Political Jouissance

Slavoj Žižek, Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350352773
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

When we oppose or disagree with something important, do we ever really do it dispassionately? Isn't setting the world to rights or condemning a political opponent always done with a hint of relish, or at least enthusiasm? This book's challenging essays explore the modes in which that transgressive pleasure of political 'jouissance' operates.

Rather than delegitimizing or depoliticising, the tacit enjoyment of outrage can in fact facilitate different forms of engagement. The tendency for groups to be bonded by a common enemy, for example, brings with it a protection from censure or persecution, and a way of alleviating guilt. In this collection, the authors seek out jouissance in the battle against patriarchy, in social revolts, in the age of mechanical surveillance, in the necrosociety of neoliberalism, or the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Drawing on Lacan's insistence that jouissance is intrinsically political by its nature, we can understand how readily psychoanalytic ideas can be put to use across the geopolitical spectrum.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface: ‘Political Jouissance’ Darian Leader
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• Part I JouissanceThe political crisis in neoliberalism
• 1 On the material existence of ideology
• 2 Neoliberalism, liber-fascism and cyber-liberalism: Modalities of enjoying symptoms in current capitalism
• 3 Mistrust and political jouissance: From a ‘tickle’ to the ‘blaze of petrol’
• 4 Neoliberalism’s political jouissance and the environmental crisis in Latin America
• 5 Hyper-royalism: A Thai modality of political jouissance
• 6 The joy circuit
• 7 Uncanny politics
• 8 Necro-society and jouissance: The acrobat, Lilith, and the Romantic machine
• 9 Jean-Luc Nancy: A philosophy for a transformative sexistence
• Part II Inside and outside the psychoanalytic view of politics
• 10 Daydream and emancipation: Against surplus-enjoyment, repression and their parallax of lack and excess
• 11 Perverted erotics in the political unconscious: Lacan and Bataille
• 12 In the absence of politics: A matter of life and death drive
• 13 Synchronic interactions among discourse, knowledge (saber) and jouissance. Politibiology and/or biopolitics
• 14 The jouissance of capital: Notes for a Lacanian critique of political economy
• 15 Aggression and the future
• 16 AOC and her boyfriend’s leg
• 17 Jouissance the Levinas way
• Index
• Copyright