1 Theorising Desire

Notes 1 Theorising Desire 1. This approach, of theorising what desire does rather than what it is, can also be linked to work by Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn, as will be discussed later in the chapter in terms of work on feminism and Deleuze. 2. For further reading, see: ‘Spinoza: Desire and Power’, The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 14 (2003); ‘Spinoza on the Politics of the Passions’, Wiep van Bunge, Cultural and Social History, 2005; 2: 99–111. 3. In Cahiers pour une morale (published posthumously in 1983), ‘Sartre describes at length what he calls “the universe of desire” (p. 364 et seq.); this is the “primitive” universe in which the interpenetration of human freedom and matter is not “lived” as the technical and productive phantasm of subordi- nating matter to human freedom but as fascination with the inherent powers of this interpenetration, that is, as a feeling of the sacred and the magical. Lack, which Sartre here calls “desire,” aims at fulfilment not through chang- ing the world but through incantatory passivity; the work required for the satisfaction of desire is considered to be nonessential and the objective and static world to be essential’ (Simont 1992, 186–187). 4. Of course these texts are not the only ones, and criticism of Freud is far from new—as will be explored later, Deleuze and Guattari mounted an attack against Freud in the 1970s as did Freud’s contemporaries. See Elizabeth Wilson’s (1998) ‘Post-Dated: A Review of Freud 2000, ed. by Anthony Elliott’. 5. Silverman goes on to clarify that she believes that the Oedipal complex allows for ‘permutations’ and ‘hybrids’ and adds that the main point of her contribu- tion was to demonstrate that the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are ‘themselves meaningless’ (2000, 169). 6. ‘Freud recollected a screen-memory (a trivial childhood memory that covers an important one) of his mother at the time of her confinement with his sister Anne (Freud was two and a half years old at this time) which he was to use later in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’ (Mitchell 2000 [1974], 61). 7. The concluding lines read: ‘It is dangerous to answer riddles, but some men are born to answer them. It is the gods’ doing. They hide themselves in riddles. We must not try to understand too much’ (Sophocles 1972, 80). 8. Freud writes in a footnote added in 1920: ‘Every new arrival on this planet is faced by the task of mastering the Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls a victim to neurosis. With the progress of psycho-analytic stud- ies the importance of the Oedipus complex has became more and more clearly evident; its recognition has become the shibboleth that distin- guishes the adherents of psycho-analysis from its opponents’ (2001 [1953], vol. 7, 226, footnote 1). 9. See also Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 66. 149 150 Notes 10. For an extensive analysis of Irigaray’s theory on ‘two lips’, see Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 170–175; Diana Fuss (1989), Essentially Speaking, pp. 62–66. 11. Lacan uses the metaphor of Orpheus and Eurydice to explain Freud’s understanding of the function of the unconscious. As soon as something is found, there is the possibility of losing it: ‘Eurydice twice lost, the most potent image we can find of the relation between Orpheus the analyst and the unconscious’ (1994 [1977], 25). 12. See Shattuc’s (1998, 212–225) discussion of the shift from the social to the personal in the talk show genre; A discussion could also be extended to con- sider Michel Foucault’s work in The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (1978). 13. For further reading, see Jean-Michel Rabaté’s discussion of Lacan and Hamlet in Jacques Lacan: Psychoanalysis and the Subject of Literature (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 54–68. 14. Elizabeth Wright suggests in Speaking Desires Can Be Dangerous that the emphasis Lacan places on Gertrude marks a different reading of the Oedipal drama from Freud’s. Instead of focusing on Hamlet’s repressed desires and his inability to let them go, Lacan places the ‘blame’ on Gertrude. As Wright suggests: ‘The (m)Other is showing no lack, and this is the essential cause of Hamlet’s inability to act. He cannot conclude the Oedipal journey’ (1999, 84). Wright’s analysis argues that Gertrude’s failure to expose herself as lack- ing undermines Hamlet’s success. Hamlet’s desires are privileged over his (m)Other’s desires. 15. Mari Jo Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Buhle’s work provides her readers with an exhaustive and well-researched analysis of the relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism. 16. Juliet Mitchell, ‘Introduction, 1999’, in Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books, 2000; first published 1974), p. xxxii. 