Eugene de Klerk
University of Mpumalanga
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Why those who are singular have the most fun: A Lacanian consideration of how Salvador Dali’s auto-erotic practice points the way to a form of jouissance capable of alleviating subjective alienation
Dedalus 24 (2020), pp. 93-110. Download PDF

Abstract
This paper explores the theme of artistically productive auto-eroticism in work by the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and relates this to the Lacanian concept of Le Sinthome (a jouissance addressed to no one). It suggests that when we create for our pleasure alone and generate a singular subjective vocabulary, we arrest or freeze the slippage between signifier and signified where pleasure is lost to desire. The paper argues that the experience of loneliness, rather than resulting from an excess of idiosyncratic expression, arises instead from subjects becoming trapped in a worn-out and commercially-dominated symbolic sphere. The paper asserts that the kind of “masturbation” in which Dali engages revivifies subjectivity and also serves to remind us that, in order to be authentic, subjectivity needs to actively generate imaginative fantasmatic content (and not passively absorb ready-made fantasies). Lastly, the paper briefly considers such subjective auto-eroticism as the basis of a limited form of community.
 
Keywords: Salvador Dali, Jacques Lacan, Eve Sedgwick, jouissance, lathouses, le Sinthome, masturbation, fantasy, subjectivity.