Psychoanalytic thought #003
Alenka Zupančič discussing sexual difference and ontology in an interview with Randall Terada titled 'Sex, ontology, subjectivity' (2015), sourced from Mariborchan:
'The sexes are not two in any meaningful way. Sexuality does not fall into two parts; it does not constitute a one. It is stuck between “no longer one” and “not yet two (or more).” I would say that it revolves around the fact that “the other sex doesn’t exist” (and this is to say that the difference is not ontologizable), yet there is more than one (which is also to say, “more than multiple ones”).
[...] my claim is, further, that if we simply replace two with a multiplicity (and claim that there are more than two sexes), we do not get out of this same logic of ontologization. We affirm that there are many sexes, and miss the very ontological impasse involved in sexuality. [...] It is not simply that we think ontology cannot begin with One (this point is not very controversial), it is that we also think it cannot begin simply with “multiplicity,” conceived as a kind of original neutrality. This is the real core of this debate. I believe the alternative between One and the multiple is a wrong alternative.
[...] the basic idea is this: ontology begins, not with One and not with multiplicity, but with a “minus One” (Lacan talks of l’un en moins in Seminar XX). Multiplicity is already a consequence of this paradoxical minus One, which is not, but structures the field of what is. In this sense multiplicity is never simply neutral, but biased by that original negativity, and hence antagonistic. The way this structuring negativity (or ontological impossibility as inseparable from ontology) exists in the world is in the form of an impossible two, that is, in the form of sexual difference which cannot be ontologized, posited in terms of difference between two beings, two ontological entities.
Sexual difference in the strictly Lacanian sense of the term is the way in which the minus One, as negativity structuring the realm of being, gets to be formulated within this very being as its point of paradoxical impossibility. My point is not: there are only two sexes, but rather: there is only the split, the antagonism. Antagonism is not simply antagonism between two things, but also, and more fundamentally, what structures the field in which these things appear.
You mentioned Slavoj [Žižek]’s example from Levi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology, which is also a perfect example of this difficult, counter-intuitive point according to which antagonism somehow precedes the (two) sides of the antagonism. If the two village groups draw two completely different maps of the village, the answer is not to take a helicopter ride and try to look from above at how the village looks “objectively.” The point is, as Slavoj said, to recognize that the two perceptions of the ground plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavours to cope with this traumatic antagonism, and they represent an attempt by each group to heal this “wound” via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure captured in their respective ground plans.
Similarly, the narratives about what is “masculine” and what is “feminine” are precisely attempts at coping with this kind of traumatic antagonism by staging it as a difference between two kinds of being. Which is why it is not enough to dismiss “masculinity” and “femininity” as symbolic constructions (which they certainly are), but one also has to recognize the real (the antagonism) that propels, motivates these constructions.'
'The sexes are not two in any meaningful way. Sexuality does not fall into two parts; it does not constitute a one. It is stuck between “no longer one” and “not yet two (or more).” I would say that it revolves around the fact that “the other sex doesn’t exist” (and this is to say that the difference is not ontologizable), yet there is more than one (which is also to say, “more than multiple ones”).
[...] my claim is, further, that if we simply replace two with a multiplicity (and claim that there are more than two sexes), we do not get out of this same logic of ontologization. We affirm that there are many sexes, and miss the very ontological impasse involved in sexuality. [...] It is not simply that we think ontology cannot begin with One (this point is not very controversial), it is that we also think it cannot begin simply with “multiplicity,” conceived as a kind of original neutrality. This is the real core of this debate. I believe the alternative between One and the multiple is a wrong alternative.
[...] the basic idea is this: ontology begins, not with One and not with multiplicity, but with a “minus One” (Lacan talks of l’un en moins in Seminar XX). Multiplicity is already a consequence of this paradoxical minus One, which is not, but structures the field of what is. In this sense multiplicity is never simply neutral, but biased by that original negativity, and hence antagonistic. The way this structuring negativity (or ontological impossibility as inseparable from ontology) exists in the world is in the form of an impossible two, that is, in the form of sexual difference which cannot be ontologized, posited in terms of difference between two beings, two ontological entities.
Sexual difference in the strictly Lacanian sense of the term is the way in which the minus One, as negativity structuring the realm of being, gets to be formulated within this very being as its point of paradoxical impossibility. My point is not: there are only two sexes, but rather: there is only the split, the antagonism. Antagonism is not simply antagonism between two things, but also, and more fundamentally, what structures the field in which these things appear.
You mentioned Slavoj [Žižek]’s example from Levi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology, which is also a perfect example of this difficult, counter-intuitive point according to which antagonism somehow precedes the (two) sides of the antagonism. If the two village groups draw two completely different maps of the village, the answer is not to take a helicopter ride and try to look from above at how the village looks “objectively.” The point is, as Slavoj said, to recognize that the two perceptions of the ground plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavours to cope with this traumatic antagonism, and they represent an attempt by each group to heal this “wound” via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure captured in their respective ground plans.
Similarly, the narratives about what is “masculine” and what is “feminine” are precisely attempts at coping with this kind of traumatic antagonism by staging it as a difference between two kinds of being. Which is why it is not enough to dismiss “masculinity” and “femininity” as symbolic constructions (which they certainly are), but one also has to recognize the real (the antagonism) that propels, motivates these constructions.'
posted by Nor at 08:35
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