17. In Écrits: A Selection, Alan Sheridan translates point de caption as ‘anchoring point’ (1977, 303); whereas in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, Bruce Fink translates point de caption as ‘button tie’ (2006, 681). ZizBek refers to the point de caption as a ‘rigid designator’ (1989, 101). 18. In her article entitled ‘Feminist Assessment of Emancipatory Potential and Madonna’s Contradictory Gender Practices’, Lynn O’Brien Hallstein argues that Deleuze and Guattari introduce Georges Bataille’s theorisation of excess into their understanding of desire: ‘Thus, Deleuze and Guattari argue that desire, the investment of human energy for satisfaction, is fuelled by excess energy and lacks nothing, which means desire is excessive, has no permanent object, structure, or pre-ordained form; it is characterised by continual flows of connections. Desire, then, is the radically free investment of energy without any boundaries, with the capacity to create a radically free unconscious’ (1996, 126). 19. Grosz’s In the Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely and Braidotti’s Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s work as theoretical allies in their discussions on ‘becomings’ and ‘evolutions’. Although Grosz does not engage explicitly with Deleuze in her reading of time through Darwin, Nietzsche and Bergson, she attempts to Notes 151 ‘run Deleuze’s and Irigaray’s concepts underneath [her] reading of the others, as a kind of (ghostly) guide to the untimely, the crack, the unexpected reso- nance, that each prefigures’ (2004, 14). Braidotti’s engagement with Deleuze and Irigaray is more explicit, but similarly to Grosz, she believes the two philosophers can be read together to elucidate notions such as embodiment, nomadism and sexual difference (2002, 65). 20. I am thinking here of Michael Moore’s work, in particular Bowling for Columbine (2002). Also, Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me (2004). 21. See Brian McNair’s Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire (London: Routledge, 2002). 22. In the introduction to The Brain is the Screen (2000), Gregory Flaxman makes a convincing argument that although Bordwell and Carroll denounce ‘grand theories’ they ‘continue to proceed on the basis of their own schematic, and universal, assumptions’—because of this, Flaxman argues that Deleuze is much more the ‘avatar’ of grand theories’ (2000, 9). 23. The idea of mapping out the co-ordinates of one’s desire comes from Slavoj Z izBek’s work in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Film Four Cinema, 2006a), which will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5. 24. As Sean Homer points out, Freud had two notions of the father: one is the father of the Oedipus complex and one is the ‘primal father of Totem and Taboo’ who, as Homer points out, ‘is perceived as outside the law’. As Homer argues, ‘identification with the primal father involves an ambiguous process whereby the subject simultaneously identifies with authority, the law and, at the same time, the illicit desires that would transgress and undermine the law’ (2005, 59). This relationship to the father(s) places the subject in a paradox- ical relationship in terms of desire and enjoyment. 25. Mary Kay was sentenced to seven and a half years, which was mostly sus- pended until she was caught having sex with Mr Fualaau, at which time she had to serve the full sentence. She eventually married Vili in 2005. The cou- ple have two daughters together, both conceived while Mary Kay was serv- ing her prison sentence (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4569259.stm, accessed 9 February 2007). 2 Hysterical Desire 1. We could turn here to Foucault’s theorisation of ‘discipline and punishment’; indeed as Joseph Rouse argues: ‘These practices of surveillance, elicitation, and documentation constrain behaviour precisely by making it more thoroughly knowable or known. But these new forms of knowledge also presuppose new kinds of constraint, which make people’s actions visible and constrain them to speak’ (1994, 96). 2. For instance, the 1984 edition of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis suggests that: ‘today we face the question of the existence or non-existence of hysteria’ (Verhaeghe 1999a, 92). 3. See ‘Is Hysteria Real? Brain Images Say Yes’ by Erika Kinetz, New York Times, 26 Sept 2006, pp. D1, 4. 4. See Does the Woman Exist? From Freud’s Hysteric to Lacan’s Feminine (1999), Paul Verhaeghe. 152 Notes 5. See Todd McGowan, (2003) The End of dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment, Albany: SUNY and McGowan (2000) The Feminine “No!” Psychoanalysis and the New Canon, Albany: SUNY. 6. For a more detailed, albeit ‘short’ history of hysteria, see Micale’s excellent ‘Short history of hysteria’ (1995, 19–29).

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