SEXUAL SIMULACRAS

Given that Baudrillard died the other day, I thought I would write a brief post about cybersex. What is cybersex exactly? It is a form of mutual masturbation (or even just titillation) between two people who are, at that moment, not in bodily contact with each other, and who way well be thousands of miles apart. The form of communication is instant messaging, and there is almost always a small delay involved. The form varies, but usually the participants will know what the other looks like, for they will have exchanged photos. There is always the chance that the photo you receive will be a fake, but since both are eager to enter into, to believe, the fantasy, this should not present a problem.

Sometimes the photos will be of the person clothed, sometimes scantily clothed, sometimes not clothed at all. In this aspect, cybersex is an inherently generous affair - it absolutely respects the objet petit a, in that the other person´s looks really do not matter. If you have a cybersex partner who you find sexy, great. But if not, since the whole thing is about fantasy anyway, you would not be disrespectful to think of, or look at, someone else entirely.

Webcams may also feature, so that one or both participants can see each other´s sexual acts in real time ; here, often the participants will be two couples, voyeurs, poseurs, neurotics, exhibitionists, toy-addicts, toe-fetishists, scatters (well, sorry, but it´s true) etc etc.

Cybersex has not and will not replace sex qua sex, for it is itself another form of sex. (By the way, does anybody else get thoroughly pissed off when people say - ah, only penetration is sex, a blow-job isn´t sex, a hand-job isn´t sex, licking someone out isn´t sex - well, why the hell not??) People have regular cyber-partners, or cyber-fuck-buddies. This defines the phenomenon of hyper-reality, or the simulacrum, as well as anything. A profound (for we are forbidden from describing it in any other terms) human experience has been replicated by two people sitting at two computer-screens talking dirty to each other. Cybersex is truly, to quote Baudrillard, "the desert of the real." The unnavigable, non-symbolisable, non-articulable Real has been opened.

The advantages of contact-sex - let´s call it that, though it seems akin to comparing wrestling with snooker - over cybersex are obvious. Kinda. So what are they?

Before we answer that, let´s recall Barthes´ analysis of Parisian strip-joints : that the girl has an erotic impact upon the male viewer up until she is naked, whereupon the viewer experiences a terrible let-down (no, that´s not a pun - behave). Real, fleshy nudity can take the promise of sexuality and deflate it cruelly.

And, speaking of which, let´s recall the debate Andrew and I had recently about the promise of sex being always-already in the future. And being a space for pure narcissism (for what else is there?).

And let´s recall "Contract" by the Gang of Four :

The same again
Another disagreement
You dreamed of scenes
Like you read of in magazines
A new romance
Invented in the bedroom

Is this really the way it is
Or a contract in our mutual interest?
Is this really the way it is
Or a contract in our mutual interest?

Another disappointment
We couldn't perform
In the way the others wanted
These social dreams
Put in practice in the bedroom
Is this so private
Our struggle in the bedroom

So the fact that cybersex doesn´t allow for bodily contact, often doesn´t allow you to see your partner naked (or indeed see them at all), and the fact that it is, when it comes down to it, mutual masturbation, shouldn´t be necessarily negative factors.

So all those obvious advantages of actual sex - like I said, what are they?

DEATH DRIVE

This and the following post were originally written as one : an exploration into the psychology of pornography with specific reference to J.G. Ballard's Crash. That post became unwieldy, so I have split it up into the two posts here. This one considers Crash ; the following considers pornography and virtual reality. Since they were formulated in tamden, I suppose that is how they should be read.

*

After Freud's explorations within the psyche it is now the outer world which will have to be eroticised and quantified.

- J.G. Ballard, Preface to Crash

At the heart of Crash, J.G. Ballard's 1973 novel, is a kind of fantastical hyper-reality which I have only otherwise seen in pornography. It portrays a world where, unaffected by the stimuli provided by the human body, people find sexual excitement from participating in car crashes. The novel, like David Cronenberg's film adaptation, has no plot as such. Unlike most Hollywood films, which treat the audience to five minutes of sex before continuing with the principal storyline, in Crash the principal storyline is people having sex, over and over and over again. It aims for the core of human sexuality, to strip away all adornments, to deprive it of language and humanity, in order to find pure, unadorned sex.

Of course in reality, sex has no core. If a person’s brain was scanned while s/he was sexually aroused, something of their agitation might be revealed, but what characterises human sexuality – surface, symbolism and irreconcilable difference – would remain obscure. This is what I mean by the claim that sex is inherently pornographic : porn's acknowledgement of the depthlessness of sex makes it satisfying for the viewer, who becomes aroused by the very plasticity of the actors, the fakedness of the orgasms. But there is a notable lack of real orgasms in Crash. Sex has become a process, a flat plane, full of absolutely nothing.



The characters in Crash (and they are barely characters at all) are incapable of normal sexual arousal by each other. They are detached from their own bodies. In seeking the speed, the violence, the aggression of sex in car wrecks, its protagonists are searching for something primeval which man has lost.

Sometimes, when reading Ballard's novel it is difficult to tell what is being described - the bodywork of the car or the bodywork of a man or woman :

As she brought my penis to life I looked down at her strong back, at the junction between the contours of her shoulder demarked by the straps of her brassiere and the elaborately decorated instrument panel of this American car, between her thick buttock in my left hand and the pastel-shaded instrument binnacles of the clock and speedometer.



Lacan’s conception of the castration process explains why our sense of ourself is fundamentally divided - we are, at the same time, subject and object, self and other.

The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation - and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development.

- Jacques Lacan, 'The Mirror Stage'

It is this alienating identity, the product of the incompatability of the unified body and the divided ego which lies within, which is the source of neuroses. Along with the destruction of the present - caused by what Lacan, at his most Marxist, calls "the historical effort of a society to refuse to recognise that it has any function other than the utilitarian one" - it causes a death of effect, a lack of an outlet for our pleasure impulses, the deferral of all pleasure into the future.

Since we experience our own bodies as objects separate from ourselves, it is perhaps no wonder that we can only become aroused by inanimate objects. When the only part of ourselves that feels complete is the image of our own, alienated bodies, and when this is exacerbated by the fetishisation of the body via advertising and commercialisation, our bodies themselves become spectacular, inanimate objects.

'I' IS AN OTHER

'I' IS AN OTHER

Death is the only end to the odyssey of the pornographic imagination when it becomes systematic ; that is, when it becomes focused on the pleasures of transgression rather than merely pleasure itself.

- Susan Sontag, The Pornographic Imagination

Recently, the advent of the DVD has seen a curious introduction to the porn video : the bonus “behind the scenes footage”. This shows the actress, apparently just before or after the filming of the sex scene, being interviewed by the director. She is variously coquettish, flirtatious, shy, kooky – in other words, she is her natural self. The footage purports to show us the girl as she really is, away from the staging and the costumes and the moans and the siren’s gaze. But we should not mistake this for an admission that the sex scene is just theatre, that the “behind the scenes” scenes are real. The message here is, “Look – the girl is sexually charged even when she’s not acting! Even when the cameras are off her, she still wants to be fucked!"

*

The format of the 3D film, where two stereoscopic images are viewed in perfect synchronicity to produce an illusion of depth, feels remarkable because it transports us somewhere else, to an alternate, hyper-real world. Your stomach turns as you descend a rollercoaster. You flinch when a punch is directed towards you. You turn your head towards your armrest, where it appears that a cup of coffee has been placed. Given the intensification of the moving image which the third dimension produces, why has 3D pornography not taken off? With a bit of technology and imagination, surely one could create a sexual experience which sidesteps the inevitable impasse of the human sexual relationship?

Or perhaps the idea of of 3D pornography is a rather conservative one. Cyberspace, after all, offers us an advanced version of this phenomenon. The idea of cyberspace was conceived by William Gibson in his book Neuromancer as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation." Technology has turned Gibson's idea into a reality, and the term is now used quite generally to describe the Internet.

It remains an hallucination, of course. Behind the screen of your laptop there appears - quite literally, even physically - to exist another fluid and dynamic world. Social networking sites seem to offer us a place to communicate with friends and strangers. But who knows - many of these people may not exist, and even if they do, they are quite worldless. They exist to provide us with a really existing Other. Their effect is different, but their structure is like that of the analyst. They are the ego-ideal made flesh.

