The permissive characteristics of the capitalist society appear to replace the big Other qua the symbolic order. After the decline of the prohibitive big Other qua the symbolic order, the obverse side of the big Other, which is called the “Father-enjoyment,” returns to order the subject to enjoy (Žižek, For They Know 135). The society no longer demands us to repress our desire for the greater profit of the public;
instead it calls on us to transgress the regulation, enjoy ourselves, fulfill our fantasies, and follow our desires. The popular motto shifts from J. F. Kennedy’s line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” to Dan Wieden’s Nike slogan “Just Do It.”16 The social milieu has changed from a space of repression and regulation to a terrain of enjoyment. Yet, this change and the “‘Father-enjoyment’ ultimately just fill out a structural insufficiency of the symbolic function of the Name-of-the-Father” (135). The effect of big Other qua the symbolic order
16 As an employee of the Nike company, Dan Wieden invented the famous Nike slogan “Just do it”
when he heard about the execution of the serial killer, Gary Gilmore. When questioned if he had any last words, Gilmore reportedly replied, “Yeah, let’s do it” (Konstand, The Game Entrepreneur 92). Dan interpreted his final words as the “key human insight when facing up to a challenge against your will . . . yet still with a mentality to just push through” (92). I see this slogan as the perverted encouragement of global capitalism to drive its customers toward the ultimate enjoyment.
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does not disappear following its decline. Quite contrarily, the “superegoic
Father-jouissance” appears to invite the public to transgress regulations in order to mask the
void in the symbolic order (Huang 60), which replaces the position of the big Other and bluntly commands the subject to enjoy. The capitalistic Father-jouissance appears as the superego that commands the individual to enjoy itself:Superego emerges where the Law – the public Law, the Law articulated in the public discourse – fails; at this point of failure, the public Law is compelled to search for support in an illegal enjoyment. The superego is the obscene “nightly” that necessarily redoubles and accompanies, as its shadow, the “public” Law . . . underside, the “unwritten”, obscene secret code . . . . (Žižek, Metastases 54-55)
So the obscene superego works as the unwritten underside when the Law/symbolic order fails. Clandestinely, the superego acts as an accomplice with the Law/big Other to mask the void in the symbolic order with its “obscene secret code” (Žižek,
Metastases 55). The superego works in two different ways. On the one hand, different
from the rigorous big Other that prohibits transgression, the superego invites the individual to enjoy transgression of the public law. On the other, the superego is in effect complicit with the big Other. Although the superego is the obverse side of the big Other, it functions as a condition of the latter’s stability. It mainly functions to cover up the incompetence of the big Other and the void of the symbolic order. In the global capitalistic society of enjoyment, which promotes excess as a norm, theobscene Father-jouissance compels the public to choose enjoyment. This superego injunction explains why the public today are constantly bombarded by countless slogans or endless commercial images plunging the consumers into various forms of pleasure and sexual gratification. We are invited, persuaded, and even commanded to
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enjoy transgression. After transgressing the law, we will feel guilty for what we do.
This injunction of enjoyment turns the permissive society into the most regulated one.
In Australia, China, and other Asian countries, government policy encourages the public to enjoy themselves by investing money in real estate in order to boost the economy—even when it is illegal and unethical to speculate in the real estate sector.
In these countries, the government plays the role of the superego, which controls the public by inviting their enjoyment of transgression. On the one hand, the authorities repeatedly declare that they will ruthlessly crack down on real estate speculators since the housing prices have become intolerably high in urban areas, resulting in anger and disappointment. On the other, despite its criticism, the government policy allows banks and associate institutions to give loans to real estate speculators easily, inviting them to transgress the law and enjoy profiting from the real estate. Consequently, the public finds it difficult to criticize the government since many are accomplices of the housing problem.
Another way in which the superegoic jouissance is activated is through the advertising of consumerism, such as soft drinks, non-alcoholic beverages, and artificial juices. These examples become the mesmerizing unknown object that triggers the superegoic jouissance. The consumer will have a soft drink to acquire the ideal that is shown in an ad. Yet, the soft drink does not deliver the promise the ad implies. Still, the more people drink it, the more they want it. The product deprived of its fantasy is the embodiment of the sueregoic jouissance. It aims to control us by keeping us unsatisfied during the enjoyment. The commodity, with its mesmerizing force, is regarded as giving back something believed to be lost—the Lacanian “objet
petit a” (Žižek, Parallax 61). The surplus of commodity always acts as the response
to a “fundamental lack” (Belief 21). In consumerism, shopping and eating will only62
stimulate more desire. For instance, the fancy colors on the packaging of the artificial juice give the impression that it contains not just ordinary juice. Rather, it contains something that the consumers fantasize they have lost, which explains why they enjoy buying and drinking it so much.