The Pleasure in Drawing

Pleasure of Relation

Pleasure of Relation If this is the case, and if there is pleasure there, it is because pleasure in general is tied to a relation, to the perception of a relation or to its enactment, two possibilities that, no doubt, intersect or even come together. Pleasure is in the relation that tends toward its prolongation or its repetition, just as displeasure tends toward suspending and rejecting the relation. One finds pleasure or displeasure at [à] such and such a form, such and such an encounter—that thing or event makes or creates pleasure for us, we take pleasure in it. Pleasure is indissociable from this active and passive tension, from this receptive spontaneity. To know (sapere) is first of all to have taste, in both senses of the expression—to isolate a particular flavor or to be truly capable of appreciating it. Homo sapiens is the animal gifted with a taste for the unique savoring of things, for savoring the world as world, in other words, as the coming into appearance, release, and compearance [paraı̂tre , parution et comparution] of all things together and in 66 P L E A S U R E O F R E L AT I O N their indefinite multiplicity.35 It is the animal that has a taste for this compearance as such, as the relation to itself of being in its givenness [rapport à soi de l’être-donné], which also means, as the gift of this donation. The gift, the formation of all forms, in other words, of all presences, is world’s relation to itself. We should specify what relation is in general. Relation distinguishes itself from being, insofar as one understands ‘‘being’’ following the example of common tradition and grammar as an intransitive verb. (We won’t explore this further, but it is Heidegger who asks that we understand being as transitive, as if to be and to make or to take had the same syntax.) Relation is not exactly transitive—it is transitivity, transit, transport. It is the effect [l’efficace] of one subject toward another, with its reciprocal necessity, and it thus involves the transport between them of some thing, force, or form that affects them both [l’un de l’autre] and modifies—or at least modalizes—them both [l’un par l’autre]. Relation suggests modification, modalization, and modulation, rather than substance, instance, or essence. Relation suggests, if not transformation in the fullest sense of the term, at least the displacement, movement, or alteration of form. Relation affects a subject. This is how the subject becomes subject and not substance. What one calls ‘‘subject’’ is a relational force [puissance], as much active as passive, an ability to affect and be affected—the force from the outside, or more precisely, the force of sharing and opening between an inside and outside which refer to one another. It is through this that the subject relates itself to its self [se 67 P L E A S U R E O F R E L AT I O N rapporte à soi], in other words, distinguishes itself from its self and experiences itself as distinct—the other in its self, experiencing this alterity as its own, experiencing its self as other. Relation is an alterity or alteration that does not happen to the subject by accident but is essential to it. To be sure, sexual pleasure should also be first considered in this perspective, or rather, it ought to be.36 Divided up into inside/outside, same/other, and one/two, the subject either puts further demands on itself [se redemande ] according to these divisions, or it rejects itself. Pleasure lies in the revival of alteration (in fact, indefinitely); displeasure lies in its rejection. One understands this better if one considers again that pleasure defined as such must be distinguished from the pleasure of satisfaction through which a need is satisfied. Plato understands this well—the suspension of a lack is only a form of pleasure, which should not be confused with the pleasure of desiring. The pleasure of quenching one’s thirst differs from the pleasure of tasting a delectable drink—in the first case, a tension is overcome, while in the second a tension is preserved and promises to return. The first case plays out in a finite completion (one is no longer thirsty), the second...