5 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Surplus value/surplus enjoyment in Zizek
I'm gonna put it very briefly, so maybe I don't explain it in the most rigorous way.
1. Surplus enjoyment is a lacanian concept know originally with the french word "jouissance" that refers to some kind of desire a subject has, that cannot be actually fulfilled. Everytime the subject tries to fulfill it, they only get more desire for it, producing displeasure more that actual pleasure (what desires are supposed to bring when being fulfilled). An intuitive way I think about it is addictions: you have a desire to smoke a cigarette, you may be craving for it, but the moment you smoke it, you only feel a very slight relief compared to the even greater displeasure you are going to feel the next time you don't have a cigarette to smoke.
2. .
3. From historic materialism, we can describe the development of societies like this: a society has its production forces (content) and its relations of production (form). When the society grows over time, making the production forces grow as well, it's expected to reach a point where these production forces outgrow the relations of production, and a radical change takes place in that society, which makes the relations of production change so that they can gather the new, bigger, stronger forces of production (like a snake that outgrows its own skin and moults into a new, bigger skin).
However, marxists think that this doesn't necessarily happen in capitalist societies. Why? Capitalism can constantly make the relations of production grow, so that they can't be outgrown by the forces of production and capitalism doesn't need to change into another form of society. Capitalism can do this thanks to the surplus value capitalists take from their workers (this should be explained further).
To sum up: in capitalism, thanks to surplus value, instead of getting to a point where the forces of production (the "content" of the society) outgrows ("fulfills") the relations of production (the "form" of the society), they only make them grow even bigger. This is analogous to surplus enjoyment, where each try we make to fulfill our desire doesn't actually fulfill it, it makes it even a greater desire.
Bonus: In Z's "The sublime object of ideology". Iirc, it's in the first part of the book.
Disclaimer: any critique is welcome, I'm only a rookie in these topics but I did my best to explain this correctly. If anyone thinks I didn't, or I just got the analogy/relation between surplus value and jouissance wrong, tell me, I'd love to learn about this too. Also, sorry for my poor english :)
Comment by TheRealZizek1917 at 17/02/2024 at 19:14 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Well, what’s weird here is that Marxists do think this happens in capitalist societies. Put simply: A crisis of overproduction occurs which leads to a new social arrangement.
I just re-read the part of SOI and it made very little sense to me, but thank you for the explanation.