Emergent Subjectivity: The Parallel Temporalities of Psychoanalysis and Social Theory

Kirsten Lentz uses Preciado’s Testo Junkie (2013) as an occasion to explore the rivalry between psychoanalysis and social theory in their attempts to account for human subjectivity. Although a commonsense view holds that the 2 fields have completely different relationships to temporality—psychoanalysts fix their gaze to the past, whereas social theorists imagine radical futures—the distinction is more complex than it appears. The analyst does not lead the patient toward the past but holds and guards the place of futurity so that new experiences of subjectivity eventually become available. Like “theory,” then, psychoanalysis tries to make room for “emergent subjectivity,” for ways of being in the world that have not yet been imagined or formulated, that have not yet been born in the mind of culture. Lentz thus insists that the radical critique of gender can and should be understood as fundamental to the work of psychoanalysis.     

Memento Mori: The Book as a Cut

Despite Testo Junkie’s overt criticisms of psychoanalysis, this essay attempts to read the formal aspect of the work—as a process of mourning, a body-essay, an experimental protocol of intoxication—through the lens of the everyday practice of clinical psychoanalysis. Looking at the way soma erupts in the consulting room, the conundrums of agency and identity, Preciado’s (2013) work on the biopolitics of the psychopharamacopornographic era is shown to be critical to any unraveling of a symptom. On a more personal scale, Preciado’s own stated intention that the writing of the book should function as a cut, as a Memento Mori, is read in this essay as a depiction of the extreme limits one must traverse to locate an experience of desire, beneath or beyond the apparatuses of the state—something that Preciado shows as penetrating further into our lives and bodies than many of us are prepared to acknowledge.     

The desire for space: stains in Zoltan Kluger’s institutional photography

The article studies the construction of Zionist space in Kluger’s institutional photographs in an attempt to understand the ideological desire for space in Zionist imagistic propaganda. The analysis employs Lacanian ‘stains’ as well as strategies of art interpretation to suggest that behind the image of Sisyphean work of men toiling the land stands the Zionist ‘law’ (in contrast to the female jouissance) which comes to signify the Jewish return to history after the fall from divine grace. This paper demonstrates by what means Kluger’s photographs echoed and propagated the Zionist unconscious based on western and Christian desire for eternity and redemption of the land, even if it meant sacrificing the sons in exchange for eternal life and the return to grace.     

Narcissism and abject aesthetics

In this article, we explore the tendency of a number of television and art shows to challenge the usual cosmetic surgery industry’s focus on the before and after images and instead bring to central stage the time of surgery itself, when the body is immobilized, cut open and remoulded. In this context, we refer to the television series Nip/Tuck and also to the art shows of Jonathan Yeo’ You’re Only Young Twice and Anthony C. Berlet’s I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual & Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery. What these television series and art shows have in common is an interest in what we call abject aesthetics, in which the anesthetized, immobile (docile) bodies are fully exposed to the viewer’s gaze as they are cut open to allow intrusion of blood into the diegetic space, creating a breakdown of bodily borders as faces and bodies are opened up and skin is pulled from side to side. We argue that the manifested and enjoyed aggressivity towards bodies is an expression of an increased level of social narcissism, which besides producing an obsession with (adulation for) an ideal body image it simultaneously fosters a strong feeling of aggressivity towards the very ideal, hence the creation in fantasy of scenarios in which the overly restrictive and deadening ideal is torn apart to reveal its abject underside. Finally, we explore the workings of this economy of revealing and concealing, by foregrounding the concept of the abject and by staging an encounter with the grotesque in order to offer a critical perspective on the beauty ideal.     