In an essay called "No sex please, we're posthuman," Zizek considers our problem in establishing the difference between the real world and what lies "beneath the screen" :

The uncanny feeling generated by playing with toys like tamagochi concerns the fact that we treat a virtual non-entity as an entity: we act "as if" (we believe that) there is, behind the screen, a real Self, an animal reacting to our signals, although we know well that there is nothing and nobody "behind," just the digital circuitry. However, what is even more disturbing is the implicit reflexive reversal of this insight: if there is effectively no one out there, behind the screen, what if the same goes for myself? What if the "I," my self-awareness, is also merely a superficial "screen" behind which there is only a "blind" complex neuronal circuit?

This, of course, is Lacan’s premise in his writings on the mirror stage. Early in its development, the child will identify with an image of itself – perhaps in the mirror, or from contact with its mother – whose unity jars with its motor incapacity. This image of the unified self means that the ego (the ‘I’ that Zizek refers to) is situated in what Lacan refers to as ‘a fictional direction’. We forever have an image of ourselves as being whole and complete, because this is how, corporeally, we appear to be. But we cannot tally this with the disrupted, fractured and incomplete nature of the way we feel. The unified self-as-other becomes an fictional ideal which we can never attain. If our lives were made into a film, we would choose this ego-ideal to play ourselves.

Virtual reality is a playground for our ego-ideal. When we spend time in cyberspace, we are not quite ourselves ; and when we engage in cybersex we may, as I have said before, come as close as possible to attaining the ego-ideal. The fact that cybersex is a non-bodily experience, a kind of virtual non-sex which bypasses the body, means that our perfect fantasy can be maintained. The awkward dialectic between our thoughts and our bodies is avoided. Of course, this can be dangerous, alienating oneself further and further from one’s body as one delves into the solipsistic comforts of the infobahn.

Which brings us back to porn. If our lives were made into a film, the sex scenes, as played by our ego-ideal, would probably be scenes straight out of a porn film. Developments in neural technology mean that a virtual pornography where, unlike the 3D film, one participates actively and physically in sex without actually encountering one's partner(s), may become possible.
As autonomous, constituent units, we would sally forth into a sexualised cyberspace, and stage our own sex scene, with neural transmissions providing us with a virtualised physicality. This should not be considered a particularly controversial nor a perverted concept. It is really an extension of the idea of cybersex, which many people take part in already, via Gibson's "consensual hallucination."

How might it work? And what might be its implications?

Neural implants are familiar to us via science and fiction. A device is attached to the cerebral cortex and records electrical activity in the brain. Using neuroimaging, this activity can be processed and implanted into the brain to stimulate neural networks. This has been used pathologically to restore sensory loss - a bionic eye which produces perceptions in the visual cortex - so might it not likewise be used to augment sensory / sexual impressions? Zizek quotes from Ray Kurzweil's The age of spiritual machines :

Your neural implants will provide the simulated sensory inputs of the virtual environment - and your virtual body - directly in your brain. A typical 'web site' will be a perceived virtual environment, with no external hardware required. You 'go there' by mentally selecting the site and then entering that world.

This reminds us of the Penfold Mood Organ in Philip K Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? whereby one can 'dial up' emotions (excitation, anxiety, depression, serenity). The combination one dials into the mood organ is regulated by subjective agency, but once a person is 'dialled up,' they are at the mercy of the Mood Organ. Could we not see neural implants in the same light?

Here lies the impasse of science. It is claimed that complete knowledge of the human genome will enable us to understand ourselves better and to re-program ourselves to eradicate our most painful disorders. But, as Zizek hints in the 'tamagochi' quote above, when we are reduced to a set of data, what can we mean by "we" and "us"? The claim that the human genome is a precise copy of ourselves (or rather, is ourselves) does not quite feel right. What is missing from the genetic information is the very thing which I claimed in my last post defines human sexuality : surface, symbolism and irreconcilable difference.

It is distance which makes cybersex exciting but rarely quite fulfilling ; it is proximity which makes physical sex threatening yet pulsatingly thrilling. Another obsession in the world of pornography is female ejaculation, or 'squirting'. This gynecological process involves a woman vigorously masturbating until, desperate and grimacing, she expels a stream of fluid (usually at the cameraman). Virtual porn, the unhappy medium to the extremes of sex and cybersex, might follow the same line - a solipsistic thud, a furious and gluttonous masturbation, a wretched, death-driven climax.

WE ALL FETISHISE

We all fetishise particular parts of the body when we look for a partner. Men and women will emphasise hair colour, or skin colour, or height, or breast size, or sometimes just a particular "look"; none of these characteristics are, in themselves, human. Even though psychoanalytic theories of repressed incestual desires remain largely subjects of ridicule, it is frequently accepted that a man will look for aspects of a woman which resemble those of his mother.

The girl who got on the 29 bus the other afternoon had what I considered nice eyes, hair and skin. So, as you do, I shot her a few passing glances. Not psychotic staring, you understand, just a couple of seconds looking, then a few minutes reading, then another couple of seconds looking, the back to my book etc etc. Before long she caught my eye and we looked at each other for one of those fairly short periods of time that feels like forever. I don't know why she looked back at me, but these extended glances continued until I got off the bus at Camden. Having my gaze returned so intensely made me feel excited, exposed, uneasy and diffident in equal measure. This is precisely what Lacan refers to as "the Gaze".



The Gaze

Our starting point here is that looking is never a meaningless act. It is as symptomatic of the unconscious as speaking or dreaming. Of course, the way that men and women look at each other is partly designated by social relations between the genders. John Berger begins one of his essays in Ways of Seeing thus:

A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man. By contrast a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura. One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.



We see that the relationship generated by the exchange of gazes on the bus was, in some sense, imbalanced, in spite of the fact that she returned my glances, that it was often my sense of disclosure which broke the exchange of glances, and that (God forbid) she may even have been looking at me for the same reason that I was looking at her.

Why might this be? What causes this imbalance? We have dismissed the notion that looking can ever be meaningless, but it is certainly true that different looks contain different levels of meaning because they are generated by different reactions to different situations and contain different relations of power. An image will provoke us in a certain way because of its imagery content, and because of the ways we have been taught to respond to it.







Why?

The Real

The act of looking is first imbued with meaning in early childhood, perhaps between six months and one year of age. Before this time, a child is in complete chaos: it cannot move or communicate independently, it cannot differentiate between itself, other people and the outside world, it does not possess any sense of subjectivity. This state of the world can be seen as the-world-as-not-seen-through-human-eyes. It is the unsubjectivised world, the world without human interventions, and, as such, is the nearest we ever come to what Lacan calls "the Real".



The Imaginary

When the child first sees its own image in a mirror (or encounters other children), it realises that it is, in fact, a separate and coherent entity, and not the bundle of chaos it originally thought it was. In one respect, this will be a joyous epiphany, but it is also inherently alienating since this initial awareness of the self is as an other, and because the child realises that it is separate from everything outside itself. The ego is thus, by definition, alienated and should not be trusted. This should not be surprising: the ego is simply the object of the ultimately more dominating superego and id. When, in Matthew's Gospel, Christ becomes tempted by the Devil, he finds himself in the invidious position of the ego: subject to the demands of moral law and dissolute jouissance.

The image in the mirror becomes elevated to the level of fantasy (what Lacan refers to as the "ideal-I"). Throughout our adult lives we aspire to close the gap between this coherent, complete image and the chaotic self we feel internally. This estrangement of the ego from the rest of the psyche never leaves us - hence the frequent feeling of surprise when one sees oneself in the mirror.

One analysand recalled looking at a photograph and seeing a male figure in the background. The man saw that this figure, despite not being the subject of the photo, had a presence which pervaded the image. He was fascinated by this figure, simultaneously venerating and envying him. It was only after much scrutiny that he realised the figure was, in fact, himself in a scene from several years ago. His initial response to this realisation was relief, but it very quickly returned to disappointment. In the sense that we aspire to, and yet resent the idealisation of, our "ideal-I", we have both a sadistic and masochistic attitude towards ourselves.



The Symbolic

After the Mirror Stage come the Oedipus and Castration Complexes. Like Freud, Lacan says that to achieve "normal" adult sexuality, we must accept that we cannot have our mother. Freud says that this acceptance must come about by the intervention of the father, who lets the child know that it cannot have its mother, but reassures it that one day it will be able to have its own love object. Lacan agrees with this, but takes it further: the intervention of the father also happens at a social level. We learn laws, social conventions etc which permit and prohibit certain behaviours, especially those relating to sex. These social rules are what Lacan calls the "Big Other" (equivalent to what Althusser calls "ideological states apparatuses") and our subsumation into the "Big Other" is produced by the intervention of the "Name of the Father" - not a literal father, but a kind of paternalistic-tyannical social code.

