How do we think Emanuel Levinas through Jouissance ( enjoyment) of Lacan? Is it at all possible to Lacanize Levinas? Maybe it is possible. Let us strive at it here. Levinas in Lacanian sense is telling us that we enjoy and bathe in what is directly accessible and not in what transcends us. This is the carnal critique that we can sense in the Levinasian rejection of sameness and the embrace of the otherness.
Life is indeed love of life and we enjoy the immanence of life and not an emergence or transcendence away from it. Life is thinking, eating, sleeping, chilling with beers, soft drinks or warming up one’s feet on a silvery sands of a beach. It is difficult to live life outside life itself ( outside immanence). We seek its transcendence only by immanating inside it. We cannot seek otherness outside immanence. Transcendence is , thus, found in the immanence of life. We are indeed beings-in-the-world. But it appears we are forced by metaphysics of transcendence to show our backs to immanence of life and are challenged to face its transcendence as otherness.
Life does shows also the other, the transcendent. The other remains the Kantian numenon or the thing -in-itself that cannot be totalized in Levinasian sense. The other is not Satrean hell that we have to overcome as politics of today seem to say. Other as hell also remains with the order of infinity of Levinas. Live, therefore is immanence as well as transcendence. We actively construct our experience ( content of experience) not merely passively suffer whatever happens around us. Of course the object or content of our experience objects us as well as we construct our object of experience. In this sense Kant appears to be right that we construct our phenomena within the neumena and not outside it.
Levinas seems to remain within this carnal side of life. Life, therefore is an infinite set in the sense of Allain Badiou but we have only access to its subsets. Life is haunted by an unsurmountable or unmasterable otherness. Life is haunted by infinity. Infinity is this master signifier around which immanence ( content of life) is ordered and accessed ( enjoyed and lived). When we remain within this immanence , we remain with the tools in action ( ready-to-hand) mode of Martin Heidegger.
When we move out of this order of abundance (where we can only raise a thing into its ‘as structure’ displaying it dynamism of being never fully foreclosing its other possibilities of being), we enter the domain of things present-at-hand. When the things move from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand we close the possibilities of being in those things ( we take being away from the order of abundance) and reductively, and pragmatically use them for our egoist ends. Hence, our way of being in the world becomes as egology in Levinasian sense.
Every object ( being as a entis) offers itself to enjoyment. Hence, it offers an economy of abundance (surplus) with the mode of things ready-to hand and we are restricted in our enjoyment within the mode of things that a closed within the mode of things present-at-hand ( order of abundance closed for pursuit of ulterior purpose) . We can only enjoy within the restricted order of the things present-at-hand . The objects of everyday use then are then subordinated to enjoyment within the other order of things present-at-hand like glass to drink water , a plate to eat food and are removed from the order of abundance ( things-ready-to-hand).
We seek enjoyment within the limited finalities of our existential exigencies. This means things do not vanish into network of further things ( in the domain of ‘ as structure’ of the things ready-to-hand) but close upon solitary termini which one can directly enjoy with much fascination. This is why market survives and prospers. It unchains things from the order of abundance, from the mode of things-ready to hand ( from further things of ‘as structure’ ), from Levinasians otherness or from Satrean otherness as hell to let them descend commodities of enjoyment. But even in this immanence of enjoyment there is something that remains unfulfilled. Enjoyment is never be fully satisfied.
The other of Levinas is need for enjoyment. It cannot be assimilated . It cannot be sublimated or even sublated to another higher level of otherness. Hence, we seek its repetition. This is why consumerism thrives. It makes us the prisoners of the cave of things present-at-hand. We can only enjoy sameness but this enjoyment requires the transcendence of otherness. Outside otherness we cannot enjoy. Jouissance requires otherness that cannot be overcome . We can only drink from this well. There is no pure drinking possible. All drinking is unquenching. We still desire further quenching. Because there is no pure enjoyment, we enjoy only within a medium.
Enjoyment in some way is a surrogation. We need specific exotic place like Goa , specific food , music, lights etc., to enjoy. There is another pathos of enjoyment. It appears that one can only enjoy individually even in a group. The group becomes the atmosphere to enjoy. My interpretation of Levinas up to this point still remains within the philosophy of the subject that is within western tradition and is visible in the work of Slavoj Zizek and Badiou. But there is a shift from the metaphysics of the subject to the metaphysics of the object. It is the object that is objecting and calling the subject to respond. It is therefore, the Levinasian Other that calls the subject to responsibility. It the Levinasian Other that disrupts our enjoyment. It is the Levinasian Other that makes our enjoyment remain unfulfilled.
Hence, we can indeed think Lacan, jouissance and Levinas together. This is our actualism of enjoyment . Hence, understanding that all enjoyment remains unfulfilled will enable us to detach ourselves from the chain of signifiers attached to the consumerist market. It will enable us to seek freedom from our enslavement to consumerism. We can still pay heed to Levinasian Other (God) who calls us to responsibility as we enjoy our immersion into the market.
