Can One Speak of a Perverse Social Bond?

Can One Speak of a Perverse Social Bond? Christian Hoffmann To cite this version: Christian Hoffmann. Can One Speak of a Perverse Social Bond?. Recherches en psychanalyse, Université Paris 7- Denis Diderot, 2014, Varia 2014, 1 (17), pp.4-7. <10.3917/rep.017.0004>. <hal- 01511919> HAL Id: hal-01511919 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01511919 Submitted on 25 Aug 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

12 2011 Miscellanea 2014 Varia 2014 Can One Speak of a Perverse Social Bond? Peut-on parler d un lien social pervers? Christian Hoffmann Abstract: The Lacanian definition of perversion as a saturation of the lack in the Other by means of the drive object is incompatible with the neo-liberal philosophy of the social bond and its definition of an autonomous subject who recognizes the Other as a locus of otherness in a social bond woven by the commodification of the body and its forms of jouissance. Résumé: La définition lacanienne de la perversion comme saturation du manque dans l Autre par l objet pulsionnel est incompatible avec la philosophie néolibérale du lien social et sa définition d un sujet autonome qui ne reconnaît pas l Autre comme lieu d une altérité dans un lien social tissé par la marchandisation du corps et des jouissances. Keywords: perversions, Lacan, neo-liberal philosophy Mots-clefs: perversions, Lacan, philosophie néolibérale Plan: 1- The Lacanian structure of perversion. 2- The perverse discourse 3- Neo-Liberalism 4- Can one speak of a perverse social bond of a perverse discourse in a neo-liberal society? 1. The Lacanian Structure of Perversion In his Seminar of 13 May 1964, on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan makes the remark that it is the fantasy that sustains desire. 1 It is not the object that sustains desire. This allows us to understand the desiring condition of the subject. Dreaming of perversion allows the neurotic to sustain his desire; it does not make him a pervert. Lacan says precisely that perversion becomes the neurotic much like gaiters do a rabbit. 2 The perverse structure, as Lacan says in this lesson of the Seminar, is an inverted effect of the fantasy, namely, the subject [ ] determines himself as object, in his encounter with the division of subjectivity. 3 Clinically speaking, this means that in this subjective encounter with the Other, the subject does not divide himself. On the contrary: he turns himself into the object for the jouissance of the Other, without knowing what he is doing. The sado masochistic drive is constituted when the subject makes himself the object of 4

another will 4, the will of the Other, to the benefit of his jouissance. The article Kant with Sade 5 illustrates this identification with the object that is disavowed by the subject 6. In his Seminar of the academic year 1968 1969, D un Autre à l autre, Lacan devotes the entire session of the 26 th of March 1969 to the Clinique de la perversion [ The Clinic of Perversion ]. 7 Lacan begins by defining the incompleteness of the Other by the evacuation of jouissance from this locus 8 due to the fact that the maternal Other, as the first Other of the child, is submitted to the law of the prohibition of incest, a prohibition that de-completes the maternal love of the erotic. It is this lack in the Other that defines Lacan s object a. The interplay of the drive between the object a and the lack of the Other gives us the coordinates for the Lacanian structure of the perversions. Lacan does not hold onto the disdain for the other party as a defining characteristic of perversion. 9 His cardinal point is that, the pervert is the one who devotes himself to plugging up the hole in the Other. 10 Thus, the Other exists for the pervert, who becomes an ardent defender of the faith. 11 The exhibitionist seeks to make the gaze appear in [ ] the Other 12, beyond the limit imposed on jouissance by [ ] the pleasure principle. 13 The result is the production of jouissance beyond this limit of repression in the Other. The voyeur forces the gaze beyond the visible, onto that which cannot be seen. 14 Lacan reminds us that, it is not for nothing that [in French] a slit, une fente, is known as un regard. 15 The voyeur interrogates the lack in the Other and supplements it with the gaze. Contrary to the neurotic who is defined by the watchword: Keep moving, there is nothing to see here, the pervert forces the gaze beyond the limit of repression, by giving a consistency of the object to the Other though the supplementation of his lack. We are now able to understand that the pervert believes in the Other, to the point of making himself the auxiliary of God. 16 One has only to read Bataille. The masochist makes the voice of the Other emerge, to which he will respond with fidelity, like a dog. 17 We understand that the function of the superego with its booming voice and its imperative of jouissance is the mainspring of this perversion. In short, the masochist gives voice to the Other by completing the Other with this object. 18 We may note that the booming voice of the superego comes from the Other by way of its imperatives of jouissance in the stead of the foreclosed symbolic path. This is something we shall be clarifying on the basis of Michel Foucault s reading of Sade. The sadist too, in his own way, seeks to complete the Other by taking away his speech in order to impose his voice. 19 Lacan indicates the failure of sadism in this operation of annulling the symbolic in reference to Sade, who comments on the slightest act by including it as an extra in an order. This is something we also find in Foucault. Lacan concludes his clinic of perversion by concluding as to the structure of the drives as determined by a topological hole. 20 Literature is a purveyor of perversions and with M. Foucault we shall be seeing the relationship between the letter and perversion we just have to open together the biography of Alain Robbe-Grillet, written by his wife Catherine (the book bears the simple title of his first name, Alain 21 ). She says of her husband, who drew up a contract at the start of their relationship, that: his fantasmatic life (that of Alain) revolved obsessively around a sadistic domination of (very) young women, for want of young girls. It is not without interest to indicate that Lacan discouraged him from doing an analysis as though he stood to lose everything there (commentary by Catherine Robbe- Grillet). The contract of conjugal prostitution starts as follows: The present contract between the undersigned parties has been drafted in order to define special rights which may be exercised by the husband upon his young 5