The "Name of the Father" coincides with the learning of language (around 2-4 years old) which launches us into the Symbolic Order. Lacan's great insight is that the acquisition of language actually limits our communication. If there is no language there is, by definition, nothing that cannot be communicated. Language, with its rules and structures, is incapable of expressing many human thoughts, and it is certainly not capable of communicating the truth of subjectivity. The biggest mistake a person in a relationship can make is to ask his partner how much she loves him - and if he does, she must refuse to reply. Language cannot express love and any attempt to do so will limit one's love, and give it parameters.

So by around the time we start primary school, we have entered both the Imaginary and the Symbolic Orders. At this point, we are really quite ready to embark on any sexual adventure, except for the fact that our anatomy is not ready. Shortly after this point (and perhaps for that reason) our sexuality goes underground until we hit puberty.

Lack and Loss

The effects of living in both the Imaginary and Symbolic Orders are that we aspire to be like the fantasised "ideal-I" of ourselves, but also that our desires are created and kept in check by the society we live in. So, for example, the boy or girl we choose as our partner acts as a mirror for our fantasy image of ourselves. This is why falling in love is fundamentally narcissistic. The effects of entering the Symbolic Order are different for men and women, however. In accepting his own inadequacy, and by accepting the dictates of society, the man is able to realise his sexual desires (what Lacan calls "reaching the phallus"), but his very acceptance of these dictates means his pursuit of sex will be in some way limited. Women do not lose anything (anatomically or socially) through the Castration process (because they do not have a penis / Penis in the first place). Thus, their pursuit of sex will be less constrained by the world around them: they will, in Lacanian terms, be freer in their jouissance, but because reaching the phallus (which, by the way, is symbolic and thus applies both to men and women) entails an acceptance of loss, they will never reach the phallus to the same extent as men.

Reality

Let's return to the girl on the bus and imagine the following scenario:

What if, upon answering her mobile phone, I had discovered that she had a particularly braying voice? What if the Mona Lisa had a speech defect? Why is David Beckham attractive so long as he keeps his mouth shut? Beckham is instructive here, because actually he remains attractive even when he does speak, precisely because of what he does. As John Berger implies, Beckham's phallic pull comes from his talents as a footballer. It is difficult to imagine a male sex symbol who would be attractive solely for the way he looks. Female sex symbols are frequently models; male sex symbols never are. Our perception of men is that their phallic power comes from their place in the Symbolic Order as much as (if not more than) in the Imaginary Order.

We have implied that the phallus (by definition, since it is taken away from the infant) is incomplete, and that men and women need to find mates who complement each other and complete the phallus. But since we exist in both the Imaginary and Symbolic Orders, the phallus becomes, in a sense, both real and Real. Which means that, whatever the relationship between me and the girl on the 29 bus, we were both predetermined to be reticent about communicating to each other. But perhaps that's a good thing; after all, if communicating can only tarnish the Real of love, perhaps such matters are better left unspoken.

ABSOLUTION

1.

Guilt is always closely followed by disgust: disgust at oneself, of course, but also at the other person for being your victim. And if they have not discovered the heinous crime you have committed against them, well then they are all the more pitiful for remaining in ignorance.

Disgust towards the object of your betrayal does not arise from the act, but from the thought of betrayal. If one seriously considers adultery and then backs out at the last minute, one will still be unable to look one's partner in the eye. From the point of view of guilt, therefore, it does not matter much whether you go through with the liaison or not: it is the thought that counts.

The Lacanian theory of guilt is complex, but it seems to revolve around the desire to get caught, the desire for punishment. This is both conscious and unconscious. A person who has considered adultery might call out the name of "the other woman" during sex with his partner. Another person might choose to go on an illicit date to a place where she subconsciously knows she will get caught. Either way, s/he will get found out and be subjected to the punishment which is the only thing that will absolve her/is guilt.

Sometimes - in fact, very often - guilt is present only at an unconscious level, and might be evident only through symptoms. So a man who desires a female friend might start reading authors favoured by her, or to take a more common example, might start dreaming about her. Whether it is conscious or unconscious, guilt is ubiquitous.



2.

If we are talking about conscious and unconscious guilt being correspondent, we must refine our ideas of moral agency. For while the adulterer and the person tempted by adultery might be culpable, surely the person who merely thinks lustful thoughts about his colleague in his sleep cannot be at fault?

This would appear to be our first lesson: guilt is not about apportioning blame. Sinthome comes up with an excellent Lacanian formulation for guilt here:

An examination of actual actions seems to do little good in alleviating the feelings of guilt, as these events and situations in the present are only occasions for satisfying one's guilt, they are not the cause of one's guilt.

What causes guilt, says Lacan, is “giving ground relative to one’s desire.” In other words, guilt is inextricably linked to desire : they are like sister drives, inseparable from one another. To make any sense of this, we must remember how desire works.

3.

Put simply, desire is what is left over when a demand is unfulfilled. If I want to be admired at work, but find my efforts disregarded and ignored by my boss and my colleagues, this will set off a desire : either for self-betterment, or to be more assertive, or to wreak revenge on my inattentive colleagues.

Likewise, if I demand sex from my partner (by this I mean if my body demands sexual fulfilment) and my partner does not wish to have sex, this will set off a series of possible desires. One of these might be to find sexual fulfilment elsewhere. If I “give ground to this desire,” guilt will surely follow.

So what are we to do?

We can try to forget about our desires, pretend they do not exist, carry on as normal. But, by definition, you cannot snuff out a desire. You can try out all sorts of tricks to “put it to the back of your mind,” but it will always return to haunt you. It may not return as an overt desire (wanting to fuck your colleague), but rather disguised as something else. We can see how this could be far more dangerous than the original, unrepressed desire.



4.

Better, Lacan says, not to “give ground to one’s desire.” It is important here not to confuse desire with need. If you want to fuck a particular person other than your partner, this is not a desire, but a need, or even a demand. Desire does not work on this conscious level. It is formulated through a network of inter-subjective influences, but actually it is simply a gap.

You may create an object which you think will fulfil your desire (the “other woman”), and you will choose an object on the basis of fantasies. You may work yourself into a frenzy chasing this person, trying to second-guess them, working out what you mean to them, how your fill their own gap of desire. You may think that in fulfilling your fantasies, you will fulfil your desire. But you are fooling yourself. There is no object to desire; it is ephemeral; it is nothingness made flesh.

In order not to give ground to our unconscious desires, Lacan says we must engage with them. We must jump into the abyss of our unconscious and become master of it, rather than the other way round.

5.

One would expect the superego to be at the heart of desire and guilt. It is usually seen as the part of the psyche which commands us not to follow our basest instincts, but to obey those laws and principles to which we, as decent members of society, are expected to adhere. It is, in other words, our browbeating moral compass.

Not so, says Lacan. The message of the superego is not “Do your duty!”, but “Enjoy your duty!” Zizek uses the example of a parent coercing his child to go and see his grandmother. The repressive parent will say, “I don’t care if you want to, just do it!” Whereas the superego figure will say, “You should only go and see grandma if you wish to; though you know how much she would like to see you.” As Zizek explains,

The trick performed by the superego is to seem to offer the child a free choice, when, as every child knows, he is not being given any choice at all. Worse than that, he is being given an order and told to smile at the same time. Not only: 'You must visit your grandma, whatever you feel,' but: 'You must visit your grandma, and you must be glad to do it!' The superego orders you to enjoy doing what you have to do. What happens, after all, if the child takes it that he has a genuinely free choice and says 'no'? The parent will make him feel terrible. 'How can you say that!' his mother will say: 'How can you be so cruel! What did your poor grandma do to make you not want to see her?'

There is something deeply totalitarian in this message. Think back to Nazism or Stalinism, or the image we have of North Korea today. The message which these regimes give to their people is: “This is your duty – if you do not enjoy carrying it out, you are guilty.”



6.

The postmodern superego thus increases the risk of our carrying out an immoral act, and increases the likelihood of our feeling guilty. We are awash with mixed messages: the Decalogue may tell us that adultery is forbidden, but our media tells us we should be fucking regularly, preferably with a selection of different people.

