Jouissance as Tool of Psychosocial Analysis

Despite critiques according to which the Lacanian concept of jouissance (libidinal enjoyment) has become a murky master-signifier lacking in coherence and rigor, the concept remains a crucial tool for psychosocial studies. This chapter stakes out the conceptual parameters of this challenging Lacanian idea so that it might be used in a properly analytical as opposed to a merely descriptive capacity. Three areas are of particular importance in the task of lending definitional clarity and analytical utility to the idea of jouissance: (1) the dimension of sexuality (understood in relation to drive and fantasy); (2) the factor of libidinal identifications (the bonding capacity of enjoyment); and (3) jouissance as intersubjective dialectic entailing perceptions of surplus and loss, and attributions of ownership and theft. Featuring a series of contemporary and historical examples – many of which pertain to racism and the critique of anti-Blackness – the chapter foregrounds the need to understand jouissance in relation to: economies of repetition; ideological fantasies (accounting for the loss and retrieval of libidinal enjoyment); the consolidation of communities of transgression; the incitements of the superego; the making and extension of symbolic law; and the factor of negatively affirmed (or stolen) jouissance as perceived in the excessive enjoyments of others. The chapter closes with a list of methodological guidelines, derived from the foregoing discussion, regards how the concept might best be applied in the context of psychosocial research.