Forbidden Talk: Commentary on Article by Andrea Celenza “The Guilty Pleasure of Erotic Countertransference: Searching for Radial True”

Sexual passions lie outside the bounds of what can usually be thought about and discussed. I applaud Celenza's (this issue) contribution to opening this area for discussion, but my understanding of the passionate nature of human experience requires that her relational conceptualizations be augmented by Freudian and Lacanian models of desire, the real, and jouissance. These models help us recognize that some psychic material can never be put into words or thought. Although we seek to expand thinking and speaking, a residue will always remain that is unthinkable. I suggest analytic therapists develop intimate peer support groups to enhance the individual's ability to think and talk of his or her unrecognized passions. Although necessarily inadequate, such arenas for safe exploration provide an essential addition to ongoing efforts to work both passionately and safely with vulnerable patients.     

Power and Shame: Reply to Mark Blechner and to Ruth Stein

I touch briefly on my own experience of shame as triggered by what my discussants have written. I look at how shame and power interact in psychoanalytic discourse, examine their play in relation to questions of aggression and activity, and refer as well to what I am calling “an ethics of relativism.” Cautioning against uncritical binary thinking, I conclude that, if we forget the intimacy of good and bad, we are going to write jouissance, that site of extremity and transcendence where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable, right out of our sexual lives. And, if we do that, we are once again going to write sexuality out of psychoanalysis.     

Speaking about building Rylands (1960s to 1980s): a Cape Flats history

This article looks at African and black men and masculinities, triangulated desire, race, and subalternity in Charles Mungoshi’s short story collections. It examines the negotiation of desire, and its interface and interplay with power relations and their negotiation in the colonial and postcolonial economies of domination and gender as depicted in the short stories. It uses the Gramscian concept of hegemony, Girard’s mimetic theory of triangular desire, and Sedgwick’s theory of gendered triangular desire, to examine these dynamics. It argues that colonial and postcolonial power and gender relations are negotiated through a complex interplay of desire that cannot all be accounted for by both Girard and Sedgwick’s models, necessitating their modification to deal with the complexity of desire in a colonial and postcolonial context. The short story collections examined span the colonial and postcolonial eras and these are Coming of the Dry Season (1981), Some Kinds of Wounds (1980), and Walking Still (1997).     

Introducing Testo Junkie

This article introduces the portfolio of essays on Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2013). After briefly describing the project of that book, the essay explains the history of the public forum and, now, publication in which Preciado was in conversation with 3 clinicians: Kirsten Lentz, Carolyn Stack, and Jamieson Webster.     

Gay shame in a geopolitical context

With the developing acceptance of gay equality in the west, it is assumed that we live in a post-shame era, with ‘the world we have won’. However, this is a chimeric cliché of neoliberalism (rather like the idea that we are all postfeminist now). The ‘proud’ homosexual of the west is discursively constructed against the ‘shamed’ homosexual of the east, a typecasting resonant with postcolonial clichés of the primal, religious, and homophobic savagery of the global south in contrast with the civilising, liberal evolution of the secular global north. Shame displacement is of course a dynamic of shame itself. The perceived failure in achieving the ‘proud iconic gay’ of media cultures in the global North results in a traumatic double bind of being ashamed of being ashamed. This article will reconsider the cultural politics and temporality of shame for primarily white gay identities after the ‘War on Terror’. As Islamophobia has exponentially increased, some western gays translocate their unacknowledged shame onto a misconceived ‘brown threat’ in a complex, aggressive, and racist shame loop [Lewis, H.B., 1971. Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press; Scheff, T.J., and Retzinger, S.M., 1991. Emotions and violence: shame and rage in destructive conflict. New York: Lexington Books].     

Riding Instincts,Even to Die

This paper develops the concept of riding instincts, even to die through a queer reading of Winnicott’s “Primary Maternal Preoccupation.” Primary preoccupation narrates the ongoing establishment of what Winnicott calls “instinctual life.” Turning to queer social history and a clinical case, a relational-structural similarity between pederasty and primary preoccupation is proposed, and the concept of pederastic enactments is used to capture the fraughtness of this similarity. A patient’s deadened instinctual life is explored in relation to his family history and queer identity, and the difficulty of riding instincts, even to die in the treatment is connected to the neoliberalization of desire.     

