Psychoanalysis k – Sam Franz – rks seniors Cover Letter
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Psychoanalysis K - Sam - Wake 2016 RKS
Security/WOT12.The WOT is a continuation of the impossible security project of empire: it fails to recognize the constitutive loss of the subject.McGowan ’13 (Todd, Associate Prof. of Arts & Sciences @ U. of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,” University of Nebraska Press, July, 2013, pp. 159-164) Nowhere is the retreat from enjoyment to pleasure more evident than in the American response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The attacks immediately reinvigorated the social bond for a majority of Americans. The loss that they occasioned brought subjects back to the shared sacrifice that defines their membership in American society. Even as they were horrified by the image of the towers burning and then falling, most Americans, in the strict psychoanalytic sense of the term, enjoyed the attacks insofar as the attacks allowed them to experience once again their social bond with great intensity. This is a bond that one suffers, just as one suffers from a terrorist attack. Even though it followed from an attack, this bond was not one formed through the male logic of friend/ enemy, which is why the headline in Le Monde on September 12., 2001, could proclaim, “Nous sommes tous Americains.”27 The bond formed around the September 11 attacks was not initially a bond of exclusivity with a clear outside and inside. Any subject willing to accede to the experience of loss could become a part of American society at that moment. The not-all of the social bond occurs through the experience of loss, but the recognition of this type of bond is unbearable. One enjoys it without deriving any pleasure from it. It is, in fact, painful. Not only is it painful, but it also entails complete humiliation. The society experiences the shame of being a victim and enduring trauma — the shame of enjoyment itself. In order to disguise this shameful enjoyment, the United States quickly turned to an assertion of power that would carry with it the promise of a restored wholeness — the recovery of an imaginary perfect security. The attack on Afghanistan brought pleasure to most members of American society. This pleasure had the function of rendering the enjoyment that emerged through traumatic loss bearable, but it could not fulfill its inherent promise. Enjoyment satisfies, and pleasure always disappoints. The disappointing nature of the attack on Afghanistan paved the way to the subsequent attack on Iraq in a further attempt to find an actual pleasure equal to what we anticipated. In terms of American society, these foreign wars serve as alibis for the enjoyment of the traumatic attacks themselves. Because we seek respite from the loss that binds us, we flee from the social bond despite our purported desire for it. The authentic social bond exists only in the shared experience of loss — that is, only according to the female logic of not-having. But the attack oh Iraq also illustrates the inescapability of the enjoyment attached to loss. The Iraq War clearly follows from the male logic of having and aims at producing the pleasure resulting from possession: the United States would conquer a recalcitrant dictator and obtain a firm ally in a globally significant region. This is both the stated justification for the war and the explanation offered by critics who see it as an exercise in American imperialism. For both the perpetuators of the war and its critics, the war concerns having, despite the different inflections they give this idea. But the result of the war is the failure of having and the renewed experience of loss. The pursuit of the pleasure involved in having returns American society to the traumatic loss involved in the September 11 attacks. Of course, no one fights wars with the express intention of losing them, but every war brings with it sacrifice and loss, which is ultimately the substance of the social bond and the source of our ability to enjoy that bond. The pursuit of the pleasure of having leads to the loss that inevitably accompanies this pursuit. Imperial powers do not attempt to stretch their military and economic reach to the point that it breaks because of an inescapable will to power or a biological urge for infinite expansion. The conquering drive of empires has its roots in the search for what no amount of imperial possession can provide — the enjoyment of the experience of loss. Empires conquer increasing quantities of territory in order to discover a territory that they can’t conquer. In this same way, the Afghanistan War disappointed the American leadership because it didn't provide even the possibility for loss. Donald Rumsfeld’s lament that the country didn't have any targets to bomb points in this direction. Iraq, in contrast, promised a possible defeat, and if it hadn’t, Syria or Iran would surely have come within the sights of the Bush administration. Whatever the proffered justification or hidden motivation, powerful societies ultimately go to war in order to reenact a constitutive loss and facilitate the enjoyment that this loss