Happiness by Di Leo Jeffrey R.;

Author:Di Leo, Jeffrey R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

The big Other is the unattainable source of desire for wholeness, which is a kind of transcendental signifier for the manifestation of desire. The Lacanian Other is behind the limitations of representation and within the realm of the inarticulable Real. However, as there is no ‘Other of the Other’, for Lacan and Žižek, there is no final guarantee of the symbolic order, or, as he puts it, ‘There is no “big Other” guaranteeing the consistency of the symbolic space within which we dwell: there are just contingent, punctual and fragile points of stability’ (Žižek 2005: 332). This ‘lack’ in the Other allows the symbolic order to function and offers a way of thinking an outside or beyond the symbolic order. Ideology works by covering over this ‘lack’ in the Other. It phantasmatically projects the possibility of wholeness and explains the alienation of its privileged social subjects (why they aren’t happy) by scapegoating, blaming marginalised others (Jews, undocumented migrants, Blacks, refugees, etc.) for their ‘theft of enjoyment’. The big Other disavows the constitutive dimension of alienation and obfuscates the subject’s immanent vulnerability to interruptions of the Real (what is irreducible to a symbolic representation of reality). Thus, for Pharrell to identify himself as ‘the Other’ takes on a whole new level of significance in view of Lacan and Žižek’s position on it.

You can subscribe to ‘i am OTHER’ entertainment on YouTube, ‘like’ it on Facebook, ‘follow’ it on Twitter, and ‘listen’ to it on Soundcloud. Pharrell’s multimedia creative collective was launched on May 12, 2012 as part of YouTube’s one hundred million dollar original channel initiative. Nevertheless, in spite of Pharrell’s efforts here in the name of ‘the Other’, it does not change the lack of final guarantee of the symbolic order. In short, no matter what Pharrell claims, the status of the ‘big Other’ guaranteeing the consistency of the symbolic space within which we dwell does not change. Happiness is not the truth—no matter how many times Pharrell sings it or how well it sells.

But then again, the same conditions hold for the equivalency of happiness with truth in literature. No matter how many times popular literature grounded in positive psychology reinforces the fantasy that happiness is the truth, progressive theory today moves in the opposite direction and has a very different message. The literature hawked by Oprah and cherished by the corporate publishing arm of the happiness industry as one of its commodities may contribute to the bottom line of neoliberal capital, but its bourgeois dream of happiness is decisively rejected by theory.

From the perspective of theory, literature that promotes the bourgeois dream of happiness is complicit in the furtherance of neoliberal capital. Therefore, as moving beyond neoliberal capital is one of the aims of progressive theory, literature associated with the pursuit of happiness as the aim of life must be regarded as counter to this objective. From the perspective then of progressive theory, the import of literature that promotes the pursuit of happiness must be regarded as a mere fantasy of neoliberal capital.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.