国际妇女节的变态核心

王子庸

                           国际妇女节的变态核心
                                 吴冠军

　　近几天来，周围的人们——从身边熟悉的女性朋友到街上的推销员（更不用提墨尔本各大电视台轮番滚动的电视广告了）——不断在提醒我：
　　“The International Women’s Day is coming! （国际妇女日快到了！）”（……所以，你该做点／买点什么……）
　　我的回答，看上去有些不太友好，用今天时髦的话来说，有些“政治不正确”：
　　“What? What did you say? What do you want from me?（什么？你说什么？你从我这里想要什么？）”
　　“这个日子到底是意味着什么？难道这不正是对女性的进一步羞辱？”
　　“难道它不正展现了这样一个事实：这个星球上的一半人口仍并不对我们意味着任何东西，所以我们决定制订一个日子，来提醒我们女性的存在？”
　　“‘所有其他的人’一年都有365天，但除了女性……所以，恭喜你，小姐，你有这样1天！你完全配拥有它，你应该高兴，去庆祝……”
　　“这，的确是很特殊……”
　　正是这样的“特殊待遇”，是今天人们思考之方式；也正是通过这样的“特殊待遇”，我们的现实世界被组织起来。人们相信，这一个特殊的日子（3月8号），真的可以提升女性们在其余364天的以那些“并不很特殊”的“所有其他的人”为中心的那已经很“精彩”的生活。
　　难道这不正是——用精神分析的术语来说的话——一个最纯粹意义上的变态的（perverse）场景？尽管在日常语言中，“变态”主要是指所谓的性反常，但在精神分析中，“变态”是一个分析性-临床性的术语，指一个主体知晓他者想要什么的一种（虚假的）确定性。所以，变态狂就是一个缺乏质问的人。他（或她）深深确信其所被告知的他者之欲望的内容。就法国精神分析师拉康（Jacques Lacan）看来，“关于变态的整个问题，包含在这样一个思考中：小孩在同其母亲的关系中，如何将自己和想像的（母亲的）欲望对象进行同一化。”在这意义上，变态便是这样一种使人“去确信”的意识形态操作：令一个主体确信不疑地使自己成为母亲／他者——(M)Other——的欲望的对象／工具。这个国际妇女日的意识形态操作是完完全全变态的，因为它被看作为他者之欲望的一个满足性的对象／工具。今天，人们相信，通过推进国际妇女日之操作、并不断使之运行，那么在关于“他者从我这里想要什么”上，就不会再有未解决的问题。对于人们来说，答案似乎比任何时候都更清楚、更确定：女性们需要的是一个日子（而这就是全部）！
　　难道今天的特征化的男性思维——通过这个国际妇女日的意识形态操作而将自身彰显出来——不正是全然变态的？它甚至比以前任何时候都更傲慢！国际妇女日正是今天男性（无意识的）幻想的一个显露，除此之外它什么也不是；而在精神分析中，幻想的功能，便总是作为对他者之缺失的一个遮盖。在这样的幻想性场景中，“我们知道你想要什么！一个荣誉的日子，一个钻石戒指，一束玫瑰鲜花……”通过这些幻想，我们的现实世界（巨大的他者）被体验为一个和谐的秩序，其根本的不连贯性则被遮盖、被取消：就是这样的一天，性别之战（对抗）现已结束！这是一个怎样的傲慢-变态的姿态！
　　今天的男性幻想，不正是在《女人要什么》（What Women Want，港台和大陆地区多译为《偷听女人心》或《男人百分百》）这部好莱坞电影中，将自身最直接地显露出来？片中男主角（梅尔•吉布森饰）在自家浴室遭遇一个“神奇”的事故（被电到），此后便能知晓“女人想要什么”，并因此使他供职的那家公司生意飞长，更是最后赢得了他的上司（海伦•亨特饰）的芳心，当他看到她的内心世界后……在电影的宣传语中，有一句话最具笑料性的反讽意味：“Finally…a man is listening.（终于……有一个男人在倾听。）”难道该电影不正恰恰分享着国际妇女日之意识形态操作的变态核心，即缺失被表达为完满：今天，最傲慢的男性幻想，被表达为女性的光辉性的-荣耀性的-庆祝性的时刻？（恭喜你！你拥有这样1天……）
　　难怪，在精神分析中，“歇斯底里”多是和女性特质（femininity）联系在一起。歇斯底里者，作为变态狂的相反的另一极端，永远不知道他者想要什么，因此永远遭受着某种自我怀疑的折磨，以及剧烈恐惧的折磨，即恐惧自己被牺牲，来填入那他者的缺失中。这就为什么，歇斯底里者总是不断地质问自己——他者从他/她这里想要什么；并不断地抱怨——他者会以某种方式来控制他/她、利用他/她、剥夺他/她最珍贵的东西……这，或许解释了，为什么拉康神秘地将“女人”定义为男人的症状。在拉康主义精神分析中，男性特质和女性特质并非生物学-解剖学性地被决定的；它们根据与不同精神结构（如，歇斯底里或变态）的关系而被定义，这些精神结构同时对男人和女人开放。在变态狂与歇斯底里者之间，斯洛文尼亚哲学家齐泽克（Slavoj Žižek）坚定地站在后者一方：“我拒绝去牺牲在我之中的珍品，因为并没有东西可以去牺牲的，因为我不能够填补你的缺失。”精神分析的最终目标，正如齐泽克所反复强调的：“不是促使主体去承担必要的牺牲……，而是去抵抗牺牲的可怕吸引。”
　　因此，当面对今天最普及的变态操作之一——“国际妇女日快到了，你将为女性们做点什么？”——时，我的回答是经典性地歇斯底里的（因此，女性特质的）：“什么？你说什么？你从我这里想要什么？”
　　也许在今天，同“国际妇女日”相关的唯一激进行动便是：“我不为女性们做什么；而是，我将自己和女性们（而非想像性的女性之欲望的对象）进行同一化。”
　　二〇〇六年三月六日星期一
　　（原载《东方早报》，2006年3月8日）
　　附英文原文，供参照：
The Perverse Core of International Women’s Day
Guanjun Wu
(School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University)
In the past few days, from my close female friends to the salesmen on the street (not to mention TV advertisements), people have kept reminding me,
“The International Women’s Day is coming! (… so you should do/buy something…)”
My response, which seems a little bit UN-friendly and “politically incorrect”, often goes:
“What? What did you say? What do you want from me?
“What does this DAY mean anyway? Isn’t this a further humiliation of women?
“Isn’t this simply manifesting the fact that half of the population on this planet still doesn’t mean ANYTHING to us, so we decided to make a DAY to remind us of women’s existence?
“‘Everyone else’ has 365 days a year BUT WOMEN… So, congratulations, Miss, you have 1 day! You’re fully WORTH it and should be happy and go celebrate…
“This IS special.”
This “special treatment” is the way today’s people think and through which our world is organized. People believe this one special DAY really helps women’s already “wonderful” life centred around those “not-so-special / everyone-else” people in the rest 364 days!
