enjoyment? feminism? together?
Jouissance and Feminist Discourse:
Should ‘enjoymeant’ be a part of feminist politics?
What are ‘feminist’ politics?
For bell hooks, feminist politics should problematize sexist actions and ideology and aim to eliminate such actions and ideological patterns (hooks 1). hooks also discusses the problematic ways in which the media and patriarchal system portray feminism. Feminists are often characterized as man-hating-lesbians. hooks argues that feminism needs rearticulation and should be understood as an issue of gender justice. For hooks then, feminist politics cannot turn it’s back of other kinds of oppression that affect women, including but not limited to racist oppression, heterosexist oppression and xenophobic oppression. International crisis likes AIDS, which many designate as a human rights issue should also enter in the prevue of feminist discourse, because these types of issues affect women and their families.
In order for a politics based on feminism and created by feminists to succeed, one must accept the construction of feminist / feminism and the Others that these terms create. Feminism has been framed so as often to exclude minorities of many sorts, and often to exclude not only men, but also problems men face in a sexist society. Feminist politics often “otherize” men, but do so for a set of historically important reasons. Women have historically been figured to be basically different from men. While I do not suppose that men and women are exactly the same, the differences that women have from men are culturally figured to be psychological and biological weaknesses. This view essentially proclaims that women are not as good as men, because they are not men.
Why psychoanalysis and feminism?
Much of psychoanalysis revolves around sex, gender and sexuality. Feminists have found problematic the psychoanalytic tendency to “otherize” women by creating a phallocentric model of human and especially child development. Feminists have long worked to use the psychoanalytic concept of desire traditionally used to explain women’s sexuality as basically different from that of men, to refigure and rearticulate the psychoanalytic development of women. The psychoanalytic concept of jouissance, that comes from Jacques Lacan’s the theory of sexuality, has been discussed in this vain. Jane Gallop writes in reference to Lacan’s notion of jouissance that “The foundation of a knowledge…is that the jouissance of exercising it is the same as that of acquiring it” (50). Should feminist discourse, as something that is radical in the sense that it challenges existing norms, be about the joy of exercising creative thought on the subject of women that leads to victimization and describes the ultimate act of not fully becoming? Much of feminism has been and exercise of jouissance, at least for white women.
For hooks feminism is often portrayed as wealthy white women’s desire to be equal to men. Historically, feminism can be understood as a white women’s issue – certainly when it comes to issues like women’s suffrage. Women’s Suffrage was certainly about white women and only allowed white women to vote. It is difficult to frame this discussion without considering jouissance. Part of the movement for women’s suffrage was creating a logic that allowed white women to be understood as people with political rights, that somehow figured white women as lacking some sort of access to the pleasure of citizenship. hooks notes that white men must have felt better about white women receiving rights than people of color. The logic of whiteness and it’s vast array of privileges seems then, to be a form of ‘enjoymeant,’ one in which one can enjoy being white and use the logic of whiteness in order to continue to enjoy certain privileges in order to eliminate the feeling of lacking (la manqué) Lacan speaks to. Women may live beyond the phallus and practice feminine jouissance, but feminism often seems to seek the power associated with masculine jouissance.
White feminists can focus on equality to men, and rely on the logic of whiteness, while heterosexual women can work for equality between women and men, while relying on the logic of heterosexuality and those who work for equality and identify with a gender in the binary gender paradigm can call for equality relying on the logic and social construction of binary gender which Butler criticizes as a false construction. Is there a certain amount of jouissance in narrowing the struggle to demand retribution for a certain type of lack, while not addressing the lack that is important to the lives of others?
Psychoanalysis has a key role in the configuration of binary gender constructions and the politics that surround these constructions and identities. The particular Lacanian relationship between the phallus and phallocentric jouissance is important for feminists to consider. Gallop explains that
the phallus symbolizing unmediated, full jouissance must be lacking for any subject to enter the symbolic order, that is to enter language, effective intersubjectivity. Human desire, according to Lacanian doctrine, is always mediated by signification. That is our human lot of castration. The ultimate Lacanian goal is for the subject to assume his / her castration. (Gallup 96)
For Lacan, desire constitutes the subject. Because human desire is always mediated by discourse, it is impossible for desire to actually be articulated. All humans are castrated in the sense that they are unable to fully articulate their desires. Still, this explanation is full of phallocentric logic, that a penis is something one seeks, that the lack of a phallus constitutes a quid pro quo problem. The political question here is not “what is the phallus, but why the phallus? Gallop writes:
“The question of whether one can separate ‘phallus’ from ‘penis’ rejoins the question of whether one can separate psychoanalysis from politics. The penis is what men have and women do not; the phallus is the attribute of power which neither men nor women have. But as long as the attribute of power is a phallus which refers to and can be confused (in the imaginary register?) with a penis, this confusion will support a structure in which it seems reasonable that men have power and women do not. And as long as psychoanalysts maintain the separability of ‘phallus’ from ‘penis’, they can hold on to their ‘phallus’ in the belief that their discourse has no relation to sexual inequality, no relation to politics” (Gallup 97).
All of the Lacanian discussion on discourse and jouissance is political. All discourse, as Michel Foucault tells us is affected by social power (Foucault). The discourse that refuses to tie the phallus to the penis is confused about why feminism matters. Feminism matters not because men have power, but because power is a “male thing.” The only way to understand power is through a male reality, through a male hierarchy and a male dominated world. Additionally, because most forms of discourses on gender equality reinforce rather than question the societal construction of gender and even of sex, they are not oriented towards social transformation.
