安娜提戈涅

前几天翻译了托德·迈高文 (Todd McGowan) 的一句话，因为这句话能直接概括整个知识点。

“嫉妒要的是客体，而嫉羡要的是通过毁灭他者的享乐来获得享乐。 (Jealousy wants the object, and Envy wants to enjoy through destroying the enjoyment of the other.) “

这出自他的播客节目《Why Theory》：

这句话转述的是克莱因的《嫉羡与感恩》，不过上下文里也有拉康视角的解读。不过就不通篇翻译了，只把Whisper转录的文本贴出来给想详细了解的人。

This is on Envy, as you can tell.
And what we're doing here, this is kind of a new little sub series we're trying out.
This one's a little bit more speculative.
We'll see what we got with this one.
But Envy is probably, I don't know, perhaps most popularly known as being part of the seven deadly sins, perhaps the most common, the most everyday.
And so we're kind of thinking of taking the seven deadly sins and taking the, I don't know, taking the sin aspect out of it in this sense.
When something is sin, it is bad.
And then when something is bad, there's no theory.
What that means is there's nothing there to speculate upon.
There's nothing there to pull apart.
There's nothing to fan out.
There's just...
It's bad.
Just don't do it.
Just don't do it.
You know?
So there's no like, oh, that's the good dough, so roll it out.
That's the bad dough, throw it away.
So we're gonna try to roll this out like it's the good dough.
And this, of course, involves, again, we're taking primarily the sin aspect out of it.
But to theorize it, we're gonna start with someone who does make it part of their theory.
And this is, I'm sure some listeners know, this is a part of Melanie Klein's text.
I don't know what word we want to use.
Corpus?
What's a good word, Todd?
Ouvre.
Ouvre.
The pretentious French word.
I wanted to say it, but I can't.
I know, you couldn't bring yourself to, because you're more down with the people than I am.
That's right, yes.
I have a baser tongue than thou.
So Melanie Klein with envy is very interesting.
And I have to credit the gloss to Joan Kopchak, as ever, who puts on, as an opposition, jealousy
and envy.
And it's very important why.
Jealousy wants the object, and envy wants the enjoyment.
And so, the great example of this is children playing with toys.
One child in a group, either siblings or in a kindergarten scenario or playground scenario,
is getting a lot of enjoyment out of playing with some toy.
And then there's some fight, and then parents or guardians come around, and they're like,
just to settle this here, you can now play with the toy.
And then what happens?
Todd, what happens?
Does the child want the toy?
No, the child doesn't care about the toy at all, right?
Because what they...
Or maybe they do in this sense, right?
Because their target, they don't play with the toy, but they hold the toy, and they're
like, ha, now you don't get it.
And I think that's the crucial, crucial aspect of envy.
I think Klein says something like, envy wants to...
These are her terms.
Envy wants to go into the good object and destroy its goodness.
And I think how we would translate that is that envy wants to enjoy through destroying
the enjoyment of the other.
So that's why it's such a common thing.
There's a lot of envy jokes, I think.
Slavoj tells a lot of these.
I think I'm stealing this from him, although turnabout's a fair play.
I think the joke goes, a genie comes to a guy and says, you get three wishes.
And the guy goes, okay, great.
And he goes, but everything that I get you, your neighbor's going to get double.
So the guy starts out, he's like, okay, I'd like a cow.
And then cow comes, but two cows appear at his neighbor's.
And he says, I'd like a mansion.
And he gets a mansion.
And then two mansions appear at his neighbor's house.
And then he says, for his final wish, he says, I'd like to have one eye poked out.
So the point of that joke is that there's these material things that bring pleasure
that one could be jealous of.
But the ultimate enjoyment of envy comes when you, it's the act of taking something away
from the other, depriving the other of their enjoyment.
And I think that's why it's such an interesting sin, if you will, or concept.
I think it seems to me almost incredible that the church fathers came up with an envy
even as one of the deadly sins.
I guess, I mean, I can see it geopolitically, right?
Because if the impoverished masses are envying the priests or the upper classes, that's going
to create social instability.
So I can see it that way.
But on the other hand, it does seem like it's such a universal quality and something that's
so psychically complex that I find it interesting that people were able to come up with it just
while they're just church fathers, right?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's just, it seems so like that.
I mean, that's what I think what's sort of interesting about it.
It seems so common.
It just, it seems so common that it just, it doesn't seem so much like a sin, I don't
think.
I think some of the other ones, wrath, I do think like in, even in common parlance have
like, yeah, there's something like sinful or at the very least like excessive.
And I think like, and kind of why I wanted to start with this, in just in common parlance
and just like common like everyday experience, like envy almost doesn't, there doesn't seem
to be access to it.
It doesn't seem like that there's anything going on with envy.
It just seems very regular.
Like you're envious of, you're envious of your neighbor having blank.
You know what I mean?
Like in the very Oedipal joke that you told to put the idea out there.
Like it's, it definitely has that, it has, it just, the whiff of the common about it
