{"id":4119,"date":"2023-02-09T19:05:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T18:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pipol11.pipolcongres.eu\/2023\/02\/09\/la-voie-du-plus-de-jouir-fabian-fajnwaks\/"},"modified":"2023-02-26T12:20:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-26T11:20:18","slug":"the-way-of-surplus-jouissance-fabian-fajnwaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pipol11.pipolcongres.eu\/en\/2023\/02\/09\/the-way-of-surplus-jouissance-fabian-fajnwaks\/","title":{"rendered":"The way of surplus jouissance \u2013 Fabian Fajnwaks<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking an interest in the maladies of the father implies approaching him from the side of his relationship to surplus jouissance [plus-de jouir<\/em>], as Lacan defines it in his last teaching. The exception that the father is bound to embody is not only supported on the side of his symbolic status of saying no to jouissance, as the Name-of-the-Father already articulated, but also by his p\u00e8re-version<\/em> and his symptoms. Let\u2019s first appreciate the subversive tour de force that Lacan gave this function, which he was the first to introduce to psychoanalysis, by proposing a formalization of the Oedipus father. For the first time in the history of psychoanalysis, the father is defined in terms of his relationship to surplus jouissance, which was unprecedented. This brings Lacan to state that\u00a0: \u00ab\u00a0It matters little that he has symptoms provided he adds to them that of paternal perversion [p\u00e8re-version<\/em>], meaning that its cause should be a woman\u00a0\u00bb[1]<\/a>. This approach to the father, from the side of the symptoms of his function, would itself be enough to eliminate any suspicion that Lacanian psychoanalysis contributes to the persistence of the patriarchal order and contributes to its legitimation, as Paul B. Preciado[2]<\/a> or Didier Eribon[3]<\/a> \u2013\u00a0to only mention the most well-known authors\u00a0\u2013 claim. On many occasions Jacques-Alain Miller has argued, the revolution on the paternal function demanded by queer<\/em> authors when revising texts of the 70s \u2013\u00a0Deleuze and Guattari, and the attempts of the Freudo-Marxists\u00a0\u2013 it was Jacques Lacan himself who put it in motion\u00a0! In pointing out that\u00a0: \u00ab\u00a0There is nothing worse than a father who proffers the law on everything. Above all, spare us any father educators, rather let them be in retreat on any position as master\u00a0\u00bb[4]<\/a>. Lacan not only shows the structural impossibility for anyone (since, today, it is legally and socially accepted this function is available to all) to be up to the task, but also shows this father would get \u00ab\u00a0a right to respect, if not love, if the said love, the said respect, is \u2013\u00a0you won’t believe your ears\u00a0\u2013 perversely (p<\/em>\u00e8<\/em>re-versement<\/em>) orientated\u00a0\u00bb[5]<\/a>. That is, if he is oriented by what makes surplus jouissance for him.<\/p>\n

In this perspective Lacan was way ahead of societal shifts when he located the paternal exception on the side of the one who wows [\u00e9pate<\/em>] his family, instead of the side of the pater familias<\/em>\u00a0: \u00ab\u00a0People have wondered a great deal about the function of the pater<\/em> familias<\/em>. What we may require of the function of the father needs to be better focused. How people indulge in these stories of paternal shortcoming\u00a0! It\u2019s a fact that there is a crisis. This is not completely false. L\u2019\u00e9-pater ne nous \u00e9pate plus. <\/em>His wowing us is a thing of the past. This is the only genuinely decisive function of the father\u00a0\u00bb[6]<\/a>. \u00a0To wow [\u00e9-pater<\/em> in French]\u2013\u00a0as explained by \u00c9ric Laurent\u00a0\u2013 is both to produce a kind of admiration, to make an impression, but moreover, in playing with the Latin wording pater<\/em>, it is to take a step aside from the ideal of the pater familias<\/em>. It\u2019s an operation aiming at a particular effect, which is to distance oneself from the belief that a father can be \u201cfor all\u201d. \u00a0\u00bb[7]<\/a> At this level the real<\/em> of the paternal function can be measured by grasping his surplus jouissance.<\/em> Lacan stressed this in his lecture at Columbia University when he noted, also for the first time, that\u00a0: \u00ab\u00a0The father is a function that refers to the real, and this is not necessarily the truth of the real. This doesn\u2019t prevent the real of the father being absolutely fundamental in analysis. The father\u2019s mode of existence stems from this real. It\u2019s the only case where the real is stronger than the true\u00a0\u00bb[8]<\/a>. This real <\/em>of the father is to be located on the side of his p\u00e8re-version<\/em>, insofar as it indicates to each member of the family that it is on the side of a jouissance limited to the surplus jouissance [plus-de jouir<\/em>] that one must find one\u2019s way, beyond one\u2019s own symptoms.<\/p>\n