Is Feminism Relevant?
For Judith Butler, “feminism is about social transformation of gender relations” (204). For Butler, transformative social action supposes a theoretical approach. Butler argues the import of theory and of feminist and queer theory. Both, in Butler’s estimation are transformative in that they question norms and project an ideal philosophy. Butler raises questions important to a feminist philosophy: “what would be the good life for women?…To what extent does gender, coherent gender, secure a life as livable?” (Butler 106).
Butler recognizes that these questions challenge feminism. How can one speak of gender equality or of gender justice without accepting gender as a construction. For Butler, gender is constantly, unconsciously performed. Butler would seek to liberate humans from the constraints of a performed gender. For Butler, true jouissance would only be available after liberation from discourse and the subjectivity it carries along with it.
For Butler we need to expand what it means to be a human, so that all human beings are not forced to become women or men. Butler believes that humans fabricate identities based on the false notion of interiority. Much like Foucault, Butler seeks to liberate human sexuality and avoid the creation of others but essentializing desire into an identity (Butler).
Can feminism continue to be relevant in the face of challenges made to the construction of gender? So long as feminism continues to be relevant to systemic oppression, I believe it will continue to be a relevant political position, but one that will continually need to be rearticulated. Feminist politics and feminist discourse should be focused around liberty and justice. However the trouble with specific political measures remains. Is the ERA, for example even a worthwhile piece of legislation? Is there anything to be lost by distinguishing women and men? Do women need protection under the law, should they be a protected legal class? All these questions touch on the concept of sexual difference. Are women and men really different? Is “female” a legitimate construction?” Feminists are charged with answering these questions because no one else wants to recognize their social importance. Feminists are responsible for examining the quality of life that women lead. That is to say that congressional representation and equal funding for women’s athletics does not address the real economic problems that women and particularly women of color face all around the nation and the world. Can jouissance exist in this context without the ‘enjoymeant’ coming at the Others expense? Can jouissance occur within a set of multiple feminisms that free feminism from this discourse of man hating? Yes.
Jouissance must continue to be a part of the articulation of feminist politics, but must free itself from discursive constraints. Feminism should instead be feminisms. Much of feminism is about the constructing what a woman is and what a woman might and should be, what women as a class lack, and what should be done to absorb the desire to lose the lack. Instead feminism should be a practice of all the things women can do, and all the ways in which they can be.
As hooks notes, feminism itself creates others, usually men. Feminism needs to speak to identity politics and challenge the idea of a stable self and a stable identity marker. In other words, feminism should be about empowering women, men and families to find their own jouissance, their own “unarticulatable” pleasure.
Feminism faces additional challenges brought on by globalization, global sexuality and sexual jouissance and the political ramifications these realities highlight. Globalization, more often than not, happens from west to east. That is to say, that those who conclude that globalization is in essence westernization are not entirely wrong. Edward Said explains that western values are not universal, even those ideals included in the United Nations Universal Human Rights Charter (Said). Feminists face the challenge of articulating feminisms that are culturally relevant. The politics of a white U.S. American woman empowering a woman from a township South Africa are enormously complicated. Ideally the woman from the South African township would have the privileges to create her own variety of feminism, but the fact that those privileges are not often there is a problem that feminisms need to carefully address.
Often sexuality is understood as a unitary reality that reflects something about the self. Foucault argues that we are obsessed with sexuality and use sexual desire to create a self by reflecting on our own desires (Foucault). Sexuality and the identities that stem from sexual practices vary enormously by culture. It seems strange that our understanding of sex and its political implications are similar across cultures. Sexual acts and sexuality should not be the center of a creation of a false self. Sexuality is often a reflection of power. Some sexualities dominate others, some are labeled as deviant and some are even labeled as criminal. Heterosexuality becomes normalized and other sexual acts become problematized. Women’s sexuality is further tied up with questions of reproduction. Should women and men, but not necessarily women with men enjoy sex? Is pleasure a valid political concern and should pleasure be part of the discursive reality of feminism? Are women sexually exploited or sexually liberated? Does women’s sexuality matter? Is it even a valid construction? Can sexual jouissance be understood as a female practice? These questions do not have just one answer, assuming they have answers at all. Feminism faces the challenge of being open to many answers and many more questions.
In a globalized world feminism faces the challenge of becoming multiple, and also faces concrete political challenges. Feminists cannot be afraid of the ‘enjoymeant’ or jouissance of feminist logic, as long as it is not a cover for the exploitation of others of the constant victimization of women, by centering on women as subjects lacking something men have.
Feminists need to be inclusive and combat problematic ideas rather than communities. Feminism needs to include third world issues and to focus on empowering women rather than enlightening them. hook’s gender justice allied with the potential and continued examination of Butler’s idea on social transformation will continue to be relevant for feminisms that seek to make jouissance available to all. More concretely, women are consistently denied the right to enjoy their lives in the same ways in which men are. Women are entitled to a jouissance that requires a transformation that allows women and all people to enjoy themselves in such a powerful way that the logic is not able to be articulated, not fixed, and adaptable.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1976. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books.
Gallop, Jane. 1982. The Daughter’s Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
hooks, bell. 2000. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge: South End
Press.
Said, Edward. 1977. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
