Locating the Melody of the Drives

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has profoundly influenced those social theories that inform qualitative methodology in human geography. Yet many geographers are skeptical about the value and viability of psychoanalytic methodology because of its alleged reductionist causal explanations and relativistic interpretations of data. Drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek, which affirms Jacques Lacan's undermining of the dualism of causality versus sense, this article illustrates the potential value of Lacanian psychoanalysis as a qualitative methodology in geography. Using a methodological case study from my research on Jamaican tourism, I illustrate how we can locate a Lacanian understanding of the drives in the interactions between tourists and hotel workers. In so doing, the article provides new insights into the enduring allures of tourism's commodity-form by focusing on how the object petit a—a chimerical object that incites desire and an unattainable object that the drives encircle—takes place in customer service and entertainment activities.

El psicoanálisis ha influido profundamente las teorías sociales en las que se apoya la metodología cualitativa en geografía humana. Con todo, muchos geógrafos son escépticos acerca del valor y viabilidad de la metodología psicoanalítica debido a sus alegadas explicaciones causales de naturaleza reduccionista y a las interpretaciones relativistas de los datos. A partir del trabajo de Slavoj Žizěk, quien respalda la descalificación que hace Jacques Lacan del dualismo de causalidad versus sentido, este artículo ilustra el valor potencial del psicoanálisis lacaniano como una metodología cualitativa en geografía. Utilizando un estudio de caso metodológico tomado de mi investigación del turismo jamaiquino, muestro cómo ubicar una comprensión lacaniana de las pulsiones y las interacciones entre turistas y empleados de los hoteles. Haciendo esto, el artículo proporciona nuevas miradas críticas sobre los inveterados halagos que ofrece el turismo como mercadería al concentrar la atención en cómo el object petit a—un quimérico objeto que incita el deseo y un objeto inalcanzable englobado en las pulsiones—tiene lugar en el servicio al cliente y las actividades de entretenimiento.

Key Words:

• desire
• drives
• psychoanalysis
• qualitative methodology
• Slavoj Žižek

关键词:

• 欲望
• 驱动器
• 心理分析
• 定性方法
• 斯拉沃热·齐泽克

Palabras clave:

• deseo
• pulsiones
• psicoanálisis
• metodología cualitativa
• Slavoj Žizěk

Acknowledgments

PAUL KINGSBURY is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. He studies the emotional and aesthetic geographies of multiculturalism, consumption, tourism, and the paranormal.

Notes

* My thanks to Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, the anonymous referees, and the staff and visitors of Sandals Resorts International. The research was supported by the University of Kentucky, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation (Grant #0202061)

¹ The importance of psychoanalytic methodology qua the method of observation is exemplified by Freud's ([1914] 1957a, 77) assertion that (meta-psychological) concepts in psychoanalysis “are not the basis of the science upon which everything rests: that, on the contrary, is observation alone.”

² Laplanche's (1999) notion of the “enigmatic signifier” is arguably another source that builds on the psychoanalytic rejection of determinism versus interpretation.

³ Lacan (1977, 168) also advocated listening awry to Freud's definition of the drives: “Let us look at what he [Freud] says—As far as the object in the drive is concerned, let it be clear that it is, strictly speaking, of no importance. It is a matter of total indifference. One must never read Freud without one's ears cocked. When one reads such things, one really ought to prick up one's ears.”

⁴ The objet petit a is therefore an underdetermined object. As Dean (2002, 24) put it: Whereas the concept of overdetermination derived from psychoanalytic hermeneutics (specifically, The Interpretation of Dreams) had promised a theory of subject formation that seemed compatible with Lévi-Strauss's structuralism, in fact the multiply determining relations created by chains of signifiers connected in a symbolic network could never completely determine the subjective effects they were invoked to explain. There is always something left over, something unexplained by symbolic determination. Hence Freud's observations about the enigmatic “navel of the dream”; hence, too, Lacan's attempts to theorize this subjective underdetermination via a range of terms and concepts (principally that of l'objet petit a [emphasis in original]).

Explaining how psychoanalytic over- and underdetermination implodes the binary of causality–sense requires the space of another article.

⁵ For Freud ([1900] 1953, 277–78), the dream is comparable to hieroglyphics and a rebus (picture puzzle).

⁶ In French, the neologism sinthome is associated with “Saint Thomas,” “healthy tone,” “synthetic-artificial man.”

⁷ The sinthome and objet petit a take place as a Tuch é; that is, a chance and unassimilable encounter with the Real (see Lacan 1977). Thus they are comparable to Freud's notion of the navel of the dream: the “unplumable … point of contact with the unknown” (Freud [1900] 1953, 186n). An excellent cinematic illustration of the idiocy of enjoyment is Arnold's (1998) fifteen-minute stuttering Oedipal drama Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy.

⁸ The technique of purposely and momentarily becoming deaf while crouching in a swimming pool ironically recalls Freud's method of “analytic listening”: taking a position of free-floating or evenly hovering attention that is responsive to new meanings in the analysand's speech. The technique also recalls Friedrich Nietzsche's recommendation that we learn to listen with our eyes.

⁹ Given the drives' radical creative capacity, that is, an ability to make a real difference in or even puncture the fabric of the social world, Lacan (1992) situated the drives in the field of ethics.

¹⁰ Let us not forget that most contemporary spaces of mobility or travel such as airports and roads are chock-a-block with inertia.