Similarly, the American soldier who has today been jailed for killing an Iraqi, claimed that “I knew that we were doing something wrong. I wanted to be part of the team. I wanted to be loyal.” All the time we hear two conflicting symbolic voices. One is the voice of traditional morality (something like the Kantian voice, or the Christian “do as you would be done by”). The other is the voice of liberal subjectivity (“you are a free human being – you decide what’s right”). Only, as Zizek explains above, there really is no choice.

Lacan’s solution – to take responsibility for our unconscious desire – is especially difficult, partly because desires struggle against each other, bend and shape each other. But also because the symptoms which expose our hidden desires – our dreams, our temptations, our feelings of paranoia and neurosis and guilt – are themselves repetitions of other events, long since repressed. The object of the exercise must be to reject the duties which the superego imposes, and to wrest from it control of one’s responsibilities. This all sounds rather weasel-worded - but Sinthome’s concluding questions might be a better place to start:

- What is this mysterious desire?

- How do we discover this mysterious desire?

- How is this mysterious desire to be distinguished from jouissance or enjoyment?

- If jouissance is the guilt-producing command of the superego in which I give way on my desire, what does it mean to avow my desire (if not to enjoy)?

A FARMER FINDS HIMSELF STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH ONLY JESSICA SIMPSON FOR COMPANY

A farmer finds himself stranded on a desert island with only Jessica Simpson for company. They start talking, get to know each other, and eventually the farmer succeeds in getting Jessica into bed. They make love in every position imaginable, and Jessica caters for the farmer’s every sexual whim.

When they have finished, the farmer turns to Jessica and says: “I have one more request. I would like you to cut your hair short, draw a fake moustache on your face, wear a man’s suit, and talk with a deep voice.”

“But why?” Jessica asks. “Is this how you get your kicks? Are you really into transvestites?”

“No no, it’s nothing like that,” says the farmer. “But please, just do this for me.” So while the farmer walks away to give her some space, Jessica shaves her head, draws a bushy moustache on her upper lip and puts on a suit as the farmer requested. When she is done, the farmer returns and says, “Listen mate, you’ll never guess what I’ve just done – I’ve just shagged Jessica Simpson!”

*

In the first of his Lacanian masterclasses today, Slavoj Zizek used this joke to illustrate what Lacan means by the Big Other. It is a paradox we have all experienced in real life: after having sex with someone very attractive, we are often less satisfied than after having sex with someone less attractive. We have satisfied our explicit sexual urges, but there is still something left over. In other words, sex – like any human interaction – is never just about the two people involved. There is a third entity which also hovers over us, which monitors us, and which we wish to satisfy.

This third entity is part of what is meant by the Big Other, and Zizek, ever the master exemplifier, also mentions the phenomenon immediately after elections in which the government retains power, but with a much reduced majority, whereby political pundits say that “the electorate has sent a message to the government.” Well, how have they done this exactly? Which particular members of the electorate have sent this message? And, indeed, what is the message? The reality is that this is media bullshit: some people have stuck with the government, while many others have diverted their vote elsewhere. But again, it assumes the existence of an amorphous collective being which speaks for and represents us. Of course, the logical question which proceeds this is: do we (collectively) make up the Big Other, or does the Big Other determine us?

I would suggest the latter is true. This should not be controversial; it follows logically from the position of the superego. But whereas Freud’s structure of the psyche insinuates an idealism, whereby something non-material and instrinsic precedes the reality of a person’s moral codes, Lacan’s structure of the psyche – where the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary imbricate each other in a Borromean knot – is rooted in materialism. The Big Other does not arise out of nothing; it is not a mere idea. Over the next couple of posts, I will try to explore where it arises from.

TODAY IS NATIONAL MASTURBATION DAY

Today in National Masturbation Day in America. I kid you not.

But why should the Yanks have all the fun? The official website for this great day recommends that you should "spend quality time with yourself throughout the day-call in late to work or extend your lunch break and spend it masturbating!" I am not one for superfluous exclamation marks, but I think that suggestion richly deserves one. Why? Let me count the reasons:

1. Because masturbation is immensely pleasurable, invigorating, rejuvenating and fun.
2. Because masturbation proclaims that sex is good in, by, and for itself.
3. Because masturbation makes you a better lover.
4. Because you can have more sex more often.
5. Because sexual pleasure is each person's birthright.
6. Because masturbation is the ultimate safe sex.
7. Because masturbation is a joyous expression of self love.
8. Because masturbation offers numerous health benefits including menstrual cramp relief, stress reduction, endorphin release, stronger pelvic muscles, reduction of prostate gland infection for men and resistance to yeast overgrowths for women.
9. Because masturbation is an excellent cardiovascular workout.
10. Because each person is their own best lover.
11. Because masturbation with a partner can be educational and hot.
12. Because masturbation increases sexual awareness.

So girls, use that washing-machine for the purpose it was intended; and boys, use it or lose it, as they say. I'm off for a joyous expression of self love. Catch you later...

BEWARE, I MIGHT GROW TO ENJOY IT

“Beware, I might grow to enjoy it,” says Wanda to Severin in Masoch’s Venus in Furs.

This is the paradox within masochism. The recipient of violence in a masochistic situation is also its instigator; he sets its parameters and directs its action. Its conditions are set out in a contract to which both masochist and torturer agree: the masochist will educate his mistress, and will stage-direct the relationship. But the torturer will inevitably fail in her role; she cannot learn by the masochist’s rules. She will either be insufficiently cruel, or she will be too cruel and turn sadistic. Hence Wanda’s warning to Severin.



I get a thrill from punishment – I’ve always been that way

It seems de trop to state that power structures dictate the course of the sadistic or masochistic relationship, but it is prescient to describe how language distorts and refracts power.

Violence does not speak and sexuality is not spoken about. Since neither is verbalised, they must necessarily belong in the realm of the Real. Here lies a further paradox: how do we speak of the sort of sex whose rapture is beyond words? James Joyce uses a vocabulary of 30,000 words in Ulysses, yet even he cannot find the words to describe his sexuality. In his letters to his wife Nora, he suggests that she insert the letters inside her. Not knowing how to make his love and desire for her speak, he literally wants his erotic words to enter Nora’s body.

Letters are all important in Masoch’s fiction. The masochist’s situation is essentially a lonely one: it is his words that do the talking in his relationship, but he needs to hear them from the mouth of another human being, a surrogate mother figure.

But, as Gilles Deleuze states in his essay Coldness and Cruelty, the sadist wishes to demonstrate “that reasoning itself is a form of violence, and that he is on the side of violence, however calm and logical he may be.” His violence is impersonal, yet requires a person or persons to receive it. The imperative and descriptive elements of his language express his individual tastes, but there are also obsessive aspects to his language which appeal to this idea – repetition, accumulation, acceleration.

This is why sadism and masochism are incompatible, despite their intersections. Whereas the masochistic relationship is based on a pact, for the sadist, total possession is the essential component – accord is the last thing he wants. The masochist would not tolerate the sadist (because the masochistic theatre must always be directed by the masochist himself), and the sadist would not tolerate the masochist (because he is a willing recipient of punishment); the sadist wants a non-compliant victim.



Cut the stallion at his mount – and stuff it in his mouth

Lacan’s theory of the structure of psychosis suggests that the psychotic patient is one who has not passed through the Oedipal channel from Imaginary to Symbolic: he has not acknowledged the Name of the Father. Indeed, he sees the Law as a charade, and supposes there must be an Other of the Big Other which actually pulls the strings.

The sadist is trapped in the Real, and is working within aberrant registers of nature and negation. Indeed, for the sadist the application of negativity is almost arbitrary since in the symbolic realm the negative can only be defined in relation to accepted positives; it is precisely these positives to which the psychotic cannot submit himself.

Absolute negativity is impossible, “hence the rage and despair of the sadistic hero when he realises how paltry his own crimes are in relation to the idea which he can only reach through the omnipotence of reasoning.” Though aspects of it will pervade reality, primary nature can only exist in the Real. Pure negation is absolute – it has no benchmarks. “But in point of fact this original nature cannot be given: secondary nature alone makes up the world of experience, and negation is only ever given in the partial processes of the negative. Therefore, original nature is necessarily the object of an idea, and pure negation is a delusion.”

The sadist is essentially a loner whose frustration is that he needs people on which to commit his violence. His particular brand of evil is determined by laws and dictates, and is thus immoral rather than amoral. He cannot act in cold blood.



