"WHERE THE FUCK IS THE BACTINE!!"

In her extremely detailed and lucid guest post, Shelden explores Lacan’s metonymic model of desire, which suggests that we can never access the object of our desire, the objet petit a.  As Shelden states, “in desire, one always only approaches the object of desire but never quite reaches it. Or, if you do finally get the object of your desire, the boy or girl or iPhone of your dreams, you will inevitably find that the thing or person you thought you wanted turns out to be not as good as you thought.”  Thus, one is forced to keep desiring and chasing what one believes will fill the void constituted by the system of the Symbolic, and as we all know, completely satisfying this void is impossible.  We have all been in a situation when we’ve achieved something we’ve desired for a long time, and our desire for the item ends up unsatisfied.  This got me thinking: what if we could fill this void?  If we were capable of fulfilling every desire we could possibly construct for ourselves, what would life be like? 

One of my favorite comic books, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, showed what this impossibility would look like.  In JtHM #6, Johnny accidentally kills himself and, through a clerical error, goes to heaven for a brief time.  In heaven, everybody is seen sitting perfectly motionless and apparently tranquil.  Johnny asks his heavenly tour guide (Damned Elise) for an explanation as to why nobody is doing anything, and she replies that the souls in Heaven do not desire anything.  They feel perfectly fulfilled, and thus do not NEED to do anything, hence the sitting.  Damned Elise also explains that one’s entrance to heaven imbues one with the psychic power to explode the heads of others, a talent which Johnny discovers is great fun and leads to his expulsion from heaven.  If it were possible to truly feel fulfilled, we would simply sit around not feeling the desire for anything.  This could only happen until one felt hungry or sleepy.  Without the desire to eat or to sleep, one would die.  Thus, without the search to fulfill one’s desire, one cannot live (hence the French ‘le petit mort,’ or ‘little death’). 

Although an orgasm is certainly an effective tool for destroying one’s sense of self, it is not the only physical outlet which directs human subjects away from Symbolic and Imaginary coherence.  Extreme physical pain performs this same task just as effectively, if not more so based on the potential for long periods of extreme pain.  Generally speaking, an orgasm lasts for a maximum of 60 seconds, and usually hovers somewhere around 15 to 20 seconds.  An orgasm is also sought after by most sexually active people during sexual activity.  It is considered the ultimate merge with, and connection to, a partner.  Pain, on the other hand, is the ultimate separation of partners.  In an instance where somebody is inflicting pain upon another, there is no positive emotional connection between the two.  Extreme pain is not sought after by most people (and when I say extreme pain, I mean blinding, white-hot, speechless, world-crushing pain), and has no established time frame (as opposed to the limitations of an orgasm’s lifespan). 

During a period of extreme pain (such as, for example, the first moment of a bad burn), one cannot bring to mind any facts about one’s own life or.  This is so because pain erases one’s sense of self, or as Shelden states, ”You are no longer thinking about what you need to do, who you think you are, or even where you are.”  Of course, Shelden is referring to an orgasm’s power to make one “forget the world for the sake of sexual release.”  I assume she is referring to a truly intense, genuine, volcanically hot orgasm, as opposed to a faked or ‘performed’ orgasm.  Perhaps this relationship between an orgasm and physical pain is the seed behind the oft-referenced ‘fine line between pleasure and pain.’

Shelden’s exploration of the relationship between sexual satisfaction and the concept of identity intrigued me.  It brought to mind the fact that priests, yogis, and other such figures searching for a ‘wholeness’ often embrace celibacy in their daily lives.  I attempted to find an article expounding upon this, and I ended up finding this gem.  It’s precious.  Although the article has many (many many) flaws to it, this sentence caught my eye: “To remain celibate even during an intimate relationship requires tremendous self-control, self-discipline, self-understanding and years of experience with celibacy.”  That’s a lot of ‘self’ for one sentence.  I found it interesting how, with the lack of sexual satisfaction, the sense of ‘self’ is supposed to become clearer or more in-tune.  This is exactly what Shelden says in her post (although the article says it backwards from Shelden), when she states that “sexual satisfaction and identity are thus completely contradictory.”  One cannot have both. 

Shelden’s post delves into the concepts of desire and sexual satisfaction.  What, then, is the relationship between desire and pleasure?  It is assumed that, upon fulfilling one’s desire, one attains pleasure from whatever it is that has fulfilled one’s desire.  However, according to Shelden (and Lacan), the pleasure from fulfilling desire is impossible to achieve due to the impossibility of fulfilling desire in the first place.  Any pleasure from supposedly fulfilling one’s desire is temporary, and thus the desire was never fulfilled in the first place.  Lacan posits that “the inability to be satisfied by the object of desire maintains the lack in the subject, a void that can never be filled.”  Does it follow, then, that the only possible pleasure which can truly be achieved is through the act of an orgasm?  If one’s desire can never be fulfilled, then the pleasure of fulfillment is a myth.  An orgasm, one’s “petit mort,” temporarily destroys the sense of self through intense pleasure.  Is this form of pleasure the only genuine pleasure we can achieve?