wife, during sessions of a particular nature to be compensated in cash during which the young woman will be subjected to ill treatment, humiliation and torture, beyond the extent of customary practice, the limits of which have come to be mutually understood during the course of the first year of marriage. 22 The contract stipulates that: His wife shall present herself [ ], expecting to be put at her husband s disposition [ ], in order to satisfy his vices [ ] and never in the intention of making her feel any enjoyment. In a word, this is a relation of slavery that submits the other party to an object without speech. The only thing that is tolerated is the imploration to the master kindly to temper his imperatives. Alain was a failing master who, in spite of his impotence, remained the master of and in our conjugal rituals. 2. The Perverse Discourse In a lecture on Sade in 1970, which was published in La grande étrangère 23, M. Foucault posits the existence of a perverse discourse. Through an examination of the alternation in Sade between discourse and the erotic scenes, he defines discourse as the motor of a limitless desire whose jouissance facilitates the passage à l acte that corresponds to the Sadean imperative: commettez ensuite. M. Foucault recognizes four kinds of this discourse: the discourse of the unconscious, the schizophrenic discourse, the ideological, philosophical or religious discourse, and the libertine or perverse discourse. The pervert denies everything that is affirmed by philosophical discourse. For M. Foucault, the philosophical discourse essentially plays a castrating role. In the Western world, since Plato, this discourse would ground the identity of the subject upon a renunciation of a part of himself, namely: the world, the body, time, and desire. The discourse of Sade comes in opposition to philosophy with a function of decastration. It is not about going beyond castration, rather it is a matter of denying, of disavowing and of refusing castration itself, through an interplay of negations of God, of the soul, of law, and of nature. God does not exist. Consequently, nature does not exist, law does not exist, the soul does not exist, and as a result everything is possible and nothing is refused in the order of prescription [ ], therefore I desire. In a word, the subject would no longer have to make the sacrifice of a part of his narcissism in order to desire without limits. In 1976, M. Foucault gave an interview that bears the title Sade, sergent du sexe. 24 There, Foucault makes the remark that in Sade, the body is still forcefully organic. It is the organ that forms the object of the sadism: You have an eye that looks, I shall tear it from you. On the other hand, the cinema of those years was starting to dismantle this organicity, which turns Sade into a sergent of sex who formulated the specific eroticism of a disciplinary society. In short, sadism was anatomically wise. Our contemporary world is seeing file past a non disciplinary eroticism: that of the body. 3. Neo-Liberalism G. de Lagasnerie clearly develops the neo-liberal paradigm in his book La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault: Sur le néoliberalisme, la théorie et la politique. 25 The vision of neo-liberal society consists in instituting a veritable commodification of society. The only law would be the law of the market, and it would encompass the full range of aspects of life in society. Its action would consist in intervening in this society in order for the mechanisms of competition to be able to play the role of regulator between supply and demand at each level of society. Neo-liberal subjectivity defines a homo oeconomicus who never renounces his interest, who is selfish, and without transcendence. This subject stands in opposition to the homo juridicus, through the latter s refusal to give up his rights and hand them over to a sovereign 6

