Žižek already pointed out decades ago that the figure of exceptional Woman is the masculine fantasy par excellence [1]. Here I would like to extend this purely fantasmatic status to the so-called ‘Other jouissance’ which neither exists nor possesses any properties; it is just a phrase Lacanians use to mark the place of their fantasy. Lacan himself merely suggested its (false) locus by the phrase ‘another jouissance than phallic jouissance’, he never dignified this locus by reserving a term for it (at least in Encore).

In The Most Sublime Hysteric, Žižek already declared the inexistence of this ‘Other jouissance’ but chose to still (encore) permit it a contradictory subsistence:

In Lacan’s Encore, he produces the formula for other jouissance (other in relationship to phallic jouissance): “Were there another one, it shouldn’t be/could never fail to be that one” (Lacan 1998b: 60).

This other jouissance therefore does not exist (because, as Lacan underlines, only phallic jouissance exists), but it nonetheless possesses a property, that of being excessive and therefore forbidden: “It is false that there is another one, but that doesn’t stop what follows from being true, namely, that it couldn’t be [sic]/could never fail to be that one” (Lacan 1998b: 60).

Here, Lacan is using the logical rule according to which it is valid to deduce the true from the false: the Real is just such a “false” entity, and as it does not exist, it must be presupposed for us to deduce the truth from it. The paradox of forbidding an impossible thing can be resolved if we link impossibility to existence and interdiction to properties. The real is impossible insofar as it cannot exist, but nonetheless it is forbidden because of its properties.

This passage is absolutely brilliant but it overlooks that the same logical rule (of material implication) also allows one to deduce the false from the false. When its condition is false, the implication requires nothing from the consequent, it no longer cares whether it is true or false.

In order to be allowed to attribute true properties to the inexistent ‘Other jouissance’, Žižek chooses to settle with the assumption that ‘what follows is true’ whereas Lacan merely says that ‘that doesn’t stop what follows from being true’ which means that what follows can also be false.

Thus the true emphasis of Lacan’s inference is not ‘being true’ but ‘doesn’t stop’ which indicates an indifference (“I don’t care”) as to whether ‘it shouldn’t be/could never fail to be that one’. Žižek chooses to perceive this ‘doesn’t stop’ like a clearance on the road and moves on to deduce his own ‘necessary’ truths (that ‘don’t stop writing themselves’) by presupposing the Real, which is absolutely brilliant both as a strategy and as to its implementation.

But the true referent of this ‘doesn’t stop’ is the impossible which ‘doesn’t stop not writing itself’: ‘Other jouissance’ is able to hold a false locus only by never writing itself and conserving its indeterminacy (symbolically interpreted as an uncertainty). Lacan’s wordplay ‘shouldn’t be/could never fail’ marks the locus of this indeterminacy that allows fantasies to proliferate.

Now let’s focus on the wordplay. Žižek interprets ‘shouldn’t be’ as an impossibility that underlies a prohibition (manifested in his typo ‘couldn’t be’). But when we re-focus the inference on the indifference of ‘doesn’t stop’, this ‘shouldn’t be’ rather marks an impropriety, it is something indecent or inappropriate [2].

And the referent of ‘could never fail’ is the (death) drive: It is absolutely certain that humans ‘could never fail’ to die, and the same holds for drives which ‘could never fail’ to misfire.

By combining these two aspects, ‘shouldn’t be/could never fail’ marks any impropriety that emerges from the drives. And we should add that the ultimate referent of this wordplay is the wordplay itself: (1) It is an impropriety that ‘shouldn’t be’ insofar as it causes confusion in Lacan’s listeners and readers, and (2) it emerges from Lacan’s analytic drive which he is confident ‘could never fail’, as he says “I don’t seek, I find.”

Moreover, the signifier ‘Lacan’ has the same status with this wordplay: The Lacanian engagement confronts the subject with improprieties that ‘shouldn’t be’ and these can be explained away by saying “This is just like Lacan!” which ‘could never fail’. Any proper name (or even conceptual term) can function in a similar way. This makes it a symptom.

In the book index of Seminar 20, there is an entry for ‘the Other jouissance’ that lists 17 pages. Significantly, none of the listed pages comprise the topic opened up by the crucial phrase ‘another jouissance than phallic jouissance’ and the crucial page 60 where the referent of this phrase is explicitly declared inexistent and false [3].

What we find instead in the listed pages (as ‘another satisfaction’ to make up for this lack) are the references to the jouissance of the Other (sex) and jouissance of the Other’s body which Lacan explicitly declares not to be a sign of love.

It should now be obvious to the reader that the jouissance of the Other has absolutely nothing to do with ‘another jouissance than phallic jouissance’. The first is quite real but inconclusive (it’s emphatically not a sign of love) whereas the second is false but pretty consequential (it’s a source of fantasies).

But people (as a rule, men, but not-always) choose to ignore that the jouissance of the Other is not a sign of love, and this is why ‘another jouissance than phallic jouissance’ nonetheless still (encore) subsists as a contradictory locus where fantasies are allowed to proliferate. This strange (étrange) locus is the angel-making (être-ange) bed where Lacan leaves us:

I am leaving you to your own devices on this bed. I am going out, and once again I will write on the door so that, as you exit, you may perhaps recall the dreams you will have pursued on this bed. I will write the following sentence: “Jouissance of the Other,” of the Other with a capital O, “of the body of the Other who symbolizes the Other, is not the sign of love.” (Seminar 20)

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father, or How Not to Misread Lacan’s Formulas of Sexuation” Slavoj Žižek

[2] It is something that bugs you, like a programming bug. See “Turing Machine and Lacan: Writing and Stopping” 

[3] See “Symbolic Exception and Real Exception”