Having devoted five decades to the study of love, sex, and language, Lacan proposed the formulation of sexual difference in Seminar XX. Unlike Freud’s distinction of sex based on the anatomical structure of body, the Lacanian psychoanalysis suggests that “sexual difference is not the manifestation of a
fundamental materiality or an immutable biological difference but a function of one’s position with respect to the Other” (Barnard 9). The subject positions of man and woman are defined on their different relations to the symbolic order, especially the Oedipus complex. As Lacan asserts, the subject’s sexuality is established by way of the phallus. The sexual difference between “having” or “not having the phallus” can
only be imagined in the symbolic order. “It is insofar as the function of man and woman,” Lacan explains in Seminar III, “is symbolized” and “situated in the domain of the symbolic that any normal, completed sexual position is realized” (177). In the dimension of the symbolic, the subject has learned to be a man or a woman from the enigmatic Other and hence his or her subject position is determined. Yet, the
realization of a normal sexual position is impossible, since “there is no signifier of sexual difference as such which would permit the subject to fully symbolize the function of man and woman” (Evans 179). In the symbolic order, there is no signifier of sexual difference, as the only sexual signifier, the phallus, “is an empty signifier that stands ultimately for the impossibility of signifying sex” (Barnard 9). Moreover, the phallus as a signifier has no female equivalent or correspondent, which shows “a matter of dissymmetry in the signifier” (Lacan, Seminar III 176). The dissymmetry also marks the lack of harmony between the masculine and the feminine structure, and prefigures Lacan’s bombshell expression of “the impossibility of founding a sexual relationship” (Seminar XX 9). In light of Lacanian psychoanalysis, sexuality is determined not by the anatomical duality or biological factors, but by the subject’s relation to the Other. The Lacanian sexual difference is nothing like the concept of sex or gender in common beliefs, and it discloses the rigid convention of sexual identification that exceeds the existing social definition or determination of sexual position.
Unlike the dominant discourses of sex and gender, Lacan’s formulas of sexual difference points to the subject’s sexual position in relation to the object a. In Seminar XX, he offers a schema that explains the logic of sexuation with respect to how the object a as the cause of the desire determines the subject position:
(78).
In this schema, the left part indicates the masculine structure and the right the feminine structure. The second formula on the upper left means that “it is through the phallic function that man as a whole acquires his inscription” (Seminar XX 79). The phallic subject is completely determined by the phallic function and his jouissance is phallic jouissance. The barred subject($) that points toward a (the object a) represents the fact that the divided subject is in the endless pursuit of the lost object, thereby failing to attain completeness. As the phallic subject, man can never be satisfied if his satisfaction is in the form of phallic jouissance. Yearning for the phallus, the barred subject is doomed to meet the failure of satisfaction. This is why Fink explains that
“phallic jouissance as the jouissance that fails us, that disappoints us. It is susceptible to failure, and it fundamentally misses our partner” (“Knowledge and Jouissance” 37).
Situating himself in this condition, the phallic subject “ never deals with anything by way of a partner but object a” (Seminar XX 80). His love of the object a forces him to reduce his sexual partner to the object a. If he falls in love with a woman, he would immediately associate her with the object a, which “occupies the missing partner” for him (Evans 181). As a result, he never sees his sexual partner as a real subject but as the cause of desire. The conjunction of the barred subject and the object a constitutes the matheme of fantasy($◊a), in which the phallic subject’s love for his partner is merely an imaginary illusion. Lacan again alludes to the poems of courtly love, in which a lady is praised as inaccessible object that requests a knight’s infinite love and
devotion. This elevation of woman’s status in these poems only reinforces man’s enigmatic relationship with woman, as this courtship is, from a Lacanian perspective, nothing but the longing for the object a. The phallic subject’s love for a woman occurs “inasmuch as the phallic signifier clearly constitutes her as giving in love what she does not have” (Lacan, Écrits 583). Driven by the object a, the phallic man is never inclined to see his sexual partner as what she is but as the substitution of the object a. In this context, we can understand why Lacan says “when one loves, it has nothing to do with sex” (Seminar XX 25). Thus, Lacan asserts “the whole realization of the sexual relationship leads to fantasy” (Seminar XX 86). The impossibility of sexual relationship marks the status of woman as the fantasy object and points to the barred Woman, which appears in the lower right of the diagram. The barred Woman is Lacan’s shorthand for the concept that “there is no such thing as Woman,” and it is regarded “as being not-whole in situating itself in the phallic function (Seminar XX 72).
The second formula of the feminine structure in the upper right corner means that “not all of her jouissance is phallic jouissance” (Fink, “Knowledge and
Jouissance” 39), and indicates that the barred woman is at least in part subject to phallic jouissance that always fails us and some part of her rejects the phallic function.
In a sense, the feminine structure is double-sided in Lacan’ formulas of sexuation.
Lacan points out that “woman has a relationship with S(A̷), and it is already in that respect that she is doubled, that she is not-whole, since she can also have a relation with Φ[the phallus]” (Seminar XX 81). The crucial difference between the phallic and the feminine subject lies in the fact that “women do not have to renounce phallic jouissance to have the jouissance: they have the Other jouissance without giving up their phallic jouissance” (Fink, “Knowledge and Jouissance” 40). In a word, the
feminine structure is allowed to experience both phallic jouissance and the Other jouissance.
