Jealouissance of having and possibility of (spoken)being
Dana Tor
In Seminar XX and in other places, Lacan refers to the jealousy captured by St. Augustine when he watches a young boy staring, completely pale, at his younger brother suckling at his mother’s breast. Lacan calls this jealousy "jealouissance" [1] . It jumps from the picture, infused with “jealous hatred” – an affect originally termed by Freud [2] designating the child’s feelings towards his imago, his competitor on the Other’s love. This jealouissance produces satisfaction from the subject as having; in the scenario reported by Augustine, the baby brother has the a [3], the mother’s nipple but, he is also himself the a, the object of his mother’s jouissance.
The satisfaction from the imaginary image overcomes the signification as unity[4]. As such, it is undefiable by language. The shift that Lacan makes from the word that kills the thing to the body that enjoys by the signifier is from phallic to feminine jouissance. This imaginary jealouissance that springs from the image is born in the Pre-Oedipus, condemned by ravage and repeats in the wanting-to-have a phallus of the castration complex; it is a force that prevails the symbolic, an infinite jealouissance aimed at anyone that tries to pull her away from satisfaction, always wanting more.
Paradoxically, the way to gain consistent satisfaction, achieved by one’s sinthome, is to give up on this satisfaction derived from the mother, agreeing to the shift from having the a to being the a.
The speaking-being is a speaking-being first and foremost because he is spoken about; to be a speaking-being requires a mode of being-in-language as an object of desire in the chain of other signi-desires. When something fails there, we see the effects of language on the body that is not mortified by the signifier, and it is there where the symptom materializes. Joyce took these unmortified pieces of living-(l)et(t)res, inventing himself as a poem, not a poet[5]. This way, Joyce could have been read by other people, becoming a signifier for other signifiers.
The jealouissance of the gaze and of having the object must be given up to enable the invention of a sinthome, a way to be looked at by someone else, thus becoming both a spoken and a speaking being.
References
[1] Lacan, J. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, trans. Bruce Fink, Norton, 1998, p. 100.
[2] Sigmund, F. “A Child is Being Beaten”, The Standard Edition, Volume XVII: An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, trans. James Stratchey et al., Hogarth press, 1955, p. 199.
[3] Lacan, J. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, trans. Bruce Fink, Norton, 1998, p. 100.
[4] See Stevens, A. “The Bodily Effects of Language” argument for the NLS Congress 2021, available online.
[5] Rephrasing Lacan’s statement in “Preface to the English Edition of Seminar XI”, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycoanalysis. trans. Alan Sheridan, Norton, 1998.