Seductions
Neus Carbonell
Seduction: The gaze, the veil and the nothingness
Seduction entails the capture of a gaze. A gaze that looks at what is supposed to be where there is nothing but nothingness. In seduction then, there is the gaze, what is lacking, and what is veiled. To seduce is to make look, which is not necessarily the same as giving to be seen. Indeed, seduction attracts the gaze towards nothingness, in order to arouse desire and keep it in suspense, at least for a moment. This is why time plays its part in seduction.
The feminine
In seduction, the gaze points to what is alluded to, to what the veil hides. For Lacan, there is a relationship between the veil, the woman and the phallus, as the frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii elegantly present. In these frescoes, a woman is about to lift the veil that hides the phallus in the Dionysian rites. The whole mystery is that behind or under the veil there is nothing. This is usually the beginning of all initiation rites: the final mystery of the initiation rite is that in the end there is no mystery at all. Thus, under the veil that the woman is about to lift in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, there is nothing but nothingness, the nothingness of castration or death. Lacan refers to this painting as an illustration of woman's relation to the unveiling of the “most hidden signifier.”[1] The woman, being related to lack, makes present a transcendence.
For all these reasons, we can speak of the relation of the feminine to seduction. After all, seduction hovers over the background of non-existence. Indeed, it suggests the non-existence of the feminine, which has no representation. Or, to put it another way, the feminine has no representation other than the very veil that covers an absence of representation.
The scene of seduction
In Freud's sexual theories in children, the seduction scene has a determining role in hysteria. Freud concluded that the seduction scene recounted by hysterics constituted a fantasy, and thus discovered not only infantile sexuality, but also the unconscious origin of human sexuality. Beyond the reality or accuracy of the seduction scene narrated – we know that Freud no longer believed in it wholeheartedly – it is about the traumatic appearance of the question of desire and the jouissance of the Other. Lacan sums it up as follows: "In the hysteric is a sudden seduction, an intrusion or an irruption of the sexual into the subject’s life."[2] Above all, psychoanalysis discovers the relationship between seduction and unconscious desire. Seduction operates to the extent that it resonates in the phantasm of each subject.
Indeed, it is only through the role of desire that the close relationship between hysteria and seduction can be understood. The hysteric situates herself on the scene either as seducer or as seduced. She takes it upon herself to cause desire, but only to escape at the precise moment of making herself the object of that same desire. At other times, seduction can be the way to unmask the master, to show his impotence, or even to make herself master of the master by being seduced by him.
But seduction can also be a demand for love in women: they want to be desired in order to be loved. A strategy that the non-existence of the sexual relationship causes to fail. Seduction comes to the place of the lack of sexual relation, of the relation between the sexes. It is a way of believing in this relation that cannot be written in the real. There is nothing that links a subject to the Other in the sexual relation. But the strategy of seduction puts forward this belief, this assumption that there is a sexual relation, that there is a knowledge that writes the relation between the subject and the object.
Male seduction: Don Juan
On the masculine side of speaking beings, seduction finds its myth in Don Juan, the man who could seduce all women. One by one he could count them all. Don Juan is the man who lacks nothing, who does not have to assume his virility through castration. There is no woman who could embody castration for him. According to Lacan, he is a feminine phantasm. Indeed, Don Juan would be the absolute Other for each woman.
Seduction in the age of consent
Seduction is under suspicion in the age of consent. Is there a place for seduction in the age of "me too", where seduction borders on abuse, thus erasing the unconscious dimension of desire? It is not so much that there is a fine line separating seduction from abuse, but that unconscious desire gets in the way of consent. In this way, the hysteric finds her alibi for slipping away when the moment comes to make herself the object of the desire that she herself has aroused: "My body is mine."
Similarly, the proliferation of images on social networks and social media exacerbates the narcissism of the body to the point of turning seduction into a parody of itself. Manuals on seduction reduce it to a technique that can be learned. When seduction is a behaviour that is known in advance, the dimension of nothingness and the veil vanish. Indeed, what place is there for seduction if the function of the veil does not operate? If time is ephemeral? The images on the screen offer what they show, and all it takes is a click to get it.
For men, the seducer is haunted by the spectre of the abuser. Don Juan has lost the shine of the myth: where is the limit allowed for the gaze? What form of seduction is allowed to the speaking beings that align themselves on the male side in these times of new masculinities?
The critique of heteronormativity might suggest that the realm of seduction would be different within the parameters of gender fluidity. Although this point would merit further development, I argue that what has been said so far would not change substantially since the unconscious phantasm insists beyond the choice of object, sexed position and, of course, imaginary body. But, of course, it remains to be seen.
A final question: What kind of seduction is at play in an era where law is replaced by normative regulation, where a transparent ego is expected to reign over the opacity of the parlêtre? Here is a field of research for contemporary psychoanalysis.