“I am what I say”: jouissance and identity in the age of insults

Federico Oyola — 2025-11-11T18:58:08Z

Abstract:

This article explores Beef (Netflix, 2023) as a contemporary portrayal of identification processes no longer sustained by Freud's Ego Ideal, but by a raw, spectacular, and immediate form of jouissance. What begins as a trivial scene —a honk, a minor insult, a glance— triggers a logic without mediation, in which the subject becomes trapped in a rigid identity. The signifier hardens, and the act replaces speech. Drawing on Lacan, Laurent Dupont, and Christiane Alberti, the article examines how the contemporary subject clings to an identity-based certainty that forecloses desire, makes forgiveness impossible, and leaves the body as the only surface on which jouissance is inscribed. Far from moralistic narratives or redemptive arcs, Beef is presented as a tragedy without heroes, where the most moving element is not violence but exhaustion. Within that fatigue of the One, a crack may appear: an empty word that persists, a desire to speak that endures even when language no longer ties. This paper reflects on the current state of the social bond, the insult as a dominant mode of enunciation, and the weakening of discourse in naming what is unbearable.

- Volumen 15 | Nº 3 - November 2025

Journal de Etica y Cine

“I am what I say”: jouissance and identity in the age of insults