Negation and Sexual Jouissance in Manto’s “Aurat Zaat (Women)”

By Shaftain Naseer

While reading Manto’s short stories, one goes through a puzzling experience. It is an inexplicable bitterness that seems uncanny insofar as it is familiar, understood, and yet negated in the form of, as Lacan (1999) puts it in “On Jouissance,” “I do not want to know anything about it.” One of his short stories, “Aurat Zaat (Women),” explores woman as desire of the Other (man), yet negative of her sexual jouissance in relation to this Other. Ashok, the protagonist, is made to watch a film of bold sexual pictures on a projector by his friend, which he then tries to show to his wife. When he forces her to watch, she screams, jumps, cries, and leaves the room. However, when he is not home, she enjoys these pictures with her female friends.

She shares the fantasy with her friends, but is unable to accept and express it in front of her husband. Understandably, she negated her sexual desire in front of her partner; however, jouissance of lack cannot be negated. It may be an exaggeration to say that in case of women who are not taught to express their sexual desire to their partners in repressed cultures, their movement in finite spaces is not compensating the lack by taking the other sex one-by-one (une par une), rather the open sets overlapping the space of sexual jouissance may take fixated place in fantasy, repetition, or negation, like the self-centered phallic jouissance.

References

Lacan, J. (1999). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore, On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge. (J.-A. Miller, Ed., & B. Fink, Trans.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton.