Lacan’s notion of perversion (the pervert ritual) as a process which, far from undermining the symbolic Law, rather stands for a desperate attempt of the subject to stage the scene of installing…the rule of the Law, of its inscription onto the human body, thus enables us to throw a new light on the recent artistic tendencies of masochist body-performances— are they not an answer to the disintegration of the rule of Law, an attempt to restore the symbolic Prohibition? And, again, since the Law in its capacity of prohibiting direct (“incestuous”) access to jouissance is getting more and more inoperative, the only remaining way to sustain the Law is to posit is as identical with the very Thing which embodies jouissance.

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