“You woke me up”: the encounter with feminine jouissance as a condition of mourning in Her, by Spike Jonze

Abstract

From contemporary psychoanalysis, the philosophical proposal of Byung Chul Han and reception theory, this article seeks to identify Her, by Spike Jonze, as the contemporary representation of female enjoyment or jouissance. As I argue, this notion organizes two processes of subjectivation carried out by the protagonists in succession: first, the configuration of Samantha, initially, as an object-a, cause of desire, and, later, as a symbol of female enjoyment; and second, the intersubjective recomposition of Theodore as a mourning agent. To this end, in the first section, I support a detailed reading of the society represented in Her as a hyperbolic simile of what Han has called burnout society, while I identify Theodore as a double symbolization of the paradigmatic tired and melancholy Prometheus. In the second section, divided into two, I address the conditions of the first referred subjectivation process in order to propose that Theodore and Samantha’s relationship configure a metaphor of psychoanalytic transference; and that Samantha, as a subjectivity in evolution, must, first, gain a sexualized corporality to, finally, wager on the eradication of finite materiality. Finally, in the third section, I delve into the second process of subjectivation alluded to in order to support how Theodore’s exposure to female jouissance enables his mourning. I conclude, then, that Her not only represents the burnout society, but also a commitment to its eradication based on a return to affections and human intersubjectivity.