Pleasure Principal

Here's the promised piece on Lacan and football.

Why do people hate Manchester United so? Psychoanalysis can tell us something about this, in particular the notion of enjoyment. Enjoyment is different to pleasure: Zizek glosses this Lacanian idea,

enjoyment is not to be equated with pleasure: enjoyment designates the paradoxical satisfaction procured by a painful encounter with a Thing that perturbs the equilibrium of the "pleasure principle." In other words, enjoyment is located "beyond the pleasure principle." (Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying With the Negative

And isn't this appropriate with regards to football (or any sport)? Quite often, watching football is not pleasurable, and yet there is certainly enjoyment there. The "pleasure principle" is about reaching a point of stasis, of quiet happiness, unruffled by either excessive pain or excessive pleasure, and football is quite the opposite, enduring moments of pain for moments of pure ecstasy.
Zizek, who, in his work, offers a political interpretation of Lacan, looks at the question of national identity via this notion, and I think it is applicable to football as well (and not just at national level). Zizek argues that the Nation is sustained by enjoyment:

The element which holds together a given community cannot be reduced to the point of symbolic identification: the bond linking together its members always implies a shared relationship toward a Thing, toward enjoyment incarnated. This relationship toward the Thing, structured by means of fantasies, is what is at stake when we speak of the menace to our "way of life" presented by the Other: it is what is threatened when, for example, a white Englishman is panicked because of the growing presence of "aliens." What he wants to defend at any price is not reducible to the so-called set of values that offer support to national identity. ... If we are asked how we can recognize the presence of this Thing, the only consistent answer is that the Thing is present in that elusive entity called "our way of life." All we can do is enumerate disconnected fragments of the way our community organizes its feasts, its rituals of mating, its initiation ceremonies, in short, all the details by which is made visible the unique way a community organizes its enjoyment. (Tarrying with the Negative)

And doesn't the same go for supporting a football team? That it is impossible to account for club loyalties in any reasonable way without referring back endlessly to "disconnected fragments?" This argument is even more meaningful when one considers the argument about supporting "your local team": football as grounded in place, as nation is grounded. "It's just around the corner" would be no answer to the why of enjoyment. Zizek continues:

It would however be erroneous simply to reduce the national Thing to the features composing a specific "way of life." The Thing is not directly a collection of these features; there is "something more" in it, something that is present in these features, that appears through them. Members of a community who partake in a given "way of life" believe in their Thing, where this belief has a reflexive structure proper to the intersubjective space: "I believe in the (national) Thing" equals "I believe that others (members of my community) believe in the Thing" ... The national Thing exists as long as members of the community believe in it; it is literally an effect of this belief in itself.(Tarrying with the Negative)

"It is just around the corner," becomes "around the corner there are people who believe in the rituals, and thus I enjoy" - "A nation exists only as long as its specific enjoyment continues to be materialized in a set of social practices and transmitted through national myths that structure these practices" (Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative).
We can now look at what Zizek says about ethnic tensions (which gets us closer to the point of all this...):

What is therefore at stake in ethnic tensions is always the possession of the national Thing. We always impute to the "other" an excessive enjoyment: he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or he has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment. ... To the racist, the "other" is either a workaholic stealing our jobs or an idler living on our labor. The basic paradox is that our Thing is conceived as something inaccessible to the other and at the same time threatened by him. (Tarrying with the Negative)

One good example of this is in the way foreign ownership of football clubs is generally presented in one of two ways: either "they are coming in and they know nothing of our club, our traditions), or "they are coming in with all their money and they will buy all our players and buy titles", which are two sides of the same coin - one from the home support, the other from opposition supporters; both are variations on "they are stealing our enjoyment". The second of these can be seen most clearly in the recent takeover of Manchester City, where stories of their wealth led to Michel Platini saying:

"During this year's festive season, one club which had suddenly become very rich made various astronomical bids in the transfer market," said Platini. "Of course, there was a tremendous outcry in the football family, people called it outrageous and scandalous.

"Is it morally acceptable to offer such sums of money for a single player? We are currently looking at the idea of limiting, to a certain degree, a club's expenditure on staff – salary and transfer fees combined – to an as yet undecided percentage of its direct and indirect sporting revenue."

