ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and evaluates the Lacanian idea that racism can be conceptualized both as a mode of enjoyment (jouissance) and as a reaction to the perceived theft of enjoyment. Despite the analytical advantages of this conceptualization, the theft of enjoyment hypothesis can nonetheless be critiques as (1) guilty of a depoliticizing psychological reductionism; (2) conceptually under-differentiated; (3) inattentive to different modes of enjoyment; (4) cut off from the associated psychoanalytic concepts that necessarily accompany its proper application. Responding to these critiques, and by way of a defence of the analytical value of this hypothesis, this chapter argues that: (1) jouissance is in some ways more of a sociological than a psychological concept; (2) the notion of enjoyment must remain empty of definitive contents if it is to serve as anti-essentialist variable of analysis; (3) three interconnected modes of jouissance should be distinguished (bodily excitation, libidinal treasure, and the surplus vitality of the other); and (4) a series of associated psychoanalytic notions (drive, fantasy, object petit a, superego) should necessarily accompany any rigorous application of the notion of jouissance to the social field.