Spit upon his face and scream – there is no Oedipus today

The masochist’s preference also arises from an interruption in the Oedipal process. But whereas the sadist wishes to vanquish the symbolic Father, Deleuze suggests that the masochist does not aim for absolute negation or destruction. Instead he works through a capricious cycle of denial – distortion – disavowal (Freud’s verneinung – verwerfung – verleugnung). Rather than wiping out reality, the masochist disavows it so that he can create an alternative ideal. Zizek notes that “masochism confronts us with the paradox of the symbolic order qua the order of ‘fictions’: there is more truth in the mask we wear, in the game we play, in the ‘fiction’ we obey and follow, that in what is concealed beneath the mask.”

The masochist’s flexible, playful dialectic contrasts with the sadist’s brutality as he oscillates between actual and idealised reality. Postponement and suspension of sexual pleasure is thus a key component of masochism – it is, in short, a waiting game. In Masoch, repetition is dramatic and “frozen”; in Sade it is accelerating and mechanical. This – repeated, fruitless negation on the one hand, suspension and disavowal on the other – is the key distinction between the two forms.
Masoch’s ideal woman is, Deleuze says, a synthesis of the sensual (uterine) and the sadistic (Oedipal) woman. Her qualities are a combination of both: “cold / maternal – severe – icy – sentimental – cruel.” Deleuze argues with Lacan that entry into the symbolic world is not necessarily dependent on the Name of the Father. In a masochistic situation, the Name of the Mother is the determining factor. Secondary, rather than primary, nature wins. The Oedipal complex thus works in an entirely different way to normal – the oral mother, having contained everything else, becomes a Spinozistic single matter.

In masochism, if the beater is the father, the beaten is the self-as-father – therefore, there is somehow a desire to humiliate the father through oneself. The properties of the father in both functions is thus transferred to the self and the mother figure; the father is no longer necessary.



Make the sacrifice – mutilate my face

Sado-masochism is, therefore, an empty umbrella term for violent sexual behaviour.
Sadism and masochism may cross over, but only at the end of each act. At the end of Venus in Furs, Wanda turns, at the behest of her somewhat absurd male lover, into a genuine sadist (as opposed to a torturer in the masochistic context). Severin is unable to maintain control, and loses her. To regain command, he also turns sadistic. So the masochist has, through the penance of pain, purged himself of the masochistic instinct so that he may become sadistic; the sadist, as an ultimate sign of power, performs his sadism against himself. But this latter conversion is not the same as masochism: it is more like the tough guy who demands that others punch him as hard as possible in the stomach to prove his resilience, or like the violence-directed-towards-the-self by Edward Norton in the film Fight Club. In either case, a conversion is not an inevitable part of the process: it is a “paradoxical by-product.”

As a coda, it is worth asking what the significance is of ‘sado-masochism’ in its softest form whereby, for example, a couple will spice up their sex life by exploring light bondage, uniforms etc. This form of ‘sado-masochism,’ being neither sadistic nor masochistic, adds further levels of fiction and reality to the game. Its uncomfortable archness and forced sniggering is like a repressed repression, but it nevertheless hints at a space which modern, raunch-culture sexuality (where sex is de-sexed, where even naked flesh is a cover-up, where the gap between what is desired and what can actually be given yawns ever wider) cannot reach: a suspension within the Real. Or, in short, a glimpse of ecstacy.

LABOURERS OF LOVE

Capitalism has not served women well. It does not matter much whether you are a feminist or not. You may believe that the prime opposition is one fundamentally of gender (and that all further opposition emerge from that), or one of economics and class, or whatever ; one merely has to face facts. There remins a dramatic inequality of income between the sexes, and nothing essential changes about the expectations of a woman's role in the family.

It is more than 50 years since Simone de Beauvoir wrote this:

We are told that femininity is in danger ; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear then that every female human being is not necessarily a woman ; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth?

This could have been written yesterday. The glamour model captures woman's divided subjectivity perfectly. It is not what she looks like which gives her an allure, but how she looks, and specifically how her look makes the male observer feel. The reader of Zoo Magazine can have his ego massaged by the doe-eyed teen who, having been objectified, in turn objectifies him. He gazes at the model who gazes back at him. This is not new : images of naked women, from the high-art nude through to the girly-mag pin-up, show woman being submissive, yet quite inaccessible.



The objectification of women by men (however much the image of a woman might sometimes emasculate the male viewer, the relationship is nonetheless always that of male-viewer and female-viewed) will manifest itself in all areas of life. Most men nowadays don't object to women working, but many will disparage the career woman. There is something about the idea of women as direct competitors which deeply unsettles men. On the face of it, much has been accomplished for "women's right" since de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex. Women have entered the workplace, have achieved economic independence and, according to the law, they are the equals of their male colleagues. There is flexibility which might allow a woman to fulfil the dual role of breadwinner and mother successfully : there are female role models to prove it.

Yet, according to a new report from the Equal Opportunities Commission, "more than 30 years after the Equal Pay Act made it illegal to pay women less for doing the same job, a 17% gender pay gap in full-time hourly earnings still exists. For part-time workers the full-time hourly pay-gap is 38%." It is significant that the gap is most marked for part-time work : what remains decidedly unchanged since The Second Sex is the expectation that women will raise families, and women who do so will be more likely to seek part-time work. This expectation is driven by economic reality : if women stopped having children, our exponential populations and economies would collapse. But there is another economic reality by which women must abide : if they do not work, our economies will also be unsustainable.

Traditionally, women's work has been thought of as the five C's : cleaning, catering, caring, cashiering and clerical work. These are considered the natural preserve of women, jobs which, while they may not pay as well as "men's work," fit nicely into women's lives and offer them "a bit of independence." In the past, progressive policy-makers have attempted to move women out of these kinds of jobs and into other areas of work, as though the low rates of pay in the five C's are inherent rather than generated by the predominance of women. But this has resulted in the rates of pay in those other areas of work which women have entered and come to dominate decreasing too :

The entry of women into occupations such as banking and teaching - both once male preserves - has been associated with a lowering over time of their pay and status.

...

Between 1991 and 2000 the average pay of male bank managers declined relative to the overall median pay by 50% at the same time as the proportion of bank managers who were women increased from 1 in 5 to more than 1 in 3.

...

Working in a female-dominated occupation is more detrimental to your pay level than being a woman per se.

A care assistance, for instance, will earn, on average, £7.61 per hour, whereas a car mechanic will earn £9.72. A nurse will earn £13.44, whereas a police officer will earn £15.91. It does not matter if the care assistant or the nurse is male or female, merely that s/he is in an occupation dominated by women.

Because of the inconsistent work patterns which inevitably follow from the double task of child-rearing and bread-winning, women are only entitled to, on average, 70% of the state pension. In fact, the economic inequity between men and women presents itself later on in the form of pensioner poverty on two fronts : firstly because many women are receiving their full pension, and secondly because one of those C's - caring - which we referred to above as being such a neglected profession is required by something like 15% of the elderly population. And as our society ages, that figure will increase. It is as if older people are being punished for not being productive - but in fact, via paid work, volunteering and caring, the economic contribution of older people in London is such that without them, the capital would sink to its knees.

Inequality in pay is an exemplar of the myth that legislation and policy alone will change things. To change assumptions about the role of men and women, one first needs to alter the economic systems which bolster those assumptions. Undoubtedly, the disparity between the sexes predates our current economic system, but the rights of women had never really been considered before the twentieth century. Now that women have achieved political independence, it is time to reach for economic independence as well.

PADDINGTON SWAPS WELLINGTONS FOR DANCING SHOES...

It might seem odd to begin an account of my trip so far by discussing dance. I am not much of a dancer really. I enjoy the dirty dog as much as the next man and I do not move with the lumpen wobbliness that proved so amusing to my friends at university. But nevertheless, when Buenos Aires welcomed me at immigration last week, it did so safe in the knowledge that I was not about to set the world of tango alight.

My only previous experience at dancing the tango, this time last year, was truly traumatic. The lesson was in Spanish, and so I did not even realise that I, the man, am required to lead every step. Consequently, I was dancing with experienced middle-aged women who expected me to lead and were sadly disappointed when I remained frozen to the ground. This emasculating experience was compounded by the presence at the class of a girl who I fancied like mad. So I spent the evening neurotically searching the room for her, checking that she was not being charmed by someone rather more proficient on his feet than myself. Ah, the curse of the male ego...



