SMOKING CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS

Comrades,

Welcome to the desert of the real.

I am new to Substack, but already feel at home. I can publish what I want, when I want, and communicate directly with you, my readers.

This year, I will endeavour to publish twice a week; Politics midweek, Culture or Bonus Obscenities on the weekend.

Today, I am mixing it up with a midweek Bonus Obscenity.

Enjoy! But not too much!

The impasses of today’s consumerism provide a clear case of the Lacanian distinction between plaisir and jouissance: on the one hand we have the consumerist calculating his plaisirs, well-protected from all kinds of harassments and other health threats; on the other hand we have the drug addict (or smoker or…) bent on self-destruction. The basic strategy of enlightened consumerist hedonism is to deprive enjoyment of its excessive dimension, of its disturbing surplus, of the fact that it serves nothing. Enjoyment is tolerated, solicited even, but on condition that it is healthy, that it doesn't threaten our psychic or biological stability: chocolate yes, but fat free, coke yes, but diet, coffee yes, but without caffeine, beer yes, but without alcohol, mayonnaise yes, but without cholesterol, sex yes, but safe sex...

We are here in the domain of what Lacan calls the discourse of University, as opposed to the discourse of the Master: a Master goes to the end in his consummation, he is not constrained by petty utilitarian considerations (which is why there is a certain formal homology between the traditional aristocratic master and a drug-addict focused on his deadly enjoyment), while the consumerist's pleasures are regulated by scientific knowledge propagated by the university discourse. The decaffeinated enjoyment we thus obtain is a semblance of enjoyment, not its Real, and it is in this sense that Lacan talks about the imitation of enjoyment in the discourse of University. The prototype of this discourse is the multiplicity of reports in popular magazines which advocate sex as good for health: sexual act works like jogging, strengthens the heart, relaxes our tensions, even kissing is good for our health.

However, there seems to be one big exception in this happy universe of healthy enjoyment: cigarettes. Smoking is more and more threated as a lethal addiction, and this feature obliterates all its other characteristics (it can relax me, it helps to establish friendly contacts…). The strengthening of this prohibition is easily discernible in the gradual change of the obligatory warning on cigarette boxes: years ago, we usually got a neutral expert statement like the Surgeon General’s warning: “Smoking may seriously endanger your health.” More recently, the tone gets more and more aggressive, shifting from the university discourse to a direct Master’s injunction: “Smoking kills!” - a clear warning that the excess enjoyment is lethal; furthermore, this warning is getting larger and larger and accompanied by hardcore photos of open lungs black from tar, etc.

No wonder, then, that the prohibition of smoking expands almost exponentially. First, all offices were declared "smoke-free," then flights, then restaurants, then airports, then bars, then private clubs, then, in some campuses, 50 yards around the entrances to the buildings, then - in a unique case of pedagogical censorship, reminding us of the famous Stalinist practice of retouching the photos of nomenklatura – the US Postal Service removed the cigarette from the stamps with the photo-portrait of blues guitarist Robert Johnson and of Jackson Pollock. These prohibitions target the other's excessive and risky enjoyment, embodied in the act of "irresponsibly" lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply with an unabashed pleasure (in contrast to Clintonite yuppies who do it without inhaling, or who have sex without actual penetration, or food without fat) – indeed, as Lacan put it, after God is dead, nothing is anymore permitted.

The best indicator of this new status of smoking is, as usual, Hollywood. After the gradual dissolution of the Hays code from the late 1950s onwards, when all the taboos (homosexuality, explicit sex, drugs, etc.etc.) were suspended, one taboo not only remained but was newly imposed as a new prohibition, a kind of replacement for the multiplicity of the old Hays code prohibitions: smoking. Back in the classic Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s, smoking on the screen was not only totally normal, it even functioned as one of the great seduction techniques (recall, in To Have or to Have Not, Laureen Bacall asking Humphrey Bogart for fire). Today, the only rare people who smoke on screen are Arab terrorists, other criminals and anti-heroes, and one considers even the option of digitally erasing cigarettes from old classic movies.

