Embracing Jouissance (Enjoyment) of Jesus Christ

Discipleship in Lacanian sense involves the embracing of the jouissance of Jesus. We, therefore, have to ask what is the jouissance of Jesus? The idea of God as an enjoyer does not fully seat in place within theology. Indian philosophy does think of World as lila or God’s play. Even Lord Krishna manifests as a playful God among the Hindus. In several religious contexts, God in Lacanian terms becomes part of the Big Other of the symbolic . The symbolic is both libidinal and normative register. This is why Zizek tells us that enjoyment takes place behind the back of a love. One has to break the law or eat the forbidden fruit in order to enjoy.

Today it appears that we have stepped into a society of enjoyment that commands us to enjoy. We are to enjoy even if we do not agree. The pressure that we seem to have is to enjoy. Enjoyment seems to have become the injunction of the Superego. Hence, we have to agree that jouissance is political. There is an excessive engagement with the enjoyment of the other which seems to say, if not controlled it will explode into excessive pleasure which of course is viewed as disorder or anarchy.

But paradoxically, the very control of other’s enjoyment becomes our own enjoyment as we feel that we are secured from the threats that the Other posed to our enjoyment that has informed our way of life. Perhaps, we can see this in the contexts of minorities, tribals, Dalits, women and children of our country. Their enjoyment is thought to require regulation otherwise, it is feared that it will explode into anarchy. Excessive enjoyment on their part therefore has to be regulated. Consequently the very regulation of their enjoyment become the enjoyment of the regulating upper caste.

There is another dimension to enjoyment. Sometimes, we do enjoy our very own oppression. In this contest, we seem to be enjoying what we get in exchange to our submission, surrender and obedience. It is a gain in the loss. Even renunciation of pleasure perverts into pleasure. It is the enjoyment of regulating the enjoyment of the other. It is a surplus that we get in our own oppression.

In the context of surplus enjoyment, there is no basic to which we add more enjoyment make it surplus. Enjoyment itself is surplus or excess. The libidinal and the normative elements of the symbolic cross our life as we move towards our surplus enjoyment. Given the complexities of the modes of jouissance , it is extremely difficult to open us the jouissance of Jesus. We cannot fully articulate the jouissance of God. it belongs to the Lacanian Real where our understanding breaks down. Nevertheless, we shall begin with the jouissance of Jesus as love. This is why we may ask: what is love? Is love limited by jouissance? Is the real of love is the Love of the Real?

Love belongs to the order of excess. It does not belong to the order of market. Nor does is belong to the order of the aesthetics? It does not belong to the order of profit. It belong to the order of loss, death and sacrifice. This is why the love of Jesus is real and undying as he loved through his death. It is through death love becomes undying. Undying love is the real of love. It puncture all our love. Undying love is unbound love. There is no love greater than this love that dies and still remains undying. This is the Real love of Jesus.

Real loving is loving through the Real. This keeps love both in the coming and going. Love is in the going and in the coming. People that we loved and loves us are gone and are in the going. But there are people in the coming. They may love us or we may love them. love stays in the coming and in the going . love is unstable. It cannot be fixed and closed. It opens us and stays in the open. It keeps opening us.

We cannot and fully love. Love, thus, is always expressed through the Real. The love of Jesus is Real love or love Real. We can only love through the love of Christ/ God (people of other faith). Humans cannot love in the purest sense. It is always marked by an incompleteness. It is marked with ego, lust and self-interest. There is always more love to come and more love to go when it comes to humans. Human desire for love is therefore, cannot be fully satisfied.

When we look for we look for our Real. But our Real is not the real that is Real love (Love of Jesus). We are frail and often we refuse to love . We love to hate too. This is why hate becomes the denial of the Real of the one that one hates. Today hate politics seem to thrive. It denies the Real of the Othered and demonized. Love is opposite, it affirms and validates the Real of the beloved. The Real still remains illusive. The fact that we can only love through Real, shows that human love can imitate Jesus. Tthe way Jesus loved exceeds and surpasses human love at several levels. We cannot receive His love fully. We have no way to experience his love in its fullness. We can only experience it’s pleroma in heaven. His love, therefore, becomes our model to love, God and His creation.

Love of Jesus is the model for us all. It makes us and others loveable as well as we are enabled to love others to the point of our death. Love, therefore, becomes jouissance and enters the structure of la petit mort. It is in dying that we love and live and living we die and love. Christian love is undying and is loveable. It is indeed the jouissance of Jesus. Loving Jesus, and embracing His jouissance challenges us to love to the point of death.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

GREETINGS

Attention is a generous gift we can give others.

Attention is love.

- Fr Victor Ferrao