Discarded Histories and Queer Affects in Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red

This article takes up Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red (1998) as an allegory for the discarded history of queerness. The novel in verse rewrites the Greek myth of Herakles (Hercules) and the red-winged monster Geryon as a queer love story. In Carson’s rendition, Herakles is not a colonizer who murders Geryon to seize his red cattle but a lover who steals and breaks his fragile heart. Born hybrid in a modern-day context, Geryon struggles with narrating his life in words and instead takes pictures.

By asking us to pay attention to history’s queer affective traces, Carson invites us to think about how bodies become discarded social monsters and how monsters must learn to live in their bodies. She turns our attention to the traumas and their affects that render the activities of subjectivity unpredictable and undecipherable. In Autobiography of Red, “queer” is not simply sexual orientation but the abject perversions of difference, not easily nameable. Without the familiar registers of identity, we are invited to witness and to be touched by Geryon’s life through his photo-autobiography, which captures the affect of experience, otherwise lost to the foreclosures of time.     

I,that am curtailed

ABSTRACT

The essay investigates desire in Shakespeare’s Richard III as connected to Deleuze and Guattari’s line of flight and war machine. By following the drawing of the line of flight of betrayal and the setting of Richard’s war machine, and by investigating the constitution of his character as a Body without organs, it traces the production of the plane of immanence of a differential subjectivity where desire is free to become.     

Youth,Mobility, and the Emotional Burdens of youxue (Travel and Study): A Case Study of Chinese Students in Italy

Based on fieldwork in China and Italy, this article examines the affective dimension of middle-class Chinese students’ youxue (travel and study) practices in Italy. With the liberalization of state policy in China’s self-funded study abroad market and the proliferation of educational intermediaries, youxue has become a special type of educational consumption that caters to the middle-class Chinese family’s desire for transnational mobility and cosmopolitan life styles. The blurring of the line between travel and study points to the open-ended and multi-linear nature of transnational student mobility. However, due to the limitations and pitfalls in international education policies in both the sending and the receiving countries, Chinese students’ youxue experiences in Italy are marked by notable contradictions between mobility and immobility, hopes and frustrations, self-appreciation and self-reproach.     

Military Invasion and Women's Political Representation

The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As ‘abject bodies’, suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly defined boundaries between inside and outside. Female suicide bombers, whose bodies are already considered ‘abject’, produce a politics of the body that exceeds narratives of victimhood, and whose very monstrosity symbolically threatens the foundations of the nation-state. Attempts at constructing subjects out of the mutilated bodily remains of victims and perpetrators of suicide bombings are key practices in the production of the state and gendered subjects. The practice of suicide bombing and efforts to recover and resignify bodies reveals how power molds and constitutes the border of the body and state simultaneously. The explosive body of the suicide bomber thus has destabilizing effects beyond the motivations of its perpetrators and exposes the political work necessary to maintain the illusion of secure, bounded bodies and states.     

Seeking Connection Versus Avoiding Disappointment: An Experimental Manipulation of Approach and Avoidance Sexual Goals and the Implications for Desire and Satisfaction

Previous correlational research has demonstrated an association between people’s reasons for having sex (i.e., their sexual goals) and their sexual desire and sexual and relationship satisfaction. Across two studies of people in romantic relationships (N = 396) we extend previous research and demonstrate, for the first time, that manipulating the salience of approach sexual goals (i.e., engaging in sex to pursue positive outcomes, such as enhanced intimacy) compared to avoidance sexual goals (i.e., engaging in sex to avert negative outcomes, such as a partner’s disappointment) or a control condition leads people to feel higher sexual desire for their romantic partners and to report higher sexual and relationship satisfaction. In addition, in Study 2 we demonstrate that focusing on approach sexual goals over the course of a week leads people to report more satisfying sexual experiences during that week, as well as higher desire and overall relationship satisfaction, compared to a control group. The current findings advance approach–avoidance theory by providing evidence that it is possible to manipulate people’s sexual goals and, in turn, impact their feelings of desire and satisfaction. Results are promising for the development of interventions to promote sexual and relational well-being.     