But two things have warmed me to the tango in the last week or so. The first was a truly wonderful show in the San Telmo barrio of Buenos Aires. Usually tango shows play a lot of very old music, weeping with melodrama and sentiment and devoid of any sensual tension. After ten minutes of this, I generally lose the will to live. But this show centred around the music of Astor Piazzolla, one of the great musical interpreters of sex and seduction. Piazzolla revolutionised tango, partly by adding new instruments and scales, but also by adding two integral sexual elements : conflict and deferral. When a couple dances to Piazzolla´s music, they engage in a theatre whereby both interact with each other, facilitate each other´s virtuoso performances, but spend little time actually dancing in union. There is a certain
masturbatory violence to this sort of tango ; it treats sex as a necessary farce. If western bump-n-grind is a porn flick, and traditional tango is a romantic melodrama, then Piazzolla´s tango is Lynch´s Blue Velvet.



The second thing to have fired my enthusiasm for tango is that last night, in my second ever tango lesson, my partner and I were judged the best couple in the hostel and were awarded a litre bottle of Quilmes. To be honest, we won in spite of my performance, which was described by the American Idol-style as "inexperienced, yet faintly folkloric". My partner had danced tango before and she devised a clever way in which she would lead the step but make it appear that I was in charge. And it was these archaic gender values which won the day.

I am now in Bariloche, a tourist mecca in the heart of the Argentine Lake District. The scenery is beautiful, though its chocolate-boxiness does very little for me personally. It is Alpine (specifically Swiss) in feel but Andean in scale. I plan to do very little here except read, write and do a spot of trekking. My original plan was to spend Christmas in Santiago, but I have heard little positive about Chile´s capital. From what I can make out, it is an LA-style concrete jungle. Besides, whenever I leave Buenos Aires I always feel like a virtual magnet is pulling me back. I must spend another two weeks there before moving north-westwards to Bolivia, so that is where I will spend Christmas and New Year. Other countries are like playgrounds for neurotic foreigners, perenially searching for the pure travelling experience. Such an idea is an example of the petit objet a - it does not exist in any form other than a western desire to engage with the Other. No doubt I shall seek it out once I reach Bolivia (where I plan to couch-surf and do some voluntary work in a women´s refuge), but for now I am very happy sipping coffee and watching the world go by.

Ciao for now amigos - hasta luego...

NOTHING THAT IS SO, IS SO

“Nothing that is so, is so,” says Feste the clown in Twelfth Night, a play about disguise, deception and duplicity. Twelfth Night is evoked in two books I have read recently. One is Michael Rosen’s William Shakespeare, the other Darian Leader’s Why do Women Write More Letter than they Post? Rosen’s book is an attempt to resuscitate Shakespeare from the metaphysics, the academic emphases on theme, plot, character, imagery etc, and from the nostalgic slop which stifles and mortifies his plays. Shakespeare is thus reborn as a radical poet who, while exploring concrete socio-political issues in late sixteenth century Europe, comes alive when applied to ourselves and our own unfortunate world.

Leader’s book might be described as Lacan for Idiots, except that it is an intelligent book which explains psychoanalytic concepts with reference to literature, culture and actual case-studies. Both books, in other words, take two modernist giants, dust them off the shelves, and throw them into the real world.

Rosen’s book could loosely be described as Marxist and Leader’s is unequivocally Freudian, yet both seem fascinated by the ambiguity of reality which Feste so succinctly frames. Conventional wisdom says that while Marx and Freud agree that appearances are often deceptive, Marx locates the source of this deception in economic relations, and Freud in the structure of the psyche. Or to put it another way, Karl and Sigmund are the two great therapists of the modern age, each diagnosing mankind as fundamentally alienated – in Marx’s analysis we are alienated from our fellow humans, in Freud’s we are alienated from ourselves.

I missed the Marxism 2006 plenary which asked if Freud was a reactionary or a progressive, but it seems to be a question which vexes Marxists of the classical school. There appears to be much concern that Freud is not scientific, or is not a materialist, or has even (as Adam Curtis’s film The Century of the Self demonstrates) been a tool for capitalism. In fact, I would argue that Marx and Freud (and, why not, Shakespeare) are supreme dialecticians who recognise that “external” economic factors and “internal” psychical factors constantly reflect back on each other. They are natural bedfellows and Marxists who ignore or close their eyes to Freud put their own position in peril.

* * *



One might sum up Freudian psychoanalysis by asserting that adult life is a recovery period for the trauma of childhood. In infancy, it is established that our raison d’etre is to fall in love unconditionally with someone who reciprocates that love. The trauma occurs when we realise that the person for whom and to whom that love corresponds – our parents, or more specifically our mother – cannot possibly fulfil that role in real life. Already there is a dialectic between the psyche and the outside world: it is less the biological impossibility of a sexual or romantic union between parent and child than the social proscription (the incest taboo) that prohibits it.

The solution to this trauma lies in the postponement of the ideal love relationship. The proverbial letter-of-the-law, which is broadcast via the parental voice. should reassure us that while we cannot function as a love object for our parent (and vice-versa), an unconditional union will be possible with another person in the future. This guarantee in itself presents significant paradoxes, not least of which is the common but misguided notion that “there is somebody out there for all of us.”

The way that humans desire presents a dual conundrum. Firstly, satisfaction of a desire always lessens or even negates it. This is fundamental, and it implies that the common formula which explains why the forbidden fruit is supremely desirable is misleading. It is not the verboten nature of the fruit that makes it desirable, but rather that our desire of the fruit is what makes it forbidden. Desire, here, comes first.

The second conundrum of desire is that it is socially driven. Darian Leader neatly illustrates this via the example of the railway refreshment trolley. When one hears the rattle of the trolley coming down the aisle, one does not necessarily feel hungry or thirsty; but one is more likely to buy a coffee if one sees a fellow passenger buying one first. Desire, as Lacan says, is the desire of the other.

What this means is that the promised love-object can never absolutely materialise. For some, it does not even present itself. Not everybody finds a mate, and their desire must therefore be sublimated, or transferred onto something else: other social relationships, physical activities, intellectual pursuits, careers etc. But even for those who do find a partner, there will always be an aspect of desire which cannot be satisfied. Indeed, a surplus of desire is essential for any relationship to survive.



What we are saying here is that human desire always requires a partial dissatisfaction (which, as the word suggests, often entails considerable frustration and discomfort). Surfeit of desire is not represented by anything human, because no human is capable of representing it. Witness Truffaut’s Day for Night, where the female lead, having been the non-requiting love object throughout the film, finally says (I paraphrase), “Ok, ok, go ahead and fuck me,” only to find that the guy cannot bring himself to fuck her. We might see his inability as pathetic, but in fact it is simply an acknowledgement that (a) no sexual act could ever match the desire he has had for her, and (b) that she, in reality, does not represent that desire.

This desire, which has (and can have) no human representation, is what Lacan calls the Phallus. The Phallus is “worldless”, except that that is actually the description Ernesto Laclau gives to capital.

Any cogent person can easily discount new-age, self-help, here-is-your-route-to-happiness books. They are born of the pressure, created partially by the pseudo-psychotherapeutic industry, to live a life of harmony. It is completely inconsistent with the Freudian therapy (if we can call it that) for our innate alienation, which is to discard the illusory notion of harmony and accept discord and conflict for what they are – unavoidable features of human existence. This is not to say that we should reject happiness, but that we should recognise that is not a given, and cannot be forced. Now, if this is not dialectical materialism, I don’t know what is.

* * *

A number of questions lead on from this, none of which I shall attempt to answer in this post. How do we proceed from the psychological to the social / political? How might we use Freud to advance Marx? If the phallus – the Real object of desire – is analogous to the notion of capital – the Real object of capitalism – how might psychoanalysis help those of us who wish to see an end to capitalism achieve our objective? Or is it just too simplistic to associate Freud and Marx in this way?

Firstly, it might be helpful to explore briefly what reality and fiction actually mean. Let’s do this by comparing sex and cybersex (this is Homo Ludens after all). Physical sex usually requires some sort of suppression – one has to keep one’s darkest desires in check. One only has to read an issue of Cosmopolitan (I wouldn’t recommend it to be honest) to see the limits of sexual fantasy that are accepted by society. But during cybersex, one can talk as filthily as one likes – your inhibitions can be left at the door. So which of these situations is the more real?