entails.” This is the case not just with war but with any positive project that a social order takes up. Building a monument like the Eiffel Tower provided French society with a possession that allows for collective identification. But the work involved with the building involved a great sacrifice in time and in money. When we think of the Eiffel Tower, we rarely think of the sacrifice required for its construction; instead, we think of the sense of identity that it offers. It provides a positive point of identification for France itself as a nation, and French subjects can find pleasure through this identification. Nonetheless, the enjoyment of the Eiffel Tower, in contrast to the pleasure that it offers, stems from the sacrifice required to construct it. Every finished societal product— such as victory in Iraq, the beauty of the Eiffel Tower, smooth roads on which to drive — promises pleasure, but this pleasure primarily supplies an alibi for the enjoyment that the sacrifices on the way to the product produce. These sacrifices allow us to experience the social bond by repeating the act of sacrifice through which each subject became a member of the social order. It is not so much that the pursuit of pleasure backfires (though it does) but that it is never done simply for its own sake. We embark on social projects not in spite of what they will cost us but because of what they will cost us. The dialectic of pleasure and enjoyment also plays itself out in the relationship that subjects in society have to their leader. According to Freud, all group members install the leader in the position of an ego ideal, and this ego ideal held in common furthers the bond among members of society. But the identification with the leader has two sides to it: on the one hand, subjects identify with the leader's symbolic position as a noncastrated ideal existing beyond the world of lack; but on the other hand, subjects identify with the leader’s weaknesses, which exist in spite of the powerful image.30 Both modes of identification work together in order to give subjects a sense of being a member of society, but they work in radically different ways. The identification with the leader’s power provides the subject with a sense of symbolic identity and recognition, whereas the identification with the leader’s weaknesses allows the subject to enjoy being a part of the community. The identification with the leader's strength provides the pleasure that obscures the enjoyment deriving from the identification with the leader's weaknesses. The weaknesses indicate that the leader is a subject of loss, that she/ he enjoys rather than being entirely devoted to ruling as a neutral embodiment of the people. The weaknesses are evidence of the leader’s enjoyment, points at which a private enjoyment stains the public image. By identifying with these points, subjects in a community affirm the association of enjoyment with loss rather than with presence. But at the same time, the leader’s weaknesses cannot completely eclipse the evidence for the leader’s strength. The strength allows subjects who identify with the leader in her/ his weakness to disavow this would-be traumatic identification and to associate themselves consciously with strength rather than weakness. The trajectory of Bill Clinton's popularity during his presidency illustrates precisely how identification with the leader unfolds. When accusations of sexual impropriety with Monica Lewinsky first appeared, Clinton's pub- lic approval rating reached its highest levels. Most thought that Clinton was probably guilty of some private wrongdoing, but they also felt that his sexual peccadillo es should remain private. Though they infuriated his Republican accusers, his sexual weaknesses had the effect of enhancing his overall popularity. This trend continued until it became undeniably clear that Clinton really was guilty, when it became impossible to disavow his weakness. At this point, identifying with Clinton became inescapably apparent as identifying with Clinton in his weakness, which rendered it more difficult to sustain. The American populace could enjoy Clinton's weakness and form a social bond through this weakness only as long as it remained partially obscured. The fundamental barrier to the establishment of an authentic social bond is the resistance to avowing the traumatic nature of that bond. We use the pleasure that accompanies the bombing of Afghanistan to disguise the shared enjoyment we experience through the traumatic experience of loss. But this pleasure inevitably disappoints us and triggers the belief that someone has stolen the complete pleasure that we expected to experience. This is why there can properly be no end to the War on Terror, no end to the list of countries that the United States plans to invade to attain complete security, no end to the number of terrorist leaders executed. Complete security, like complete pleasure, is mythical. It attempts to bypass the one experience that cannot be bypassed — the foundational experience of loss — and it is this experience that holds the key to an authentic social bond.
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