City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2019 The Subject of Jouissance: The Late Lacan and Gender and Queer Theories Frederic C. Baitinger The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3243 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE SUBJECT OF JOUISSANCE: THE LATE LACAN AND GENDER AND QUEER THEORIES by FRÉDÉRIC BAITINGER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in the French Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2019 © 2019 FRÉDÉRIC BAITINGER !ii All Rights Reserved The Subject of Jouissance: The Late Lacan and Gender and Queer Theories by Frédéric Baitinger This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in the French Program in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 03 / 21 / 2019 Royal S. Brown ————————— ———————————————— Date Chair of Examining Committee 03 / 21 / 2019 Maxime Blanchard ————————— ———————————————— Date Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Royal S. Brown Francesca Canadé Sautman Raphaël Liogier !iii THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK ABSTRACT The Subject of Jouissance: The Late Lacan and Gender and Queer Theories by Frédéric Baitinger Adviser: Royal S. Brown The Subject of Jouissance argues that Lacan’s approach to psychoanalysis, far from being heteronormative, offers a notion of identity that deconstructs gender as a social norm, and opens onto a non-normative theory of the subject (of jouissance) that still remains to be fully explored by feminist, gender, and queer scholars. Drawing mostly on the later Lacan, The Subject of Jouissance shows that by locating the identity of the subject in the singularity of its bodily mode of enjoyment (that Lacan calls “jouissance”), and not in the Imaginary illusions of the ego, nor in the Symbolic social structures, Lacan fosters thinking about identity as an ethical act through which a subject learns how to make something socially valuable out of what would have !iv remained excessive, autistic or perverse in its own singular mode of jouissance. To contextualize this idea and emphasize its relevance, The Subject of Jouissance stages encounters between Lacan and the work of feminist and queer scholars such as Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous and Lee Edelman, as well as the works of French post-structuralists who influenced Lacan’s late teaching, such as Jacques Derrida and Georges Bataille. In doing so, this dissertation intervenes in current debates in American academia that oppose relational theorists, who support the optimism of identity politics, like the lgbt+ movement, and anti-relational theorists, who favor a “queer” dissolution of the very notion of identity. In The Subject of Jouissance I argue that it is possible to build an ethics of jouissance that preserves, on the one hand, the singularity of one’s own mode of jouissance and, on the other, keeps as a primary goal the creation of new forms of sociality that goes beyond the limits that impose onto our psychic life the discourse of economy and the discourse of (neuro)science. !v PREFACE My dissertation proposes re-opening a dialogue between psychoanalysis and gender and queer theories by taking as its compass the late and last teaching of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Opposing the idea hold by most gender and queer scholars according to which psychoanalysis is a technique aiming at correcting or normalizing a potentially “deviant subject,” my dissertation underscores that Lacan’s late and last approach to psychoanalysis puts at the very center of its preoccupation the singularity of each subject’s unconscious desire. However, differing from most gender and queer scholars who also emphasize the importance of singularity, Lacan’s late teaching does not use singularity as a point of departure for minority politics, nor as a weapon against any form of symbolic power. On the contrary, he suggests that it is possible for each subject to build a knowledge of its own singularity that that could help it, on the one hand, to contain what is potentially negative, deadly or anti-social in its singularity and, on the other hand, that would give to this subject the occasion to turn its singularity into a new source of agency and social bonding. To situate my argument I use in my introduction The Ethics of Opting Out (2017), a book by Mari Ruti in which she suggests that when it comes to the question of the singular, there exists at least two opposite groups of feminist, gender and queer scholars. There is the group of gender and queer scholars that she calls “relational,” who believe like the lgbtiq++ movement !vi that the singularity of each subject needs to be recognized at a political level through the development of minority/identity politics. And there is the group of queer scholars that she calls “anti-relational,” who think that identity politics betrays the very notion of singularity that is at the core of the queer protest. Likewise, Ruti suggests that the opposition between the two groups is also visible when it comes to the way in which these thinkers approach, understand and use psychoanalysis in general, and Lacanian psychoanalysis in particular. For most relational theorists, psychoanalysis is generally considered a conservative theory or, at best, an interesting theory about subjection. It is, for example, how Judith Butler in The Psychic Life of Power (1997) uses the work of Freud and Lacan to understand how subjectivity is created through the interiorization of a certain dominant discourse and how certain subjective singularities (such as the one of gays, lesbians or queers subjects) are bound to feel melancholic, or depressive given certain historical contexts. However, as soon as the question moves from the one of subjection to the one of subversion, most relational thinkers prefer using an ethical framework such as the one of Emmanuel Levinas, or a psychological framework such as the one of Silvan Tomkins, or a post-structuralism framework such as the one put forth by Jacques Derrida. Differing from the relational theorists, most anti-relational theorists do not focus on the normative aspect of psychoanalysis, but on what makes the very notion of norm problematic from a psychoanalytic point of view. For Lee Edelman, for example, in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, the notion of jouissance—and all the more the notion of the sinthome that !vii Lacan developed in his very last teaching on James Joyce—is, par excellence, a notion that enables a radical critique of the conformism entailed by the relational position. This is how Edelman opposes, in a gesture very similar to the one of Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share, a restricted economy oriented towards the future and the preservation of life, which he associates with a relational position, and a general economy oriented towards jouissance and expenditure, which he associates with a radically queer affirmation of one’s singularity. Consequently, one could argue that an “anti-relational” theorist like Edelman, contrary to a “relational theorists” like Butler, do not consider psychoanalysis, and even less Lacanian psychoanalysis, as a conservative theory but as a potentially very subversive one. However, the problem with this “anti-social” reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis is that it greatly undermines what is traumatic for any given subject in its experience of jouissance. To put it simply, it confuses the notion of jouissance with the notion of desire by raising the moment of jouissance, as well as the fading of the subject that it triggers, to the level of an affirmation of one’s own singularity, while under-evaluating the deep alienation that such moment of sensible ecstasy implies on the side of the subject that undergoes it. In other words, even if anti-relational theorists have tried to find in Lacanian psychoanalysis a subversive dimension, they did so by deeply undermining what is potentially deadly and abusive in one’s singular mode of jouissance. Instead of understanding how jouissance, unlike desire, partakes in the contemporary capitalist super-ego (which forces us to “enjoy”), or with all kinds of abuses or addictions, they celebrated it as what is the most singular in one’s identity, as well as what enables a deviant subject to transgress any given norms. !viii Taking as its standpoint this opposition between relational and anti-relational thinkers, my dissertation asks three fundamental questions. First, it questions if the group of relational thinkers is justified to say that psychoanalysis as the late and last Lacan defines it is a conservative theory, or if it could offer a non-normative theory of gender? Second, it asks if Lacanian psychoanalysis is really a neo-libertine theory that systematically values jouissance over castration, or if Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a way to take jouissance into account while not giving to it free rein. Finally, my dissertation examines wether the late and last Lacan can offer a theory of the subject that could potentially reconcile the anti-relational desire to take into account the singularity of one’s own mode of jouissance, and the relational need for political recognition, which always implies, in one way or another, a limitation on the free rein of jouissance. !ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have earned my deepest gratitude for their contribution towards the completion of my dissertation. I am extremely grateful to my adviser Royal S. Brown who first introduced me to the different interpretations of Lacan in English and helped me connect these readings to my love of French avant-garde Literature and French avant-garde cinema, while never imposing on my research any specific direction, except the one of my true desire: an interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis’ potential impact on gender and queer theory.