Zizek notes a similarity in the phenomenon of placid young men who play violent computer games. Is the man in question a placid young man “playing” at shooting up as many enemies as he can find, or is he actually a latently violent young man who “plays” at being docile because that is what society expects him to be? Is it conventional intercourse or dirty fantasies that maketh the man?



Social and political life differ from introspective psychological experiences because the former contain meanings only insofar as they can be articulated via language. In one’s thoughts and dreams, signifieds buzz around chaotically, often with nothing to signify them, or turn them into values that we can order and make sense of. Social life is, in other words, filtered by language. Psychoanalysis accepts psychological difficulties because it recognises there is no alternative – must politics do the same, and if not, why not?

I am struggling here to be honest, but what I am trying to tease out is precisely how two diagnoses of human alienation (shared and psychological) might lead to some sort of shared treatment. I absolutely refute the kind of Villa Road, proto-Janovian collective primal scream deal, but actually let’s ask the question anyway: what might a socio-political therapy session look like?

PADDINGTON'S 350(ish) MUSICAL MONADS

Apologies for the protracted absence : Paddington is off to Latin America next Monday, where hopefully the solace of being back in his native continent will inspire him to update his blog rather more frequently.

In the meantime, I ask you to indulge me a little. People who can write about music write about it ; those of us who can't make lists. What follows is a pretty much exhaustive list of what I believe every music fan should have on his or her ipod. Actually, I don't own an ipod - I only bought my first CD walkman last year - but the album has become such a staid format, and such a dull commodity, that I almost never listen to one from track 1 to track 13. Even new purchases get played on shuffle mode. So this selection, a mixture of essential albums, singles and album tracks - my top 350 musical monads, if you like - is to be played on a single ipod (or perhaps an iPad). Albums are in italics, singles in quotes, and for tracks which are either non-singles or better known as album tracks, I have indicated which album they are from. In fact, I am beginning to feel like a right old statto.

I was going to do a bit of a preamble, but tastes pretty much speak for themselves. In case it makes a difference, I am white, male and middle-class : each of those will probably be over-represented. I am also 26, though I think this makes less difference : the following list covers something like 80 years of music, though the first 40 and the last five are somewhat under-represented. I have completely ignored classical music, but have included some jazz (in retrospect, probably not enough). Please scatter your comments liberally. You will inevitably be wrong, but anything for a good barney.

PADDINGTON'S 350(ish) MUSICAL MONADS

althea and donna, “uptown top ranking”
american graffiti
angels, “my boyfriend’s back”



aphex twin, windowlicker ep
aretha franklin, queen of soul : the atlantic recordings
art blakey, ken burns jazz
artesians, “trick bag”
arto lindsay, mundo civilizado
associates, “white car in germany”
b-52s, “give me back my man”
b-52s, time capsule: the best of the b-52s
baby bird, the original lo-fi
band, the band
basement jaxx, “oh my gosh”
beach boys, “kiss me baby” (from beach boys today!)
beach boys, pet sounds
beach boys, “the trader” (from holland)
beach boys, “just once in my life” (from 15 big ones)
beach boys, “the night was so long” (from beach boys love you)
beach boys, sounds of summer: the very best of the beach boys
beastie boys, paul’s boutique



beatles, “there’s a place” (from please please me)
beatles, a hard day’s night
beatles, “rock and roll music” (from beatles for sale)
beatles, revolver
beatles, sgt peppers lonely hearts club band
beatles, the beatles
beatles, abbey road
beatles, “i’ve got a feeling”, “the one after 909” (from let it be)
beatles, 1962-66
beck, odelay!
billy bragg, “greetings to the new brunette” (from talking with the taxman about poetry)
billy bragg, “sexuality” (from don't try this at home)
bionic dub, “bionic dub”
bjork, “venus as a boy”



blackalicious, “the fall and rise of elliott brown” (from the craft)
blue nile, “tinseltown in the rain” (from a walk across the rooftops)
blue nile, “the downtown lights”, “saturday night” (from hats)
blue nile, “broken loves” (from high)
bob dylan, bringing it all back home
bob dylan, highway 61 revisited
bob dylan, “positively 4th street”



bob dylan, blonde on blonde
bob dylan, “new morning” (from new morning)
bob dylan, blood on the tracks
bob dylan / the band, the basement tapes
bob dylan, “not dark yet” (from time out of mind)
bob dylan, love and theft
bob marley & the wailers, “turn your lights down low” (from exodus)
bob marley & the wailers, kaya
bob marley & the wailers, legend
boogie down productions, “love’s gonna getcha”



brakes, “shut us down” (from ring a ding ding)
brave new world, “train kept a rollin’”
brian eno, “blank frank” (from here come the warm jets)
brian eno, another green world
brian wilson, smile!
b-rock and the bizz, “mybabydaddy”



bruce springsteen, tunnel of love
bruce springsteen, “streets of philadelphia”
bryan ferry, these foolish things
bryan ferry, “let’s stick together”
captain beefheart & the magic band, trout mask replica
carole king, “beautiful” (from tapestry)
chris bell, “i am the cosmos” (from i am the cosmos)
clash, the clash
clash, london calling
coasters, “charlie brown”
coasters, “yakety yak”
cocteau twins, “violaine” (from milk and kisses)
cornershop, “brimful of asha”
coumba gawlo, “miniyamba” (from the music in my head)
count five, “psychotic reaction”





coup, pick a bigger weapon
creedence clearwater revival, chronicle
culture, two sevens clash
david bowie, station to station
david bowie, 1:outside
de la soul, aoi: bionix
debarge, in a special way
debarge, “the rhythm of the night”
dillinger, “cocaine in my brain”
dinosaur jr, “little fury things” (from youre living all over me)
dizzee rascal, boy in da corner
dj shadow, endtroducing…
donald fagan, the nightfly



doors, “back door man” (from the doors)
dr buzzard’s original savannah band, dr buzzard’s original savannah band
duke ellington and his orchestra, the age of ellington
ella fitzgerald, the best of the songbooks
elton john, “madman across the water [demo]” (from remastered version of tumbleweed connection)
elton john, elton john’s greatest hits vol. 1
elton john, captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy
elton john, rock of the westies



elvis costello, this year’s model
elvis costello, imperial bedroom
elvis presley, #1s
emerson, lake and palmer, “jerusalem” (from brain salad surgery)
eminem, the marshall mathers lp
ernest ranglin, “surfin’”
etta james, the chess box
fall, 458489 a sides
fela-anikulapo kuti, the best best of fela kuti : the black president



first choice, “armed and extremely dangerous”
fleetwood mac, rumours
fleetwood mac, tusk
flying burrito brothers, “sin city” (from the gilded palace of sin)
freedy johnston, “this perfect world” (from this perfect world)
funkadelic, “maggot brain” (from maggot brain)
funkadelic, music for your mother : funkadelic 45s
funky 4+1, “that’s the joint”



gang of four, entertainment!
george harrison, “what is life” (from all things must pass)
gloria gaynor, “never can say goodbye”
go-betweens, “bye bye pride” (from tallulah)
go-betweens, ocean drive
grace jones, island life



grandmaster flash, “adventures on the wheels of steel”, “the message”
half man, half biscuit, “albert hammond bootleg” (from back in the dhss / trumpton riots ep)
half man, half biscuit, “a country practice” (from four lads who shook the wirral)
harmonia, “dino” (from musik von harmonia)
husker du, “celebrated summer” (from new day rising)
ian brown, “corpses in their mouths” (from unfinished monkey business)
ian dury and the blockheads, “jackshit george” (from mr love pants)
isley brothers, “it’s your thing”



jackie mittoo, “get up and get it” (from keyboard king of studio one)
jackson 5, “a.b.c.”
jackson 5, “i’ll be there”
jackson browne, “fountain of sorrow” (from late for the sky)
jah wobble, i could have been a contender
james brown, soul classics
james carr, “the dark end of the street”
jimi hendrix experience, electric ladyland
jimi hendrix experience, experience hendrix : the best of jimi hendrix
john cale, guts



john coltrane, my favourite things
john lennon, “oh yoko!” (from imagine)
john lennon, shaved fish
john martyn, “dancing” (from one world)
johnny cash, “san quentin”
johnny osbourne, “we need love”
joni mitchell, blue
joni mitchell, for the roses
joni mitchell, hejira
joni mitchell, “both sides now” (from both sides now)
joy division, “decades” (from closer)
kanye west, the college dropout





