Did somebody say jouissance? On Slavoj Žižek, consumption, and nationalism

Abstract

This article illustrates how the works of Slavoj Žižek can advance the field of emotional geographies, as well as our understandings of emotion, space, and society. Žižek provides a rich social theoretical vocabulary that can help explain cultural discontent, how emotional worlds bond and fall apart, why there is no guaranteed harmony in love with our partner, and how emotional worlds are organized in ways so that people can hold onto something that resembles ‘subjectivity’ and ‘reality’. I focus on geographers’ interpretations of Jacques Lacan's notion of jouissance: a concept that is at the heart of Žižek's writings. First, I consider how geographers’ canonical portrayals of Lacan as the arch phallogocentric thinker rely on what Žižek calls the “false poetry of castration”. Second, I address how Žižek's notion of enjoyment (his usual translation of jouissance) as the “paradoxical payment” informs his critical engagement with Marxism, as well as questions about the political and emotional. I then turn to discuss how the irruptions of enjoyment can take place amidst spaces of nationalism and consumption. The article concludes by affirming the prospect of making emotional geographies less enjoyable than ever before.