“She Would Get all of Them. Every Last One”: Carrie and the Jouissance of Revenge

William P. MacNeil

doi:10.1515/pol-2024-2023

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“She Would Get all of Them. Every Last One”: Carrie and the Jouissance of Revenge

William P. MacNeil

Published/Copyright: September 25, 2024

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From the journal Pólemos Volume 18 Issue 2

Abstract

Is there more powerful revenge narrative in contemporary popular culture than that of all-time über-nerd, Carrie White? For Carrie is a figure of abjection nonpareil, one who is, routinely, subjected to ongoing and intensifying humiliations. Given this treatment, it should come as no surprise when, finally, the tormented Carrie turns the tables, quite spectacularly, on her tormenters – and everyone else who gets in her way. A catastrophic state of affairs that Carrie so clearly ‘enjoys’, embodying what might be called revenge’s jouissance. Utilising a perspective that is broadly psychoanalytic, this article will take up Carrie’s jouissance of revenge, situating it in terms of three registers: phallic jouissance, juris-jouissance and feminine jouissance. All, with this end in sight: nothing less than the re-inscription of feminist connection and, with it, the possibility of forgiveness – instantiated in Carrie as victimised outlier and victimising jouisseuse – at the very centre of the Law’s psychic subjectivity and social bond.

Keywords: revenge; juris-jouissance; phallic jouissance; The Thing; not-all; feminine jouissance

Corresponding author: William P. MacNeil, Honorary Professor, FAAL TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia; Adjunct Professor of Law, School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia; and Distinguished Fellow, Westminster Law and Theory Lab, University of Westminster, London, England, E-mail: w.macneil@uq.edu.au

This article was originally presented as “‘Plug It Up!’: Carrie and the Jouissance of Revenge”, Annual Conference of the Italian Law and Literature Association (AIDEL, Associazione Italiana Diritto e Letteratura), IULM University, Milan, Italy (2022), It was, subsequently, presented at the Annual Conference of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ), QUT, Brisbane QLD Australia (2023), My thanks to the organisers, Professor Paola Carbone (IULM Milan, Italy) and Associate Professor Trish Luker (UTS, Sydney NSW Australia). This article is dedicated to two embodiments of (intellectual) jouissance: to my good friend and UTS co-panellist, Dr Honni van Rijswijk (Law, UTS, Sydney, NSW, Australia), jurisprude, novelist and the “Susan Snell of cultural legal studies”; and to my good friend and outstanding teacher, the doyen of Lacanian scholars Down Under, Dr Russell Grigg (Lacan Circle of Australia, Melbourne VIC, Australia), il miglior fabbro. To both, I say enjoy! (But don’t destroy your high schools!).

Published Online: 2024-09-25

Published in Print: 2024-09-25

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/pol-2024-2023

Keywords for this article

revenge; juris-jouissance; phallic jouissance; The Thing; not-all; feminine jouissance