Facing fascism: A feminine politics of jouissance

Conclusion To resume, then, the need for a written Law specifically prohibiting Genocide. (1) It should by now be evident that the pleasure principle needs its ethical mandate, beyond the reality principle of a social field that can no longer be considered homeostatic and nonconflictual. The fantasmatic character of human pleasure must not only be accounted for in any ethic today, it must take primacy. Fantasy formations grow ever central in our lives; fantasy is the support of our reality.(2) The writing of such a Law would permit the enunciation of positively negative content, thereby reframing the Other as lacking; and it would also provide a way for the increasingly stateless citizens of the postmodern, global community, to be asked todecide on the necessarily paired alternatives (Good and Evil, to kill or to love) which have once again become the starkest of possibilities for them. Only this kind of decision — which is not that of thevel — suffers resistance to the will of the people when it is a malignant will-to-jouissance.