Perversion the Social Relation

Perversion 55the pervert's sexuality. The pervert's conscious fantasies may involve akind of unending jouissance (consider the Marquis de Sade's numerousscenarios where the male sexual organ never manifests any limit in itsability to recommence sexual activity), but we must not confuse consciousfantasies with concrete activity, and the latter is designed to placelimits on jouissance. 4 *Desire is always a defense, "a defense against going beyond a [certain]limit in jouissance" (Écrits, 825; 322), and the pervert's desire is no exception.The masochist, for example, in fantasy, seems to do everythingfor the Other and nothing for himself: "Let the Other get off on me, useme as he or she sees fit!" he seems to say. Beyond this fantasy, however,his aim is somewhat different: beyond this apparent altruism—"Nothingfor me, everything for the Other!"—there is something in it for him.Desire as a defense appears in the pervert's fundamental fantasy thatmanifests his position with respect to the law.The neurotic desires in relation to thçjaw: the father says the childcannot have its mother, and the child thus unconsciously desires her. Thepervert, on the other hand, does not desire as a function of the law—that is, does not desire what is prohibited. Instead, he has to make thelaw come into being. Lacan plays on the French term, perversion, writingit as père-version, to emphasize the sense in which the pervert calls uponor appeals to the father, hoping to make the father fulfill the paternalfunction.Jouissance and the moral lawJouissance ... is indecently admitted to its very wording.—Jacques Lacan, ÉcritsCertain moralists and ethical philosophers like Kant would have us believethat moral principles are "rational" and objective, and that wecan accept living by them "rationally" just because they are "true."Freud suggests, however, that a principle is nothing in someone's psychicalreality until a quantum of libido has been attached to it; in otherwords, a moral principle, like any other thought (Vorstellung), has tobe cathected before it can play a role in someone's psychical economy.And the psychical agency in which Freud situates moral principles is thesuperego which, as Freud himself teaches us, takes pleasure in criticiz-