We Can Do It: Ferocious Jouissance of Female Gender
Despina Karagianni
In modern civilization, at a time when men are being called upon to become more feminine, women experience a kind of push-to-the man, rushing to repeat “me too” in the name of legal equality.[1] An example of this is the demand for equal rights in combat during war. With the slogan We Can Do It, women have been claiming a place on the front line like men since World War II, saying it is also their war.
Proponents of feminism oppose this, saying that the purpose of the feminist movement is not to establish rights that perpetuate patriarchal ideals, but to repudiate them for all of humanity. In this same spirit, resolutions of the European Parliament and the United Nations attribute to women special abilities for dialogue and non-violence, abilities that “might contribute in a very positive way to peaceful conflict prevention and management.”[2] The expectation is that the promotion of women to decision-making and negotiating positions will help to avoid war. But we must bear in mind that “man” and “woman” are different modes of jouissance of the speaking-being and not biologically determined constructions.
Psychoanalytic discourse disrupts the fantasy of world peace carried by speaking beings of female gender. Drives have no gender. For the human mammal, the death drive, with war being one of its vicissitudes, is inherent. A civilization, from which the Name-of-the-Father is gradually declining, is exposed to attempts to incarnate the outlawed “Real Man,” even if he is of female gender, or even to the “Mother of the Nation” as the name of a ferocious jouissance.
War criminals such as Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, who ordered the rape and burning of Tutsi girls and women, Biljana Plavšić, who considered ethnic cleansing a natural phenomenon and was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, Lyndie England and Sabrina D. Harman, who were photographed enjoying sexual torture, humiliation and murder of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Hoda Muthana the Jihadist bride who encouraged ISIS terrorism and killings… all of them highlight the asexual jouissance of torture.[3]
The jouissance of war does not simply carry the mantle of the ideals of a heroic struggle for country and freedom, nor can it be exhausted in a push-to-the-man to access the sanctuary of his jouissance. Beyond this, there is a residue of the pure jouissance of das Ding, which no semblant can embellish, no tool of the symbolic can represent. In contrast to crime aimed at some gain, in the crime for crime’s sake, in other words in the crime committed for jouissance, what plays the key role is “the most secretive theater of drive, of ‘cruelty’ [...] which isolates in each speaking being his or her irreducible share of inhumanity.”[4]
References
[1] Interview with Jacques-Alain Miller, Psychologies Magazine, https://wapol.org/fr/las_escuelas/TemplateArticulo.asp?intTipoPagina=4&intPublicacion=4&intEdicion=1&intArticulo=1681&intIdiomaArticulo=5
[2] See, for example, the European Parliament resolution of 2 February 2012 on women’s situation in war 2011/2198(INI).
[3] See, for example, Steflja, I., & Darden, J. T., Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice, Redwood City, Stanford University Press, 2020.
[4] Cf. Miller, J.A., “Preface” to Biagi-Chai, Francesca, Le cas Landru, Paris, Editions Imago, 2008.