Here we have pleasure alone and triumphant, it
reigns over all. Pleasure cannot be measured, it is not subject to
quantification, its nature is overmuch
(‘our fault is not, as has been
believed, to desire overmuch, but to
desire too little . . .’); it is itself the measurement: ‘feeling’
depends upon pleasure: ‘The privation of the sensual need degrades feeling,’
and ‘full satisfaction in material things is the only way to elevate feelings’:
counter-Freudianism: ‘feeling’ is not the sublimating transformation of a lack,
but on the contrary the panic effusion
of an acme of satiety. Pleasure overcomes
Death ( pleasures will be sensual in the afterlife), it is the Federator,
what operates the solidarity of the living and the dead (the happiness of the
defunct will begin only with that of the living, they having in away to await the others: no happy dead so long
as on earth the living are not happy; a view of a generosity , a charity’ that
no religious eschatology has dared). Pleasure is, lastly, the everlasting
principle of social organization: whether negatively, it induces a condemnation
of all society, however progressive, that neglects it (such as Owen’s experiment
at New Lamarck, denounced as ‘too severe’ because the societaries went barefoot),
whether, positively, pleasures are made affairs
of State ( pleasures and not leisure: this is what separates –
fortunately- the Fourierist Harmony from the modern State, where the pious organization
of leisure time corresponds to a relentless censure of pleasure); pleasure
results, in fact, from a calculation, and operation that for Fourier is the
highest form of social organization and mastery; this calculation is the same
as that of all social theory, whose practice is to transform work into pleasure
(and not to suspend work for the sake of leisure time):the barrier that
separates work from pleasure in Civilization crumbles, there is a paradigmatic
fall, philosophical conversion of he unpleasant into the attractive (taxes will
be paid ‘as readily as the busy mother sees to those foul but attractive duties
her infant demands’), and pleasure itself becomes an exchange value, since Harmony
recognizes and honors, by the name of Angelicate,
collective prostitution: it is in a way the monad energy which in its thrust
and scope ensures the advance of society.
Since pleasure is the Unique, to reveal pleasure is itself a unique duty:
Fourier stands alone against everyone (especially against the philosophers,
against all Libraries), he alone is right, and being right is the desirable thing:
‘Is it not to be desired that I alone am right, against everyone? From the
Unique derives the incendiary character of pleasure: it burns, shocks,
frightens to speak of it: how many are statements about the mortal shocks brought
on by the over-abrupt revelation of pleasure! What precautions, what preparations
of writing! Fourier experiences a kind
of prophylactic obligation for dispassion ( poorly observed, by the way: he imagines
his ‘calculations’ are boring and that reassures him, whereas they are delightful);
whence an incessant restraint of discourse: ‘fearing to allow you to glimpse
the vastness of these pleasures, I have only dissertated on . . .’ etc.:
Fourier’s discourse is never just propaedeutic, so blazing with splendor is its
object, its center;[*] articulated on pleasure, the sectarian world is dazzling.
The area of Need is Politics, the area of Desire is what Fourier calls Domestics. Fourier has chosen Domestics
over Politics, he has constructed domestic utopia ( but can a utopia be otherwise?
Can utopia ever be political” isn’t politics: every language less one, that of Desire? In May 1968, there was a proposal
to one of the groups that were spontaneously
formed at the Sorbonne to study Domestic
Utopia – they were obviously thinking of Fourier; to which the reply was
made that the expression was too ‘studied’, ergo ‘bourgeois’; politics is what
forecloses desire, save to achieve it in the form of neurosis; political neurosis
or, more exactly: the neurosis of politicizing.
[*] ‘If we could suddenly see this arranged Order, this work of God as it will be seen in its full functioning . . .it is not to be doubted that many of the Civilized would be struck dead by the violence of their ecstasy. The description [of the 8th Society] alone could inspire in many of them, the women in particular, an enthusiasm that would approach frenzy; it could render them indifferent to amusements, unsuited to the labors of Civilization.’
No comments:
Post a Comment