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Jouissance Studies

A collection of 32 issues

Anne Carson on why we should read classics today

Here is an excerpt From Anne Carson/Antiquity, a collection edited by Laura Jansen. This is Carson being quoted from an interview she gave, where she responds to the idea that teaching classics is relevant because it can teach us to recover something we need today. I don’t feel

Pro wrestling & jouissance

From an article on Wrestling Inc. on the work that Al Snow is doing at OVW: I'm also doing something here that no one's teaching anymore. I'm teaching the art of how to work a professional wrestling match — not wrestle a professional wrestling match

Compasses, then & now

On the back of Desire and Its Interpretations: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VI Jacques-Alain Miller writes: Up until recently, all of our compasses, no matter how varied, pointed in the same direction: toward the Father [the Law]. We considered the patriarch to be an anthropological invariant. His decline

QTS-012 | Minimalism & desire

In her post titled Don't make simplicity complicated, Clare Devlin writes: Anything taken to the extreme can be complicated. And simplicity is no exception. Minimalism is, I think, about not being tormented by the insatiability of desire. However, the desire to become more minimal can become as distracting

The fantasy of an evil Other

Writing in The Atlantic, David Brooks focuses on a turn in how people “self-identified” and calls our attention to the following: Sometime around 1970, the American personality changed. In prior decades, people tended to define themselves according to the social roles they played: I’m a farmer, teacher, housewife, priest.

Debt Ceiling

Ezra Klein writes (behind NYTimes paywall): Defenders of the debt ceiling will tell you that the limit has been around a long time and has largely operated to the good. America has never defaulted on its debts, but the debt ceiling has often motivated compromise between the two parties. That

Hysteria plus cruelty

David French in his most recent NYTimes column (article is behind the paywall): Hysteria plus cruelty is a recipe for violence. Well said. Reading this made me think of the concept of ordinary psychosis. I rephrased the sentence to read, ”Delusion plus certainty and cruelty is a recipe for violence.

The end of the analysis is beyond the pleasure principle

Another significant bit from the 1986 article Lacan and the Ethics by John Rajchman, where he makes a very astute observation about the "end of analysis" (i.e., the analytic cure in so far as such a thing exists). The aim or "end" of analysis is

Existing as an Individual & a Member of a Society

From Using Lacan, Reading Fiction, by James M. Mellard. Various theorists have embraced Lacan because his reading of Freud has placed particular emphasis on several elements that constitute us as individuals and social beings. This stands out to me because it references what I'd call the non-rapport (i.

More on Energetic Pessimism

Yesterday, I wrote about the concept of [https://www.surplusjouissance.com/energetic-pessimist/]energetic pessimism [https://www.surplusjouissance.com/energetic-pessimist/]. Today I want to keep exploring this idea. To do this, I want to look at the author's description of her energetic pessimism. (This is different than the author&