Speed Limits: Out of Time in Organization Studies

A screaming comes across the sky. Others glare with a vacant intensity. Solaris studies at the very same time that the world appears to be becoming one vast recording studio. Our cameras are in the process of dissolution and decay. This paper hurtles headlong into the Green Burning Car that is the crash of organization studies today. On the cusp of a promised new mode of study in organizational analysis we write on speed, attracting found objects, jump cuts, wierd juxtapositions, and chance encounters in a ‘pataphysical’ dérive. As an exercise in sympathetic magic, or orgiastic ritual, we are able to exorcise here a number of ghosts in organization theory. Speed limits provide an occasion for shame: shame for its bombast and juvenility, its masculinity and narcissism; the end(s) of organization studies intrudes as event, a sacrifice for dreams of what might come.     

SELECTIVE RECOGNITION: HOW TO RECOGNIZE DONORS TO INCREASE CHARITABLE GIVING

Recognizing donors by revealing their identities is important for increasing charitable giving. Using a framed field experiment, we show that all forms of recognition that we examine increase donations relative to the baseline treatment, and recognizing only the highest or only the lowest donors has the strongest and significant effect. We argue that selective recognition creates tournament‐like incentives. Recognizing the highest donors activates the desire to seek a “positive prize” of prestige, while recognizing the lowest donors activates the desire to avoid a “negative prize” of shame. We discuss how selective recognition can be used by charities to increase donations. (JEL C93, D64)     

Psychological Flexibility and Self-Compassion in Gay and Heterosexual Men: How They Relate to Childhood Memories,Shame, and Depressive Symptoms

This study explores differences between men who are gay (n = 53) and men who are heterosexual (n = 52) regarding memories of shame events and of warmth and safeness experiences with parents during childhood and adolescence, self-compassion, psychological flexibility, internal shame, and depression. Also, it aims to explore whether psychological flexibility and self-compassion play a role in the association between these memories and internal shame and depressive symptoms. Results confirmed the mediating role of psychological flexibility and self-compassion. These findings suggest the appropriateness of promoting acceptance and self-compassion towards difficult memories in a therapeutic setting with men who are gay experiencing shame and depressive symptoms.     

Coping with Guilt and Shame After Gambling Loss

In this study we examined the relations between guilt and shame and coping strategies in response to gambling loss. Based on H.B. Lewis’s (Shame & guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press, 1971) account of guilt and shame, we proposed that unlike guilt, the experience of shame involves the attribution of gambling loss to stable and global internal factors (i.e., self-devaluation). We hypothesized that problem gambling severity would be more strongly associated with the intensity of shame than with the intensity of guilt following gambling loss. Further, we hypothesized that the intensity of shame would be positively associated with the use of avoidant coping strategies following gambling loss. Finally, we hypothesized that the intensity of shame would mediate the association between problem gambling severity and the use of avoidant coping. These hypotheses were supported by a retrospective survey of recent gambling losses. Our finding suggests that the experience of shame and the use of avoidant coping strategies to deal with this emotion are central to problem gambling severity.     

Labiaplasty and the Melancholic Breast

This article is an attempt to think through the sociosymbolic dimensions of the phenomenon of nonmedical or cosmetic surgical reduction of the labia minora, an interventionist medical practice that is gaining currency in the contemporary Western context. The article seeks to navigate the symbolic meaning of labial excision in the contemporary Western “postfeminist” context. I suggest that the desire for labiaplasty is embedded in a dialectical narrative of femininity that draws upon a specifically postfeminist distinction between desirable sexuality and undesirable maternity. I use the Kleinian theory of melancholic loss to argue that the contemporary desire for labiaplasty is indicative of a failure of mourning and the inability to establish the maternal breast as a good internal object in the psychosocial formation of the feminine body-ego. I argue that because the mother’s breast cannot be legitimately mourned, the female body is compelled to abject its reproductive, animal materiality.