Symptomatic is here the ambiguous role of the electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) which functions like sugarless sugar: an electrical device that simulates the act of tobacco smoking by producing an inhaled mist bearing the physical sensation, appearance, and often the flavor and nicotine content of inhaled tobacco smoke; though without its odor, and intended to omit its health risks. Most e-cigarettes are portable, self-contained cylindrical devices the size of a ballpoint pen, designed so that they resemble actual cigarettes or cigars. Sometimes they are prohibited on planes because they show addictive behavior; sometimes they are even sold on planes. The E-cigarette is difficult to classify and regulate: is it itself a drug? a medicine?

But who is this Other whose “addictive behavior” – in short, whose display of excessive enjoyment – disturbs us so much? It is none other than what, in Judeo-Christian tradition, is called the Neighbor. A neighbor by definition harasses, and “harassment” is another of those words which, although it seems to refer to a clearly defined fact, functions in a deeply ambiguous way and perpetrates an ideological mystification. At its most elementary, the term designates brutal facts of rape, beating, and other modes of social violence which, of course, should be ruthlessly condemned. However, in the predominant use of the term “harassment,” this elementary meaning imperceptibly slips into the condemnation of any excessive proximity of another real human being, with his or her desires, fears and pleasures. The other is OK insofar as his presence is not intrusive, insofar as the other is not really other. Tolerance coincides here with its opposite: my duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him, not to intrude into his/her space.

The courts in most Western societies now impose a restraining order when someone sues another person for harassing him or her (stalking him or her or making unwarranted sexual advances). The harasser can be legally prohibited from knowingly approaching the victim, and must remain at a distance of more than 100 yards. Necessary as this measure is, there is nonetheless in it something of the defense against the traumatic Real of the other's desire: is it not obvious that there is something dreadfully violent about openly displaying one's passion for and to another human? Passion by definition hurts its object, even if its addressee gladly agrees to occupy this place.

What one should focus on is what kind of subjectivity is implied in the obsession with the different modes of harassment: the "Narcissistic" subjectivity for which everything others do (address me, look at me...) is potentially a threat, so that, as Sartre put it long ago, l'enfer, c'est les autres. With regard to woman as an object of disturbance, the more she is covered, the more our (male) attention focuses on her and on what lies beneath the veil. The Taliban not only forced women to walk in public completely veiled, they also prohibited them wearing shoes with too solid (metal or wooden) heels, and ordered them to walk without making too loud a clicking noise which may distract men, disturbing their inner peace and dedication. This is the paradox of surplus-enjoyment at its purest: the more the object is veiled, the more intensely disturbing is the minimal trace of its remainder. This is why the ultimate Politically Correct sex is cybersex – the attraction of cybersex is that, since we are dealing only with virtual partners, there is no harassment.

Another way to avoid harassment is to reduce our sexuality to pleasures provided by partial objects: we are more and more bombarded with objects-gadgets which promise to deliver excessive but effortless pleasure. The latest fashion is here the Stamina Training Unit, a counterpart to the good old vibrator: a masturbatory device that resembles a battery-powered light (so we're not embarrassed when carrying it around). You put the erect penis into the opening at the top, push the button, and the object vibrates till satisfaction. The product is available in different colors, levels of tightness, and forms (hairy or without hair, etc.) that imitate all three main openings for sexual penetration (mouth, vagina, anus). What one buys here is the partial object (erogenous zone) alone, deprived of the embarrassing additional burden of having to deal with another entire person.

How are we to cope with this brave new world which undermines the basic premises of our intimate life? The ultimate solution would be, of course, that each of us brings to our date the appropriate gadget (one a vibrator, the other a Stamina Training Unit), and so, after politely greeting each other, we push a vibrator into the Stamina Training Unit, turn them both on and leave all the fun to this ideal couple, with us, the two real human partners, sitting at a nearby table, drinking tea and calmly enjoying the fact that, while the two machines are buzzing and shaking in the background, we have without great effort fulfilled our duty to enjoy. So maybe, if our hands brush against each other while pouring tea, and we slowly descend into intimacy, we can sit up in bed having actual intense sex without any superego pressure – and romance is thus born again…

One thing is sure in all this. If, today, Thomas de Quincey were to rewrite the opening lines of his famous essay Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, he would have undoubtedly replaced the last word (procrastination): »If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and smoking in public.«