karen ramirez, “looking for love”
kate and anna mcgarrigle, dancer with bruised knees
kate bush, “get out of my house” (from the dreaming)
kate bush, hounds of love
kate bush, aerial
kay starr, “wheel of fortune”
kelis, kaleidoscope
king sunny ade & his african beats, “eje nlo gba ara mi” (from juju music)
king sunny ade & his african beats, “synchro system” (from synchro system)
kinks, the ultimate collection
kraftwerk, “franz schubert / endless endless” (from trans-europe express)
kraftwerk, “vitamin” (from minimum maximum)
kris kross, “jump”
laura nyro, “time and love”, “captain for dark mornings” (from new york tendaberry)
le tigre, le tigre



le tigre, “i’m so excited” (from this island)
led zeppelin, iv
leftfield, “melt” (from leftism)
lesley gore, “johnny angel”
lewis taylor, lewis taylor
linton kwesi johnson, straight to inglan’s head
little milton, “we’re gonna make it”
little richard, “rip it up”
ll cool j, mama said knock you out
los lobos, “don’t worry baby” (from how will the wolf survive?)
lou reed, “the gun” (from the blue mask)
lou reed, ecstacy



lou reed, nyc man
loudon wainwright iii, “motel blues” (from album 2)
loudon wainwright iii, “the swimming song” (from attempted moustache)
louis prima, “angelina / zooma zooma”
madness, “my girl”
madonna, the immaculate collection
mama cass, “make your own kind of music” (from mama's big ones)
marshall crenshaw, marshall crenshaw



martha wainwright, “bloody mother fucking asshole” (from martha wainwright)
marvis gaye, “stubborn kind of fellow”
massive attack, “risingson” (from mezzanine)
michael jackson, “got to be there”
michael jackson, off the wall
michigan and smiley, “nice up the dance”
miles davis, “boplicity” (from birth of the cool)
miles davis, a kind of blue
miles davis, a tribute to jack johnson
miles davis / bill laswell, panthalassa : the music of miles davis 1969-1974
millie small, “my boy lollipop”





mitch ryder and the detroit wheels, “jenny take a ride”
moondog, “enough about human rights!” (from viking of fifth avenue)
morrissey, your arsenal
motown : the classic years
naughty by nature, “everything’s gonna be alright (ghetto bastard)”
neil young, after the goldrush
neil young, tonight’s the night
neil young, “walk on”, “ambulance blues” (from on the beach)
neil young, “hey hey my my” (from rust never sleeps)
new musik, “straight lines” (from from a to b)



new order, substance
new york dolls, “personality crisis” (from new york dolls)
nick drake, “northern sky” (from bryter layter)
nilsson, “down” (from nilsson schmilsson)
nirvana, in utero
nirvana, unplugged in new york
notorious b.i.g., “mo’ money mo’ problems”
ocean of sound
oh romeo, “try it (i’m in love with a married man)”
ohio players, “fopp” (from honey)
orange juice, “rip it up and start again”
orb, “little fluffy clouds”
ornette coleman and prime time, tone dialling



otis redding, very best of otis redding
parliament, “flash light”, “bop gun (endangered species)” (from the best of parliament : give up the funk)
paul mccartney & wings, “the back seat of my car” (from ram)
paul simon, “peace like a river,” “50 ways to leave yr lover” (from greatest hits : shining like a national guitar)
paul simon, graceland
pavement, “trigger cut – kite at : 17” (from slanted and enchanted)
pavement, wowee zowee
pavement, brighten the corners
pavement, “folk jam” (from terror twilight)
pet shop boys, actually
pet shop boys, introspective
pet shop boys, very
pet shop boys, pop art
peter gabriel, peter gabriel i
peter gabriel, “sledgehammer”
pj harvey, rid of me
pj harvey, to bring you my love
pj harvey, stories from the city, stories from the sea
police, ghost in the machine
prefab sprout, steve mcqueen
prefab sprout, “the king of rock and roll”
prince, 1999
prince, purple rain
prince, “raspberry beret”
prince, sign o the times
prince, “the most beautiful girl in the world”, “eye hate u” (from the gold experience)
public enemy, apocalypse 91: the enemy strikes black
pulp, “common people”
r.e.m., murmur
r.e.m., out of time
r.e.m., “try not to breathe” (from automatic for the people)
r.e.m., new adventures in hi-fi



rachid taha, made in medina
radiohead, “fake plastic trees” (from the bends)
radiohead, “let down” (from ok computer)
randy newman, 12 songs
randy newman, good old boys
randy newman, lonely at the top: the best of randy newman
ray charles, “what’d i say”
ray price, “crazy arms”
replacements, let it be
richard and linda thompson, shoot out the lights
richard and linda thompson, “i want to see the bright lights tonight”, “hokey pokey”, “beat the retreat” (from the end of the rainbow : an introduction to richard and linda thompson)
robert wyatt, nothing can stop us



robert wyatt, “mister e” (from cuckooland)
rocket from the crypt, “on a rope”
rolling stones, “off the hook” (from rolling stones 2)
rolling stones, big hits (high tides and green grass)
rolling stones, big hits (through the past darkly)
rolling stones, let it bleed
rolling stones, sticky fingers
rolling stones, exile on main street
rolling stones, “start me up”
rolling stones, “rough justice” (from a bigger bang)
rotary connection, “i am the black gold of the sun”
roxanne shante, “big mama”
ruben gonzalez, “chanchullo” (from chanchullo)




rufus wainwright, “poses” (from poses)
rufus wainwright, “i don’t what it is” (from want one)
scott walker, “sleepwalkers woman” (from climate of hunter)
screamin’ jay hawkins, “heartattack and vine”
scritti politti, cupid and psyche ‘85
serge gainsbourg / brigitte bardot, “bonnie et clyde”
sex pistols, never mind the bollocks, here’s the sex pistols
shangri-las, “give him a great big kiss”
simon and garfunkel, “the only living boy in new york” (from bridge over troubled water)
sinead o’connor, “nothing compares 2 u”
slits, “typical girls” (from cut)
sly and the family stone, greatest hits



smiths, hatful of hollow
smokey robinson & the miracles, “ooh ooh baby”
sonic youth, “shadow of a doubt” (from evol)
sonic youth, daydream nation
sonic youth, “tunic (song for karen)” (from goo)
sonic youth, dirty
sonic youth, sonic nurse



sonny boy williamson, “bring it on home”
specials, singles
steely dan, “home at last” (from aja)
steely dan, showbiz kids: the best of steely dan
steve earle, “the galway girl” (from transcendental blues)
steve reich, music for 18 musicians
steve reich, “eight lines”
stevie wonder, innervisions
stevie wonder, “superstition” (from talking book)
stevie wonder, songs in the key of life
stevie wonder, looking back
stevie wonder, “so what the fuss” (from a time to love)
streets, original pirate material
suede, suede
sugarhill gang, “rapper’s delight”
suzanne vega, “luka” (from solitude standing)
swell maps, “blenheim shots” (from jane from occupied europe)
talk talk, spirit of eden
talking heads, more songs about buildings and food
talking heads, remain in light
talking heads, “making flippy floppy” (from speaking in tongues)
television, marquee moon
the indestructible beat of soweto



the kings and queens of township jive: modern roots of the indestructible beat of soweto
the rough guide to the music of the sahara
thelonious monk, criss cross
todd rundgren, “hello it’s me” (from something/anything?)
tom tom club, “genius of love”
tom waits, “martha” (from closing time)
tom waits, “16 shells from a thirty-ought 6” (from swordfishtrombones)
tom waits, “walking spanish” (from rain dogs)
tom waits, “goin’ out west” (from bone machine)
tom ze, “ogodô, ano 2000” (from brazil classics 5 : the return of tom ze : the hips of tradition)
tom ze, com defeito de fabricação



tricky, maxinquaye
trojan explosion
tropicalia!
u2, achtung baby
velvet underground, peel slowly and see box-set
was (not was), “walk the dinosaur”
wayne shorter, speak no evil
whipping boy, heartworm
who, meaty, beaty, big and bouncy



wire, “map ref 41 north 93 west” (from 154)
wire, on returning 1977-79
xtc, skylarking
xtc, apple venus vol. 1
yarborough & peoples, “don’t stop the music”
yeah yeah yeahs, “pin” (from fever to tell)
yes, “survival” (from time and a word)
youssou n’dour et le super etoile dakar, “birima” (from super fin d'annee plus)