third party that would stand as the guarantor or social unity. He is thought through as a unified being, a coherent being, who is supposed to apply the economic calculation to anything and everything. The contract comes to replace social constraint. Foucault s critical gesture consists in displacing the major concept of the neo-liberalism of freedom towards plurality. 4. Can One Speak of a Perverse Social bond in a Neo-Liberal Society In order to broach this question, we need to look again at the neo-liberal paradigm with the Lacanian concepts of the divided subject, the object a, the Other, the master signifier, the superego, all of which would lead us into work that would be far too long to set out in just one lecture. On the other hand, I shall choose another angle, which is the one that M. Foucault touches on just barely in the interview whose title speaks volumes about the function of the superego in perversion. In Sade, sergent du sexe, he perceives the difference between the body in Sade [which] is still forcefully organic and the contemporary body, formulating a non disciplinary eroticism that dismantles this organicity. 26 Nelly Arcan has presented herself as a philosopher and as a prostitute. In her most recent book, Burqa de chair 27, she has described what one might call the commodification of the body: On the web, things are chilly. The web is a window onto dis-incarnation. When one can see one s own sexual organ open in front of one, and when one s sexual organ starts to speak, to seek information, to spread its products, to set its price and its availabilities, one has crossed a line. Beyond that, madness lies in wait, with its gaping mouth, so wide and deep that it makes you dizzy. It remains to be seen whether the contemporary dismantling of the organic body is compatible with the object a, with which Lacan develops the clinic of perversion. Bibliography: Arcan, N. (2011). Burqa de chair. Paris: Seuil. Foucault, M. (2001). Sade, sergent du sexe. Dits et écrits, T.1. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2013). Conférences sur Sade. La grande étrangère. Paris: EHESS. Lacan, J. (1993). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964). (Sheridan, A. Transl.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Lacan, J. (2006a). Kant with Sade. (1963). Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English. (Fink, B. Transl.). New York / London: Norton & Co. Lacan, J. (2006b). Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre XVI, D un Autre à l autre (1967-1968). Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (2014). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, Anxiety (1962 1963). (Price, A. R. Transl.) Cambridge, UK: Polity. Lagasnerie, G. (de) (2012). La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault: Sur le néolibéralisme, la théorie et la politique. Paris: Fayard. Robbe-Grillet, C. (2012). Alain. Paris: Fayard. Notes: 1 Lacan, J. (1977). The Partial Drive and its Cicuit, Lesson XIV of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis 1964 [1973], translated by A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press; reprinted by Penguin Books (Harmondsworth, 1993) with an introduction by D. Macey, p. 185. 2 Lacan, J. (2014). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, Anxiety, 1962 1963 [2004], translated by A. R. Price, Cambridge, UK: Polity, p. 50. 3 Lacan, J. (1977). The Partial Drive and its Cicuit, Lesson XIV of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Op. cit., p. 185. 4 Ibid., p. 185. 5 Lacan, J. (2006a). Kant with Sade [1963] in Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English, translated by B. Fink in collaboration with H. Fink and R. Grigg, Norton & Co., New York / London, p. 645-668, cited by Lacan himself, ibid., p. 185. 6 Lacan, J. (1977). The Partial Drive and its Cicuit, Lesson XIV of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Op. cit., p. 186. 7

7 Lacan, J. (2006b). Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre XVI, D un Autre à l autre, 1967-1968, Paris: Seuil, p. 247-261. 8 Ibid., p. 252. 9 Ibid., p. 253. 10 Ibid., p. 253. 11 Ibid., p. 253. 12 Ibid., p. 254. 13 Ibid., p. 254. 14 Ibid., p. 254. 15 Ibid., p. 255. 16 Ibid., p. 253. 17 Ibid., p. 257. 18 Ibid., p. 258. 19 Ibid., p. 258-259. 20 Ibid., p. 259. 21 Robbe Grillet, C. (2012). Alain. Paris: Fayard. 22 [Translation from the B. Charpentier version published in Vanity Fair, January 2014.] 23 Foucault, M. (2013). Conférences sur Sade, in La grande étrangère, EHESS. 24 Foucault, M. (2001). Sade, sergent du sexe, In Dits et écrits, Tome I, Paris: Gallimard. 25 Lagasnerie, G. (de) (2012). La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault: Sur le néolibéralisme, la théorie et la politique, Paris: Fayard. 26 In the domain of contemporary art, see the exhibition by the artist Bart Dorsa, Katya, at the Venice Biennale of 2013. 27 Arcan, N. (2011). Burqa de chair. Paris: Seuil. The author: Christian Hoffmann, PhD Psychoanalyst and Professor of clinical psychopathology at the University Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris Diderot. Researcher at the CRPMS. Université Paris VII Diderot. Campus Paris Rive Gauche Bâtiment Olympe de Gouges 11, rue Jean Antoine de Baïf 75013 Paris France Electronic reference: Christian Hoffmann, Can One Speak of a Perverse Social Bond?, Research of Psychoanalysis [Online], 17 2014 published June 20, 2014. This article is a translation of Peut-on parler d un lien social pervers? Full text Copyright All rights reserved 8