One of the symptoms of our civilisation is the difficulty of maintaining the place of the paternal exception which allowed the universal to be founded, according to the formulae of sexuation from the Seminar Encore<\/em>[9]<\/a>.<\/em> The universal no longer holds; and the world of the Law has been replaced by the more blurred world of norms<\/em>. Each person is free to embody an exception, according to the feminine logic, by articulating a mode of jouir<\/em>, a singular lifestyle\u00a0: the problem with this perspective is that it combines so well with the injunction of jouissance that characterises our era, without leaving any gap, any remainder whatsoever, for desire. The success of books extolling the deconstructed man<\/em> or the way the patriarchal order sabotages heterosexual relationships<\/em> can be read in this light. The point here is not to advocate a return to the old order where we knew what men were, in the manner of the masculinist or Incel <\/em>movements, but to return each speaking being<\/em> to identifying his singular mode of jouissance and making use of it. Regarding fathers, it is a question of being able to embody the model of the function. \u00c9ric Laurent explains how a father manages to be a model of the function\u00a0: \u00ab\u00a0To be a father is to be one of the models, one of the variables (a,\u00a0b,\u00a0c,\u00a0d<\/em>) of the function P(x<\/em>). So, to say ‘the father as agent of castration can only be the model of the function’ is to say that the approach Lacan chooses to the question of the father is that of the one by one<\/em> of those who have become father.\u00a0\u00bb[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the father\u2019s maladies we can situate at one end of the spectrum the \u00ab\u00a0educating father\u00a0\u00bb, the one who can\u2019t be, at the risk of becoming President Schreber\u2019s father. At the opposite end of the spectrum we can situate the toxic father, the one who makes of his children an object of jouissance. The incest problem, so present in contemporary families according to all human sciences\u2019studies, has also been present in literature\u2019s developments over the last decades. Something is new compared to the classical tragedies where incest was also in the foreground\u00a0: it is autofictional testimonies which make it possible to treat the real of the irruption that the trauma produces in the life of the subject. It is sometimes enough for a father to let slip a remark about his young daughter’s body \u2013\u00a0a remark that can be heard by a third person and relayed to the subject\u00a0\u2013 for this remark [dit<\/em>] to take on the value of a trauma.<\/p>\n

We also have the \u00ab\u00a0playmate\u00a0\u00bb father mentioned by \u00c9ric Laurent, in the style of Little Hans\u2019 father, a pioneer-symptom of the beginning of the XXth<\/sup> century, era of the assumed patriarchal order. The permissive<\/em> father, serial in his nature, who is a companion in the consumption of various products and who, by his position, admits his powerlessness to limit jouissance. The effects of this resignation are persistently felt by children through various symptoms. We can also add the father\u2019s resignation when he is so absorbed by the jouissance of his own symptoms that he\u2019s no longer able to show the way for \u00ab\u00a0helping his family\u2019s members to say no to the mortifying aspect of jouissance and to say something about a jouissance that might be bearable\u00a0\u00bb[11]<\/a>. And our epoch, with its countless gadgets, does not fail to offer objects allowing a surplus jouissance <\/em>that can distract a father from \u00ab\u00a0saying no to jouissance\u00a0\u00bb. Under that perspective the p\u00e8re-version<\/em> seems almost like a challenge, not only for being a brake to the contemporary push to jouissance [pousse-au-jouir<\/em>] but also as its true subversion.<\/p>\n

Translation\u00a0: C\u00e9dric Grolleau
\nProofreading\u00a0: Robyn Adler<\/p>\n

Picture: \u00a9Emilie Divet<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Lacan J., Seminar\u00a0XXII, \u00ab\u00a0RSI\u00a0\u00bb, 21 January 1975, transl. by J. Rose in J. Mitchell and J. Rose (eds.), Feminine Sexuality<\/em>, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1982, p.\u00a0167.
\n[2]<\/a> Preciado P. B., Je suis un monstre qui vous<\/em> parle [I\u2019m a monster talking to you], Paris, Grasset, 2020. Not translated.
\n[3]<\/a> Eribon D., H\u00e9r\u00e9sies: essais sur la th\u00e9orie de la sexualit\u00e9 <\/em>[Heresies: Essays on the Theory of Sexuality], Paris, Fayard, 2003. Not translated.
\n[4]<\/a> Lacan J., Seminar\u00a0XXII, \u00ab\u00a0RSI\u00a0\u00bb, op.cit<\/em>., p.\u00a0167.
\n[5]<\/a> Ibid.
\n<\/em>[6]<\/a> Lacan J., The <\/em>Seminar<\/em>, book\u00a0XIX, \u2026Or worse<\/em>, trans. Adrian Price, Polity, 2018, p.\u00a0184.
\n[7]<\/a> Laurent \u00c9., \u00ab\u00a0Parentalit\u00e9s apr\u00e8s le patriarcat\u00a0\u00bb. Available in French language at https:\/\/institut-enfant.fr\/zappeur-jie7\/parentalites-apres-le-patriarcat\/<\/a> Not translated.
\n[8]<\/a> Lacan J., \u00ab\u00a0Columbia University Lecture on the Symptom\u00a0\u00bb, The Lacanian Review<\/em> 12, trans. Russell Grigg, p.\u00a078.
\n[9]<\/a> Lacan J., The Seminar<\/em>, book\u00a0XX, Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge<\/em>, edited by J.-A. Miller, trans. Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998.
\n[10]<\/a> Laurent \u00c9., \u00ab\u00a0Parentalit\u00e9s apr\u00e8s le patriarcat\u00a0\u00bb, op. cit<\/em>.
\n[11]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking an interest in the maladies of the father implies approaching him from the side of his relationship to surplus jouissance [plus-de jouir], as Lacan defines it in his last teaching. The exception that the father is bound to embody is not only supported on the side of his symbolic status of saying no to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pipol11.pipolcongres.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Fajnwaks-divet-750.jpg","yoast_head":"\nThe way of surplus jouissance \u2013 Fabian Fajnwaks - Pipol11<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pipol11.pipolcongres.eu\/en\/2023\/02\/09\/the-way-of-surplus-jouissance-fabian-fajnwaks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The way of surplus jouissance \u2013 Fabian Fajnwaks - Pipol11\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Taking an interest in the maladies of the father implies approaching him from the side of his relationship to surplus jouissance [plus-de jouir], as Lacan defines it in his last teaching. 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