In the relationship with the phallus (Φ), the feminine subject is, like the phallic subject, always in the illusion of chasing after the object a. From this perspective, we can again find the impossibility of a harmonious sexual relationship in love, since both the phallic and the feminine subject are looking for something in each other more than each other. Sexual relationships, as Lacan suggests, “revolve around a being and a having” the phallus (Écrits 582). For the phallic subject, the feminine subject is “the phallus, that is, the representative of his desire” (Soler, “What Does the Unconscious” 102). In order to satisfy the phallic subject’s desire, the feminine
subject enters “the dimension of masquerade,” a process of change from a “not having”
(the phallus) to a “being” (the phallus) (Morel 83). The nature of the masquerade is phallic, as it covers the essential part of the femininity and turns the feminine subject into a “phallus-girl” (83). Encountering the phallic man’s desire, the feminine subject
“is concerned that she does not posses the object that man sees in her, and thus she constantly wonders what is in her more than herself” (Salecl, “Love Anxieties” 94).
This uncertainty in her mind allows her to construct her own frame of fantasy as a response to the enigmatic desire of the Other. Fink points out that the feminine subject is homosexual insofar as “she loves men, she loves like man and her desire is
structured in fantasy like his” (The Lacanian Subject 119). From the feminine subject’s perspective, the object a still plays a crucial role in the so-called sexual relationship, and its function makes the phallic desire a dominant place in this impossible relationship.
Apart from her being partially determined by the phallus as a “not-all” in the symbolic order, the feminine subject can experience a “jouissance beyond the phallus”
(Lacan, Seminar XX 74). The second formula in the feminine structure indicates:
there is not any that is not phallic jouissance, the emphasis going on the first “is.” All the jouissances that do exist are phallic (in order to exist, according to Lacan, something must be articulable within our signifying system determined by the phallic signifier); but that does not mean there cannot be some jouissance that are not phallic. It is just that they do not exist; instead, they ex-sist. The Other jouissance can only ex-sist, it cannot exist, for to exist it would have to be spoken, articulated, symbolized.” (emphasis original, Fink, Lacan to the Letter 161).
In addition to the experience of phallic jouissance, there is the Other jouissance logically inherent in the feminine structure. The reason why the Other jouissance cannot be spoken is that the necessary condiction of being spoken lies in the
articulation through signifiers in the symbolic order. The Other jouissance “doesn’t signify anything,” and it is the kind of jouissance that the feminine subject is not aware of until “it comes (arrive)” (italics original, Lacan, Seminar XX 74). In the formulas of sexuation, the Other jouissance indicates the feminine subject’s relation with S(A̷), “the signifier of the lack in the Other” (Morel 82). In the diagram, the first formula assumes “her Other partner” as S(A̷), whereas the second formula in the feminine structure designates her partnership with the phallus rather than the phallic subject (Fink, The Lacanian Subject 121). With this partner, she makes up for the sexual relationship that does not exist (Morel 82). In a sense, as her partner is no longer the object a, the feminine subject does not have to “relate or accede” to the
object a located under the category of the phallic subject (Fink, The Lacanian Subject 121). In her relationship with the Other jouissance, this jouissance functions as a kind of “supplementary jouissance” for the barred Woman as “not-whole” (Lacan, Seminar XX 73). The nature of supplement in the Other jouissance points to the fact that the feminine subject does not confine herself with the desire for the object a in the hope of being whole again. Free from the limited desire triggered by the object a, the feminine subject experience the Other jouissance without knowing how to articulate it in the symbolic order. Unlike the phallic subject who is driven by the lack, the
feminine subject in relation to the S(A̷) discovers the limit of desire as the lack in the Other so that she can enjoy this supplementary jouissance.
The non-articulable experience of the Other jouissance is “a jouissance that is beyond,” and this experience, according to Lacan, can often be found in mysticsism (Seminar XX 76). The statue of Saint Teresa is the paradigmatic example of the Other jouissance, since it demonstrates “the essential testimony of the mystics consists in saying that they experience it, but know nothing about it” (76). 11 The theme of this sculpture is Teresa’s religious ecstasy in the encounter with an Angel, representing an episode of her spiritual autobiography The Life of Teresa of Jesus. For Lacan, what Teresa experiences is “the jouissance of woman insofar as it is extra (en plus)”
(Seminar XX 77). This excess of feeling in the Other jouissance points to the notion of
“ex-sistence,” revealing “the face of God” based on the Other jouissance (77). The word “ex-sistence” is translated from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “standing outside of” or “standing apart from” something, and it also connotes the states of mind of being ecstatic (Fink, The Lacanian Subject 122). Therefore, the derivative word, ecstasy, has a close relation with the Other jouissance, which is “beyond the symbolic,
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11“The Ecstasy of St. Teresa’ is a marble and gilded bronze niche sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1645-52) located in the Coraonaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome” (Seminar XX 76).
standing apart from symbolic castration. It ex-sists” (122). Knowing nothing about the phallus, the Other jouissance “is foreclosed from the symbolic and is outside the unconscious” (Soler, What Lacan Said 40). Elusive to the signifier in the symbolic order, the Other jouissance falls outside the grasp of proposition such as “it is” or “it is not” (Shepherdson 139-40). It is already stated in Lacan’s formula that the barred Woman as “not-whole” cannot be inscribed in the symbolic knowledge (Seminar XX 81), revealing the possibility of the other side of femininity that is incommensurate in terms of the phallic signifier. This disproportion leads us to see the feminine subject occupy the place of the “radically Other” after he explains the close relationship between God and the feminine subject (Seminar XX 83). This radical Other in the feminine structure can not to be confused with the Other as the symbolic order, since the former is based on the Other/feminine jouissance and the latter is the locus of the signifier (Φ). If we imagine the two Others as two intersected circles, what drops out between them is the object a (Fink, “Knowledge and Jouissance” 43), which serves as the fundamental element in the phallic subject’s love while it is excluded from the feminine structure. The disjunction of the faces of the Other restates the notion of the impossibility of sexual relationship as well as the idea that the Other jouissance ex-sists outside the symbolic law.