Control óptimo

In the following comment, Bruce Fink explains the relationship between pleasure and knowledge:

We find the pleasures available to us in life inadequate, and it is owing to that inadequacy that we expound systems of knowledge – perhaps, first and foremost, to explain why our pleasure is inadequate and then to propose how to change things so that it will not be … Knowledge, according to Lacan, is motivated by some failure of pleasure, some insufficiency of pleasure: in a word, dissatisfaction. (Fink, 2002, p. 27)

If we read ‘pleasure’ here as jouissance (which is an incomplete translation), we can interpret Fink’s comment to mean that we generate knowledge in order to attempt to satisfy a lack. We want to plug the gap left by what we lack with complete jouissance. Unfortunately for us, “Desire’s object will not sit still; desire always sets off in search of something else” (Fink, 2002, p. 37), so we are constantly left with a feeling of dissatisfaction, whilst still believing that satisfaction is possible. This in itself is not a problem because without it we would not be motivated do anything. The problem is when that what causes desire (objet a) becomes particularly associated, through the effect of anxiety, with phallic jouissance. My contention is that as the cycles of ‘search for knowledge then dissatisfaction’ repeat, phallic jouissance creates, in the anxious fat man, a growing sense of dissatisfaction, urgency and desperation.

Spoken in terms of rationalist capitalist enterprise, this unconscious mechanism is capitalised by the weight loss industry supplying its consumers with products masquerading as objet a. They regularly produce a new ‘knowledge-as-truth’ when dissatisfaction with the previous emerges. They are in fact selling empty signifiers that each consumer fills with their particular imaginary cocktail of signification (desire- anxiety-phallic jouissance).

These ‘new knowledges’ take on a variety of forms. They might be an entirely new regime, or simply a re-branding of an existing product. What seems to be common among them is the reliance on science as a master signifier that functions in the symbolic register of anxious fat men as a powerful legitimating force. It is also well utilised by media organisations that regularly ‘interpret’ scientific research by spinning stories of newness –

constantly reinventing obesity science and drawing links with lifestyle that are ambiguous at best.

In my view it is this relationship between anxious unconscious mechanisms and rational but exploitative capitalist enterprise that has created the consumerism western societies have seen in the weight loss industry since the 1980s. The relationship is what Stavrakakis calls the relationship between the subject and the ‘organized Other’, I see the organised Other in this circumstance as the collective weight loss industry – including slimming organisations, recipe book producers and government anti-obesity health units. As Stavrakakis remarks, the subject “and organized Other become inter-implicated in the institution and reproduction of social life” (Stavrakakis, 2008, p. 1038). The way this occurs can be found in the fundamental lack that exists within the subject, both in the imaginary alienation developed during the mirror stage and within the symbolic – signified by the lack in the Other. The subject seeks unity and associates the power of the ‘organized Other’ with access to what will fill their lack. This “predisposes social subjects to accept and obey what seems to be emanating from the big Other, from socially sedimented points of reference invested with the gloss of authority and presented as embodying and sustaining the symbolic order, organizing (subjective and objective) reality” (Stavrakakis, 2008, p. 1045).

Almost without exception, the ‘organised Other’ of the weight loss industry has, and continues to ignore the unconscious instead positioning the fat subject as conscious and rational. This organised Other is not aware of what they co-construct unconsciously with their consumers; it would seem probable that they view the relationship purely on a cognitive level, assuming that the consumer rationally judges their wares and selects

products and services from amongst alternatives. In this imaginary world, ‘knowledges- as-truth’ are things to be advertised, branded and marketed to recruit consumers. Similarly, my experience with anxious fat men shows that they do attempt to rationally judge the available resources and select an alternative. Clearly, however, this does not work, as anxiety around weight loss and body shape continues to haunt a growing number of people.

I imagine that some of my readers might be thinking at this point, ‘so what?’, because trading in unconscious desire could be seen as serving the consumer well. In the rational sense, it is reasonable for organisations in a market economy to recognise demand and supply it, if consumers are willing to part with their money for a weight loss product or service and the organisation is operating within the law then what right do I have to say anything at all about their ethics? However, I also speak from the position of one who has suffered at the hands of the organised Other of the weight loss industry. These anxious subjects manifest at the reception counters of weight loss organisations and read public health messages promoting weight loss as rational consumers wanting to lose weight but their particular fantasy is adorned with weight-anxiety. All subjects’ fantasies in a Lacanian sense will fail, that is the pleasure and the pain of being a lacking subject. The crucial point of departure for weight-anxious consumers, in my experience, is the lack of lack I described when discussing anxiety earlier – for these subjects, anxiety is attached to the fantasy of weight loss and failure to lose weight is experienced as a failure to restore lack and increases the intensity of anxiety. So, for those non-anxious weight loss consumers the weight loss industry is like many others – providing a service. But for those whose anxiety is attached to the fantasy of weight loss it is not so sparkly.

I am purposefully differentiating between two groups of subjects above, one that is not weight-anxious, but does partake in weight-loss activities for a number of reasons and one that is specifically defined by weight-anxiety, whose life revolves around attempts at weight control in an attempt to restore lack. Membership to this latter club is not related to a subject’s Real embodiment but is characterised precisely by a lack of lack – which is most easily recognised by the intense jouissance that is defined by the function of the phallus. I am not trying to say that weight-loss is the cause of this fundamental anxiety – other ‘desires’ can equally come to occupy this symbolic space – what I am trying to say is that by promising weight-loss as a symbolic solution to restoring lack the weight-loss industry does not help these subjects.

Lacan identifies phallic jouissance, which resides in the symbolic register, as directly associated with the masculine structure (Lacan, 1998 (1972-73)). My analysis, therefore, implicates a masculine structure as underpinning the weight-anxious consumer. If this is so, what is interesting is why so many of those who identify as biologically female are caught up in the anxious inter-play with the organized Other of the weight loss industry. Susie Orbach wrote Fat is a Feminist Issue in 1978. At that time, she was specifically interested in girls and women, though in more recent times she has expanded to include people who are biologically male (see Orbach (2006) for example). It is good to see the feminist movement providing scope for fat blokes to ‘appear’ (as evidenced also by Bell and McNaughton (2007), discussed earlier), though I say this not because I want men to play a part in the feminist project but rather because it may open the door to a more critical dialogue of what gender might mean psychoanalytically when considering weight issues. My analysis above suggests that perhaps ‘Fat is a Masculine Issue’, would be

equally as valid and provocative as Orbach’s original. I see these ideas as an opportunity to explore Lacan’s conceptualisation of feminine jouissance as perhaps there is something within the not-whole of the feminine structure that can skirt around the painful weight- anxiety experienced by a growing number of male subjects. This is the subject of chapter six.