From Enjoyment to Aggressivity: The Emergence of the New Father in Contemporary Society

It has become a truism among conservative thinkers to link the rise in aggressivity and violence in contemporary society to the decline of paternal authority. The fight against aggressivity is often couched in terms of fathers once again reasserting their authority and taking paternal responsibility. The gathering of the Promise Keepers in Washington is only the most recent example of this culture-wide movement. This kind of reassertion of the father's authority is not simply a spontaneous outburst of reactionary fervor, but a response to something that is happening within contemporary society. Without question, a certain kind of father has lost sway, but he has not-as the Promise Keepers no doubt suspect-left a void. A new father has emerged in his stead—a father Slavoj Žižek calls the “anal father of enjoyment.” The emergence of this new father has direct repercussions upon the state of aggressivity within contemporary society. For all the talk about aggressivity and violence rising in response to the absence of fathers (and the Father), what has been missed is the seemingly ubiquitous presence of the new anal father and its effects upon aggressivity. Through a look at David Mamet's American Buffalo, we will see that the contemporary rise in aggressivity is not the result of a decline in paternal authority, but the direct consequence of a new kind of father being born on the cultural landscape.

In Totem and Taboo, Freud conceives of the primal father as the one man in the primal horde who gets to enjoy women. In fact, he hoards them-or at least the enjoyment of them-all to himself. For the primal father, no women are off-limits, not even the women of his immediate family. When it comes to women, in other words, the primal father knows no limits. Not only is his choice of women not limited, but the primal father, as a man not subject to castration, is the only man actually capable of enjoying women in themselves. Ordinary men, unlike the primal father, get to enjoy