5 - “Na, wenn du mich erst fragst?”: ReconsideringAffirmative Consent with Schnitzler, Schnitt,Habermas, and Rancière
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2022
Summary
Consent
IN HIS 2015 ESSAY “The Sexual is (Not) Political,”Slavoj Žižek makes a case against affirmative consent, the“yes means yes” sexual rule by which all partiesinvolved in a sexual encounter agree to specificforms of conduct, either through clear, verbalcommunication or nonverbal cues or actions. Notsurprisingly, Žižek considers recent calls to codify“yes means yes” a prime example of the “narcissisticnotion of subjectivity” that feeds our “politicallycorrect obsession with protecting individuals fromany experience that may hurt them in any way.”According to Žižek's polemic, affirmative consent isbased on the naive idea that a sex act could befreed of any suspicion of coercion if bothparticipants announce their free and consciousintention to participate. Žižek argues that thisfalse assumption ignores the conflicts resultingfrom the competing pressures within the Freudiantriad between id impulses and a punitive superego.“Under the pressure from the Superego, my Ego says‘no,’ but my Id resists and clings to the denieddesire? Or (a much more interesting case) theopposite: I say ‘yes’ to the sexual invitation,surrendering to my Id passion, but in the midst ofperforming the act, my Superego triggers anunbearable guilt feeling? So, to bring things to theabsurd, should the contract be signed by the Ego,Superego, and Id of each party, so that it is validonly if all three say ‘yes’?”
Žižek's point in this essay is consistent with hisLacanian interpretation of the superego as anantiethical agency that stigmatizes what it formallycommands; namely, the ego's failure to suppress theinstinctual demands of the id. As Žižek explains,the superego is “the agency in the eyes of which Iam all the more guilty, the more I try to suppressmy ‘sinful’ strivings and meet its demands.” In thisunderstanding, it is impossible to withdraw from orreject the fundamental nature of desire thatstructures the very core of erotic interplay.
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- Information
- German #MeTooRape Cultures and Resistance, 1770-2020, pp. 123 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022