Abstract

The stories collected in You Are Not Alone are each intimately concerned with the jouissance referred to in Lacanian psychoanalysis: the thrill or excitation that lies constantly out of reach of both language and law, such that its pursuit frequently requires that the subject transgress from pleasure and enjoyment (where the jouissance is carefully regulated) to pain and dread (where the jouissance is beyond anyone's control). As the title of the collection suggests, each story revolves around characters grappling with their own isolation and coming to terms with the presence of the Other – the effects of which range from the cathartic to the terrifying.

From a trio of fetishists in “Philia,” to a monstrous encounter in a rural Malaysian village in “Pontianak,” to a political rally on the streets of inner-city Kuala Lumpur in “Bersih,” I explore how jouissance can be, paradoxically, both the great unifier and divider of subjects. We find characters whose personal jouissance, be it in the form of enjoyment or suffering, seems to alienate them from the rest of the world. Only by apprehending the jouissance felt by the Other––a friend, a stranger, or a monster––and by feeling the Other's pain and pleasure as acutely as one's own, can the subject reach beyond the lonely confines of private turmoil towards a point of solidarity and kinship: a jouissance of the Other.