Jouissance

The title says it all...but it says more than I can possibly say even if I were to blog until my last breath. Jouissance is French, from the root "jouir" to enjoy. At least, that is its simple meaning, which of course varies with context. In a lease of land, the lessee can enjoy the fruits of her labours, of her use of the land. In the context of sex, it can mean to come. The English rough equivalent, "enjoyment", leaves out the intentional aspect, the evaluation of worth that Dany Nobus captured more closely in the neologism/pun "enjoymeant". Jouissance is not simply pleasure, rather it is the inexplicable, unexpressible aspect of that which we are driven to do, repeatedly.

Jouissance is what drives some women to repeatedly seek out abusive partners, some men to seek women to abuse. Repeatedly. Again, these examples could be repeatedly explored (guess what form my jouissance takes...), but a short-cut would be to refer you to Freud's well-publicized case histories.

Now, imagine a scenario where, in my boring life, in a neighbourhood where I have lived for twenty years, I suddenly find that the house next door has been sold to a young family from Haiti. Now, instead of the quiet neighbours I used to have, the music is too loud, their children play really noisily outside in the back yard, and the husband and wife are always laughing, hugging their kids, hugging each other. It's just too much.  Their jouissance is beyond my understanding, does not fit in with my idea of what family life should be like. 

After a few weeks, I find that I am detesting this family more and more, and with each passing day, my detestation has turned into hate. But then I discover that my hate is now becoming a weird form of enjoymeant. I can't make sense of it, but each time I turn my thoughts to this family, a churning in the pit of my stomach tells me that I do not simply dislike them; I hate them in a strange way that is an adrenalin rush that pulls my thoughts towards them, and a physical revulsion that turns me away, with neither feeling dominating enough to drive out the other.

Clearly, this is an oversimplified and foreshortened process that leaves out whatever experiences in my earliest childhood have prepared me for this. But it will, I hope, give you a different way of looking at one of the ways we come to hate.

Perhaps there will be more...