal Father, and it serves to bar anyone entering the symbolic order from enjoyment. On the basis of this evacuation of enjoyment, the symbolic order constitutes itself and thus demands that subjects seek recognition through the Law in lieu of enjoyment outside of it. The Law itself, however, is not entirely free from enjoyment. Enjoyment lives on in the Law in the form of the superego, which is, of course, the Law insofar as the subject has internalized it. Whereas the Law proper—as the Name of the Father—marks the absence or death of the primal father and his horrific enjoyment, the superego, the internal representative of the Law, is the remnant of this Father that continues to make its presence felt. Overflowing with the primal Father’s enjoyment, the superego, as the underside of the Law, makes evident the obscenity in the Law itself. The obscene superego represents the limit of the society of prohibition; it is the point at which enjoyment infects the prohibition itself. Thus, it should not be at all surprising that it is around the figure of the superego that we can witness the emergence of the society of enjoyment.”
(<i style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>The End of Dissatisfaction?: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment, p. 28)

[Marilynn Lawrence]

Thanks, Addam, for the assistance with this question. In one of the Zizek videos, Mikey talks about a distinction between the superego and the Big Other. It is the superego that is imploring us to Enjoy! I’m still not sure if this use the word enjoyment is about jouissance (which you described really well as having this excessive component by external standards) or a separate matter, since jouissance is typically being translated as enjoyment.

[Marilynn Lawrence]

My question about the superego was answered in the latest video installment of the Zizek series (part 18). It’s definitely jouissance.

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