Social Psychology and Interaction Commons^™

Commanded To Enjoy: The Waning Of Traditional Authority And Its Implications For Public Administration, Gary S. Marshall

Public Administration Faculty Publications

This article addresses the recent changes in social experience and the effect these changes have on the practice of public administration. It is argued that we have moved from a society of prohibition to a society of commanded enjoyment. This thesis is explored using the frame of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The central claim is that the waning of traditional authority means that enjoyment or jouissance operates on an axis of possibility or impossibility. In such a realm, the coterminous relationship of science and the market make most things possible.