to the point that it doesn't seem to be really anything like theoretical going on.
But that misses, of course, this nice point about the like eliminating the enjoyment that
you were, that you laid out.
There's a, I've never referenced this show before and may never again, but there's an
episode of Malcolm in the Middle that's really good for this.
And it does have to do with the show.
It's a family sitcom if no one's ever seen it.
Two parents, three kids.
And it's kind of told, it's like a fourth wall breaking direct address for one of the
characters, Malcolm, played by Frankie Muniz, who talks to the audience.
He's the middle child.
And I'm forgetting the coordinates of this, which is probably good because it'll help
for people who haven't seen it.
But like the two parents played by, it was Brian Cranston and, oh my goodness, I'm forgetting
her name.
That sucks.
That'll come to me later.
And they were supposed to go to one of their kids events at school, but they were just
too harried and forgetful.
And so they didn't go.
And I think it was the youngest one was very upset about it.
And so they're trying to make it up to him.
And they're trying to give him gifts or whatever, and he doesn't want anything.
And so they finally get the idea, okay, we're gonna give you the birthday present we were
going to give to your brother.
And I think if I remember this right, I don't know if it played out exactly, but he wanted
it on condition that his brother knew, had to know that it was gonna be for him.
But then he had it.
That was the only, and then he was satisfied and not mad at his parents anymore for missing
the thing.
And so I always thought that...
You go ahead.
The stealing is part of the enjoyment, right?
And the suffering of the other is part of the enjoyment.
Because he had to know.
Because if he didn't know, then he just had an object.
But yes, it's the stealing had to be there or else...
Like if there's...
Exactly, that's the whole thing.
The object only matters insofar as it's theft.
It is the...
You are actively...
One of the listener I've talked a lot to and become friends with, Sarah Hamadi.
She's Iranian.
And there's not...
I think she told me this, that in Farsi, there's not a word for envy.
So she had to come up with her own construction to talk about it.
And what she landed on was joy thief.
And I thought that was so cool.
No, it's good.
I think that is right.
Yeah, joy thief.
I think that's the perfect expression of it.
Right?
Yeah, I think so.
And it works with the Malcolm in the Middle example.
It works with the kid example.
It works with a lot of what's going on here because what you...
Again, you're trying to...
The illicit...
If you could just acquire...
If you were just acquiring objects and object pleasure, then it's fine.
You don't need this other thing to it.
You don't need this enjoyment.
You don't need...
You don't need precisely the element that I think the more that we talk it out, you
don't need the element that makes it a sin.
To take...
Right.
It's not just...
You're not stealing.
That's what's...
I think it's really important.
It's not just theft.
It's not theft isn't a deadly sin, but it's to thieve joy.
I think...
I don't know.
The more that we push it, maybe this does come boomerang back around into sinful territory.
I don't know.
What do you think of that?
No, I love that.
I think that's right.
I like that theft of...
I think that is what envy is, the desire to steal the enjoyment of the other.
I think what's important is that you can steal it for yourself, like the Malcolm in the Middle.
He actually gets it.
But you can just enjoy the act of depriving the other person of it alone.
No matter what it costs you...
That's another interesting thing.
People will go to extraordinary lengths to enact their envy, no matter what it costs
them.
As long as it costs the other person, then they're satisfied with that.
So I think that...
Think about...
This is the example I think is the best in English literary history, is the example of
Othello.
Yes.
So Iago says to Othello, and he's being disingenuous, of course, because he's trying to foster his
jealousy.
He says,
"'Oh, beware, my lord of jealousy, it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat
it feeds on.'"
That's what he says to Othello.
And I think he's right.
Othello is jealous.
He's jealous of Desdemona because he sees Michael Cazio talking with her.
He gets the handkerchief that he gave her.
He keeps having Iago say,
"'I like not that.'"
And he gets that in his head.
But Iago is...
I think there is no way to read him as a figure of jealousy.
And I think the play is really about this contrast between jealousy and envy.
And I think we know Iago is envious.
He says...
He has this great line.
He says,
"'The more has a beauty in his life that mine lacks.'"
That's what he wants to destroy, that beauty in his life that mine lacks.
And he doesn't say,
"'I want it for myself.'"
And then he gives all these reasons why he has to destroy Othello.
He's having sex with his wife, Amelia.
He passed him over for a promotion.
But he has too many reasons.
It's like the kettle logic.
You have too many reasons, you don't really have one at all.
And so it proves that he's just driven by envy.
And I think that's what's so compelling about that play is not so much Othello's jealousy.
I think everyone thinks Iago is the central character in the play.
And he's maybe the greatest literary depiction of envy that there's ever been.