Is There a Universal Enjoyment?

In his talk for the State of Cultural Analysis series, Professor Todd McGowan argued that we must centre enjoyment in the analysis and practice of politics.

McGowan opened his talk with the observation of what he names ‘particularist enjoyment’. This enjoyment exists in those nationalist, religious, ethnic, or otherwise exclusionary movements that target an enemy for expulsion and denunciation.

This enjoyment is not the fleeting pleasure that comes when tension is released but involves suffering and trouble in the build-up of tension. It gives us something to struggle for and a reason to live or sacrifice ourselves for a greater cause.

In its particularist form, enjoyment is engaged in the perpetual struggle against an enemy. This struggle can never reach a conclusion or, as McGowan pointed out, the enjoyment would cease. Understanding this process is crucial for understanding the appeal of right-wing politics and cultivating a universal enjoyment in its place.

Universal enjoyment, McGowan suggested, might take two forms. The first, to try to include everyone, fails when it encounters the enemy who resists belonging (the role that the populist right plays for liberal inclusionists).

The second is grounded on universalising the position of non-belonging. This universal non-belonging was enjoyed when Haitian revolutionaries sung la Marseillaise back to the French soldiers attempting to re-enslave them. It was enjoyed by seminar participants when McGowan shared a joke in which every character occupied the position of non-belonging (the source of the joke’s humour) at some point in the story.

From these examples, McGowan posited the possibility of a universal politics that is seen not only as a moral imperative, but a source of profound enjoyment and meaning. The response from Ben Highmore offered two further case studies for locating universalist enjoyment and opened a discussion on the related affective states of hedonism, fun, delight, and exuberance.

Speakers

Professor Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity, Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, Only a Joke Can Save Us, The Impossible David Lynch, and other works. Todd is also the cohost of the ‘Why Theory’ podcast with Ryan Engley.

Professor Ben Highmore is a writer, researcher and teacher with expertise in many areas of 20th- and 21st-century culture. He has published books on post-war taste, British art, domestic interiors and playgrounds. He’s also published extensively in the field of everyday life studies and is the author of Everyday Life and Cultural Theory, Michel de Certeau: Analysing Culture, Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday, and Cultural Feelings: Mood, Mediation, and Cultural Politics.