Considering how many of Man City's bids were successful this statement is certainly more excessive than necessary, showing that enjoyment is what is at stake. The same could be said of the criticisms of English teams dominating the Champions League at the moment. Platini's proposals can be seen in the context of English football as that which ruins the European enjoyment, but which has, at the same time, an enjoyment which is inaccessible - the proposals being an attempt to render "our" enjoyment accessible to "them". That it bears little relation to "reality" shows it is linked to enjoyment and fantasy - take Real Madrid's constant attentions and huge sums of money offered to buy Ronaldo, is this not just as "scandalous" to Platini? No, because it does not threaten his enjoyment.
Other examples abound. Take the still common practice (especially on ITV) of commentators using the stereotype of "diving foreigners", in a Champions league tie the team playing an English team are always "diving", always "time-wasting", whereas the English team's players are simply "making the most of it", or "being professional", this despite the fact that most players for English teams in the Champions League tend to be foreign. But "our" foreign players have become part of the community, they no are no longer a threat, it is the opposition players who are threatening to steal our enjoyment.
To concentrate now on Manchester United and the same threat to enjoyment can be seen in many of the attitudes towards us. Consider how seriously everyone took Rafa Benitez's assertion that Liverpool were at a disadvantage to Manchester United because of the difference in money available. The fact that Liverpool also have vast amounts of money was never really considered, nor Chelsea's or Arsenal's. It was just taken for granted that he was right. There was some quibbling over the actual figures but nevertheless the one "fact" that remained for everyone was that Man Utd are some monolith of money and power, putting everyone else at a disadvantage. Reality never came into it. In relation to other clubs we are in the position of the "other" who steals enjoyment and at the same time has access to some secret enjoyment, inaccessible to the other clubs.
On the subject of this inaccessible enjoyment a comparison with Arsenal is interesting. Arsenal get many plaudits for their "beautiful" football while Man Utd get only grudging praise, always qualified with "but" ... Why this difference? It seems to me that the difference is that it is OK to play great football as long as you don't win anything. Just look at the rather patronising praise for West Brom this season, "they may well go down, but at least they've tried to play football". And isn't it the same with Arsenal? Admittedly Arsenal occasionally win things but the essential point remains - the difference between Man Utd and Arsenal is success. Our inaccessible enjoyment is therefore the marriage of good football with success. Of course on another level Arsenal are praised to the hilt simply because they are not us, in the same way that Chelsea, no matter how awful their football might have been under Mourinho, were still praised because they were stopping us winning things.
Again, reality doesn't come into any of this, the fact is, this season apart, we don't win everything all the time, it is a fantasy construction - our place in the structure is that of the team that prevents other teams' enjoyment. This can of course be spread to the entire top 4 (and, considering Platini's comments, English football), "If it wasn't for them, we'd be winning trophies!"
The difference between our football and Arsenal's football lies precisely in the success it breeds. I'd like to suggest that Arsenal's "beautiful" football, their wage policy and their adherence to playing youngsters is a defence against failure. Which is to say that rather than compete, their adherence to principles becomes an excuse for not winning anything - "you can't win anything with kids", "I'd rather play beautiful football than win by playing long balls". Whereas our "beautiful" football is a means to success, we fully assume the risk, thus when we lose there is excessive enjoyment on the part of the other at our failure, when Arsenal fail (and the same can be said of West Brom, "we may go down, but at least we stuck to our principles.") they get sympathy for sticking to their beliefs. As an aside, it is interesting to look at Arsene Wenger in the context of the figure of the miser. Doesn't his adherence to youth simply disguise the fact that he hates spending money? And don't the stories of the money that Arsenal could spend every summer but never do, place him even more in this place - he hoards his money, never to spend it. In this context Lee Edelman's discussion of Silas Marner in No Future is also interesting - its placing of the figure of the miser as against futurism can lead to an interpretation of Wenger as a man who, for all his talk of the future ("these young players are the future of Arsenal") is presiding over an Arsenal who are treading water.
The other thing to note is the criticism of the supporters of Man Utd, the distance from the club, the overseas support. The fact that other clubs have a similar diaspora of supporters and actively seek to increase the numbers of overseas supporters matters nothing. The scenario that is constructed is of a Man Utd which is soulless against the other clubs which are in some way considered "authentic". And this is the other side of the coin - if our enjoyment is inaccessible to them, they consider their enjoyment as inaccessible to us, and that we are trying to ruin it by globalising the game, turning the "authenticity" of the English game into one big money making factory. That they are all trying to do the same, only less successfully, doesn't matter, because, as we pointed out earlier, the Thing is not made up of actual content, it is only a result of other's belief, so reality doesn't need to come into it - the fantasy is maintained despite the facts.
I already mentioned, in my post on Freud on and "Rafa's Rant", Sir Alex as the figure of the father. For convenience's sake I'll repeat what I said there (with the odd revision) before adding to it.
Sir Alex is in the position of the Father. There is in Freudian theory two father's; one, the father of the Oedipus complex, the father who is an obstacle to our enjoyment; and two, the Primal Father, described in Freud's Totem and Taboo, "a violent and jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away his sons as they grow up". This is the all-powerful father, the only one allowed to enjoy. With regard to football one can see how Sir Alex occupies the position of the father, not only through his longevity, but in the respect he is afforded, the weight his words are given, and most importantly in the fact that he is perceived as he who must be beaten (killed) for the other managers to attain enjoyment (winning the league). He is the obstacle to enjoyment, and in the way he sentimentally offloads certain players (Keane, Beckham, Ince, for example) he can be seen driving "away his sons as they grow up", as they become a perceived threat.
What does all this have to do with RR you may ask? It is in the difference between the two fathers that we find our answer. Slavoj Zizek describes this in Looking Awry:

The Oedipus myth is based on the premise that it is the father, as the agent of prohibition, who denies us access to enjoyment (i.e., incest, the sexual relationship with the mother). The underlying implication is that parricide would remove this obstacle and thus allow us fully to enjoy the forbidden object. The myth of the primal father is almost the exact opposite of this: the result of the parricide is not the removal of an obstacle, enjoyment is not brought fully within our reach. Quite the contrary - the dead father turns out to be stronger than the living one. After the parricide, the former reigns as the Name-of-the-Father, the agent of the symbolic law that irrevocably precludes access to the forbidden fruit of enjoyment.

First off we should note that Sir Alex occupies this position, not because of any personal quality, but simply because he is manager of Manchester United. "I symbolize the subject by the barred S, in so far as it is constituted as secondary in relation to the signifier" (Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyscho-analysis). It would take us too far away to look closely at this concept, but the essential point in this context is that the subject is constituted by the symbolic network and not vice versa. We can see this most clearly by looking at the weight given to Sir Alex's words. When he speaks, his words are given greater meaning by virtue of his being Manchester United manager. His longevity as manager is secondary, for otherwise wouldn't, for instance, Alan Curbishley's words have been given similar weight when he was Charlton manager? Zizek sums this up well in The Sublime Object of Ideology:

The Lacanian definition of a fool is somebody who believes in his immediate identity with himself ... like a king who thinks he's a king, who takes his being-a-king as his immediate property and not as a symbolic mandate imposed on him by a network of intersubjective relations of which he is a part.

Secondly, this reinforces what we have been saying: that the position of Man Utd as bar to enjoyment allows other clubs to keep the illusion that a full enjoyment is possible - "If it wasn't for Man Utd we could win things!", in a similar way that the figure of the foreign "other" allows the racist to keep the idea that if one was to exclude the other the nation would be perfect. This comparison is also apt in that, as the figure of the foreign "other" hides the essential antagonisms inherent in the capitalist system, so, by having a club such as Manchester United to take aim at, the essential disparities throughout football are disguised. Which is to say that we have a football system which reflects the capitalist system of which it is a part, consequently all attempts to redress the balance in football fail because nothing can be changed unless we are willing to change society. On a very simple level we can see this in the way that proposals to make football more equitable generally fail because of laws guaranteeing the system of free trade in the wider society.
So it can be seen that an inaccessible enjoyment is imputed to us, that Sir Alex as the primal father enjoying everything is exemplary of this, and that all of it serves to distract from two things - the impossibility of full enjoyment and the inherent antagonisms of capitalist society. The only point still to make why should this be so fascinating to the other - at the same time as everyone complains that, "Man Utd are on the TV again", everyone still watches. Why? Let's refer to Zizek again:

What we gain by transposing the perception of inherent social antagonisms into the fascination with the other ... is the fantasy-organization of desire. The Lacanian thesis that enjoyment is ultimately always enjoyment of the Other, i.e., enjoyment supposed, imputed to the other, and that, conversely, the hatred of the Other's enjoyment is always hatred of one's own enjoyment, is perfectly exemplified by this logic of this "theft of enjoyment." ...Do we not find enjoyment precisely in fantasising about the Other's enjoyment, in this ambivalent attitude toward it? Do we not obtain satisfaction by means of the very supposition that the Other enjoys in a way inaccessible to us? Does not the Other's enjoyment exert such a powerful fascination because in it we represent to ourselves our own innermost relationship toward enjoyment? ... the fascinating image of the Other gives body to our own innermost split, to what is "in us more than ourselves" and thus prevents us from achieving full identity with ourselves. The hatred of the Other is the hatred of our own excess of enjoyment. (Tarrying With the Negative)

We go all the way, so they don't have to.

In the second part of this I shall look at this from the other side of the coin. Here we looked at how other people see us, there, I shall look at what all this means from the Man Utd side.