Isn’t this, in psychoanalytic terms, a perverse scene at its purest? Despite its everyday associations with so-called sexual deviancy, perversion is also an analytic-clinic term that (Lacanian) psychoanalysis uses to designate a (pseudo-)certainty that a subject knows what the Other wants. The pervert is therefore defined by a lack of questioning. He (or she) is convinced of the meaning of the desire of the Other. “The whole problem of the perversions”, for French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, “consists in conceiving how the child, in his relation to the mother … identifies himself with the imaginary object of [her] desire”.　In this sense, perversion is such a make-believing ideological operation that convinces a subject to be the object-instrument that satisfies the desire of the (M)Other. The ideological-fantasmatic operation of this so-called “International Women’s Day” (IWD) is exactly perverse since it is conceived of as a fulfilling-satisfying object/instrument of the desire of the Other. Today, people are convinced that there is no unsettled issue, by advancing this IWD operation and keeping it running, with regard to the question of “Che vuoi?” (What does the Other want from me?) It seems clearer and more certain to them than ever: Women want one DAY (and that’s ALL)!
Isn’t today’s idiosyncratic male-thinking totally perverse, manifesting itself through this IWD operation? It is even more substantially arrogant than BEFORE. (It could be considered, in my personal view, as the most arrogant moment in the history of male dominance.) This “International Women’s Day” is nothing but a manifestation of today’s male’s (unconscious) fantasy; and fantasy, in psychoanalysis, functions as a concealment of the lack of the Other. In such fantasmatic scenarios, “we know what you want! An honorary Day, a diamond ring, a bunch of flowers…” Through these fantasies, our reality-world (the Other) is experienced as a harmonious order and its fundamental inconsistency is concealed, or cancelled out, eradicated: just a DAY, and the war (antagonism) of sexes now is OVER. What an arrogant-perverse gesture it is!
Doesn’t today’s male fantasy disclose itself most directly in the Hollywood movie What Women Want (2000)? The hero (Mel Gibson), after a “magic” accident happened in his bathroom, knows clearly “what women want”, therefore makes the business of the company he works for rapidly booming, and wins his supervisor’s heart (Helen Hunt) after seeing her inside world… There is one line in the poster of the movie, which couldn’t be more hilariously ironic: “Finally…a man is listening.” Hasn’t this just shared the very perverse core of the ideological operation of IWD – the lack is presented as the fulfillment: today, the most arrogant male-fantasy is presented as women’s glorious-honorarycelebrating moment? (Congratulations! You have one DAY…)
No wonder in psychoanalysis, hysteria is often associated with femininity. The hysteric, as the opposite extreme of the pervert, is never clear what the Other wants and is therefore always plagued by a kind of self-doubt, and, more frequently, severe fear of being sacrificed to fill in the lack of the Other. That is why the hysteric is constantly questioning him/herself what the Other wants from him/her, and complaining that the Other will somehow manipulate and exploit him/her, deprive him/her of his/her most precious possession... That explains, perhaps, why Lacan mysteriously defines “woman” as a symptom of man. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, masculinity and femininity are not biologically-anatomically determined; they are defined in relation to different psychic structures (e.g. hysteria/neurosis, perversion) that are open to both men and women. Between the pervert and the hysteric, Slovene psychoanalyst, philosopher Slavoj Žižek stands firmly with the latter group: “I refuse to sacrifice the agalma in me BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING TO SACRIFICE, because I am unable to fill in your lack.” The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is, as Žižek claims repeatedly, “not to enable the subject to assume the necessary sacrifice … but to resist the terrible attraction of sacrifice.”
Therefore, facing one of today’s most prevailing perverse operations – “The International Women’s Day is coming, and what will you do for women?”, my response is typically hysteric (therefore, feminine): “What? What did you say? What do you want from me?”
That “I am not doing things for women; rather, I am identifying myself with women (instead of the fantasmatic object of women’s desire)”, perhaps, is the radical act today with regard to IWD.