Jouissance and its discontents in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin depicts the invisible forces that affect and end relationships. Through highlighting the aftermath of a failed friendship, the film shows how individuals move toward radical strategies to deal with the loss of a connection in which they once invested deeply. This article offers a Lacanian reading of the film, arguing that it is a textual product of unconscious historical forces that remain in the background while profoundly shaping its conscious, visible world. I further maintain that the characters’ obsessive, repetitive actions, symptomatic of the Irish Civil War as a traumatic Real, (mis)lead them toward jouissance, a path that brings only loss and isolation. I demonstrate how the characters’ violation of the law of the Symbolic order in an attempt to move beyond the limits of desire places them in an impossible situation of lack and dissatisfaction.