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Nothing is more entertaining than fucking with words and their arrangement

From Lacan by Lionel Bailly pg 124:

There is just as much, if not greater jouissance in the functioning of the mind than in the functioning of any other bodily part. The ability to cross the bar of metaphor, to operate in the symbolic realm – to conceptualise, to analyse, and to rationalise – are all libidinal functions, which entail enjoyment of the mere functioning of the intellect. One can observe in children who have just successfully integrated the laws of language the enjoyment they derive from reading and other Symbolic activities. Nonsense rhymes, limericks, and puns are screamingly funny for children (and adults) who fully understand the rules of language and society are being broken. This is jouissance, rather than pleasure, for no tension is reduced, and often they try to sustain it for as long as they can, piling joke upon joke, until the rules collapse, and the enjoyment dissipates. 

How can you not love this language?
It’s beauty and pain and relentless anguish
Each twist and turn that you’re controlling
Taste each verb as of ya tongue it’s rolling
Nothing is more entertaining
Than fuckin’ with words and their arrangement
Every syllable can rhyme
If you will afford the time
But now I’ll leave it there alright?
And simply declare

It occurs to me that I experience writing as pleasure rather than jouissance, in the sense that it does involve a reduction in tension. I feel the ideas pile up in my mind until they have to be released. But I think what Bailly is pointing to is ‘fucking with words and their arrangement’ rather than a creative process orientated towards an output; playing with, bending and breaking language.

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