I am 11 weeks into my last semester of university as a student of English Literature. I should be a kick-ass literary theory-spouting, Proust-quoting, Plathian nightmare. Instead, I’m a little grumpy, quite awkward, and completely confused. Not in like a spiritual, existential way; I’m pretty okay with that stuff but in a more literary way. I’ve never read ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and at some point, I believed Eyre wrote Austen. I don’t actually understand what the signifier and signified mean. I still don’t know how to punctuate my sentences, and I haven’t read a whole book since Trevor Noah’s memoir.
Gosh. It’s finally off my chest.
It’s not like I’ve lost interest, or that I’m stupid. I hope. I think I may have just not really paid attention the first time someone explained this stuff, and now it’s too late in my literary career to ask basic questions. I feel like a neurosurgeon who can’t remember what his stethoscope is supposed to do. It’s all a splash unsettling.
I can only hope that future employers don’t dig up this article when I show up for my interview with a perfectly coordinated outfit and a jaunty pair of fake glasses. Anywho, this is my last HC article, and I wanted to leave you with a little insight. Insight that I only really got about 7 minutes ago.
Do you know what the word Jouissance means?
Fret not, I had no idea what it meant either until I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me in the style of a trashy Cosmo. It’s actually quite wild. She—I’m assuming ChatGPT is a she, can you imagine a guy that reliable? Forgive me, I digress—she told me that it’s that wild ecstatic moment of joy that flows through you when you experience earth-shattering euphoria.
Our chatty friend writes, and I quote:
“Imagine you’re Monica on Friends, cleaning her apartment to the point of sparkling nirvana. That’s plaisir, or regular enjoyment—the satisfaction of a job well done. Now, picture Phoebe randomly bursting out with a nonsensical song about unicorns while roller-skating through the freshly mopped floor, leaving a trail of rainbow glitter. That’s jouissance—it’s intense, unexpected, and maybe a little messy, but it goes beyond normal pleasure. It’s a wild, untamed feeling that can be both delightful and disruptive. Jouissance is like that crazy cosmic energy that sometimes breaks the rules. It’s the chaotic dance of creation, the ecstatic explosion of a supernova, or even the bittersweet sting of a heartbreak that somehow makes you feel more alive.”
She kind of lost the plot with the bittersweet heartbreak thing; I wouldn’t sign up for that stuff if you paid me. But the rest of it is pretty wild! Why am I writing an entire HC article about a ChatGPT explanation for my Queer Eye reading? The reasons are manifold. None of these include my looming deadlines, my rapidly unraveling thesis, my tendency to procrastinate, or the class post that I am surreptitiously avoiding.
The point is! How many of us experience this sense of Jouissance regularly in our lives? Or at all, really? How many of us are doing things that make us want to just click our heels with joy, in the most dorky, Disney way imaginable? Someone asked me, right at the beginning of this sem— “If you were on your deathbed, could you look back at your life, and say, with confidence, that you lived exactly the way you wanted…?” Dark. I know. I told him to go watch Legally Blonde and down a martini.
But it got me thinking.
And after about 20 seconds of deep introspective, soul-searching, thought, I realized, god no, I definitely have regrets. It wasn’t an extreme realization or one that I alone have, but it was eye-opening in a simple, almost in-your-face way.We—yes, I am going to make a sweeping claim about the entire human race—tend to live for the monkeys in our heads. Why monkeys? I don’t know. Maybe it’s some subliminal throwback to our forefathers, maybe I just like monkeys, maybe I was on a time crunch.
The point is, that we perform for the people around us, and we craft ourselves to fit into what the world expects from us.
“Soooo original!” you think to yourself, with a little eye roll. “Aliya, you’re kind of stating the obvious here. Plus, you’re ripping off every valedictorian speech ever made in like every corny chick flick.”
Spare me the sass. I know.
But it’s cliché, and corny, and obvious because it’s true. We spend a lot of time listening to what other people think of us, or what we think other people think of us. I don’t really think anyone is thinking of anyone else all that much. We’re all just kind of thinking of other people thinking about us. So technically we’re all just thinking about ourselves and what other people think about this self.
Here’s the catch. Suppose everyone is scrutinising themselves, and scrutinising how deeply they think you are scrutinising them. In that case, no one really, logically speaking, has enough space in their head to think about anything other than this self-scrutiny and scrutiny of the self through the eyes of the other.
Unless the other really is quite bored, in which case, I’d recommend pottery, or perhaps knitting.
Quite the brain pretzel, or mind duck as the censored toddlers exclaim. But it’s a comforting, complicated, scantily researched, glistening gem of a thought. And it is my parting pearl of wisdom to you little Ashokans.
So here’s your little reminder, to draw even though you suck at it, to sing really loudly despite common reiterations of your tone deafness, and to dance even when everything feels awkward and jiggly.
That was very Live, Laugh, Love of me; wasn’t it?
And maybe, if you’re lucky, in these tiny moments of rebellion from your constructed identity, you can score a gooey slice of that jooey -thing…