These injunctions are a trap: not only do -contemporary subjects know ful well that they cannot have it al but they know that actually having it would be completely dangerous. Fully losing oneself in sexual delirium could lead to the transmission of disease. Taking fabulous party drugs or drinking large quantities of alcohol could result in death. Eating loads of expensive chocolate could invite obesity and diabetes. Moreover, all the regulations associated with enjoyment return us to the regulations suggested by experts and ethical committees. These regulations do not provide subjects with symbolic identities grounded in norms. Instead, they provide advice, advice that is ultimately contested and ungroundable and therefore experienced as illegitimate constraint. The shift away from the discourse of the master, then, does result in the emergence of authorities and regulations, as Butler notes. But these authorities are not signs of a resurgent sovereignty. Instead, they are part of a capitalism's incessant selfrevolutionizing, its generation of and reliance on excess, wherein supereogistic injunctions to enjoy overlap with contested regulations to sufoc;ate the subject in a situation of unbearable closure.13
Zizek's emphasis on the superego injunction to enjoy also helps explain the obscene underside of power accompanying public law, thereby accounting for the lawlessness Butler links to sovereignty.14 Recall, Butler argues that sovereignty reappears through the suspension of law in an extralegal operation of power. To call specific practices of the Bush administration resurgences of sovereignty-practices that include the use of signing statements to limit the scope of legislative acts, as well as surveillance activities undertaken with the knowledge of congressional leadersmistakenly covers over the split already within law, the crimnality supporting public power. Not only does it treat as something new the lawless irrationality already pervading law as law but it unnecessarily consolidates and strengthens this lawlessness into the figure of a sovereign. We should not forget that the U.S. president is in no way a sovereign.
ETHIC S
133