Book Description
In this volume, contributors discuss a third way of thinking about sexual identity and sexual difference--a direction opened by Jacques Lacan. For Lacan, what we all recognize as sexual difference is first and foremost representative of a certain fundamental deadlock inherent in the symbolic order, that is, in language and in the entire realm of culture conceived as a symbol system structured on the model of language. For him, the logical matrix of this deadlock is provided by his own formulas of sexuation. The essays collected here elaborate on different aspects of this deadlock of sexual difference. While some examine the role of semblances in the relation between the sexes or consider sexual identity not as anatomy but still involving an impasse of the real, others discuss the difference between sexuation and identification, the role of symbolic prohibition in the process of the subject's sexual formation, or the changed role of the father in contemporary society and the impact of this change on sexual difference. Other essays address such topics as the role of beating in sexual fantasies and jouissance in feminine jealousy.
Literary and gender theorists, as well as psychoanalytic scholars will welcome this insightful collection.
Contributors. Alain Badiou, Elizabeth Bronfen, Darian Leader, Jacques Alain Miller, Genevieve Morel, Renata Salecl, Eric L. Santner, Colette Soler, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic
Publisher comments
"Many of today's leading Lacanians--practicing psychoanalysts as well as cultural theorists--here puzzle out the new riddles of sexuality. Does Lacan's concept of 'sexuation' really answer to feminist and queer discourses on sex and gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation, performativity? These provocative essays will begin the debate."--John Brenkman, author of Straight Male Modern: A Cultural Critique of Psychoanalysis
