Jack Mitchell

5/5/17

REL 374

The Role of Lacanian Psychoanalysis in the Problem of Sexual Difference

Sexuality, rightfully so, has become a central topic of debate in Western society in

modern times. This can be seen perhaps most obviously in the recent controversy surrounding

trans individuals and public restrooms. On the supportive side, the prevailing argument is that

public restrooms should be gender inclusive, which is grounded upon the idea that individuals

who dont identify with the gender assigned to them at birth should be permitted to use the

bathroom which fits their gender identity. Even more radically, we see the supportive group

advocating for public restrooms designated specifically for trans individuals, as opposed to the

binarism present in the male/female choice presented in the vast majority of public restrooms.

On the oppositional side, we see a reaction predicated mostly on a fear of sexuality, specifically

based on the notion that under the guise of being transgender, male subjects will be able to view

or, even more worryingly, film women in a private environment for the purposes of scopophilic

pleasure.1 What is most problematic in both of these mainstream discourses is their fundamental

grounding in how they conceive of gender. On the oppositional side, we see a conception of

gender based on biology: people with the biological material traditionally associated with male

or female genders are fundamentally just that: a male because of the presence of the penis or a

female because their possession of a vagina. The (mainstream) supportive side challenges this

1
Warner Todd Huston, Top Twenty-Five Stories Proving Targets Pro-Transgender Bathroom Policy Is Dangerous
to Women and Children, Brietbart, April 23rd, 2016. http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/04/23/twenty-stories-proving-targets-pro-transgender-bathroom-policy-danger-women-children/.
and states that there some people, due to an essential part of their being (which is also typically

rooted in biology or, even worse, neuroscience2), do not conform to the symbolic identity

imposed on them because of the cultural association with their genital makeup. What, I claim,

both of these perspectives neglect is the psychoanalytic perspective on sexuality. I aim to

demonstrate this with a summary of the viewpoint on sexuality offered to us by the article

Sexual Difference and Ontology, written by a member of the Ljubljana School of

Psychoanalysis, Alenka Zupancic. The central point regarding the Lacanian position towards

sexuality Zupancic illustrates is best captured this quote from her piece: [sexuality] is a

nonexistence in the real that, paradoxically, leaves traces in the real. It is a void that registers in

the real. It is a nothing, or negativity, with consequences.3 In this essay I aim to make the

meaning of this statement clear and demonstrate how because of this argument, from the

psychoanalytic position, any explanation of human sexuality which justifies itself on essential

categories is doomed to miss its target.

The popular conception of psychoanalysis which we see in much of our media is a kind

of science of sexuality, one which promises us to reveal the secrets of our sexual activity and

desires. The proper psychoanalytic response to this demand is perhaps best captured in Jacques

Lacans infamous statement that there is not sexual relationship. How is such an ambiguous

assertion to be interpreted? Here we must look to Alenka Zupancics Sexual Difference and

Ontology as an explanation of Lacans claim and additionally as a credible framework of the

(Lacanian) psychoanalytic stance on the structure of sexuality as such. It may be fair to say that

the majority of modern gender studies is usually in line with Judith Butlers theory of

2
Francine Russo, Is There Something Unique about the Transgender Brain?, Scientific American, January 1st,
2016, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-something-unique-about-the-transgender-brain/.
3
Alenka Zupani, Sexual Difference and Ontology, e-flux 32 (2012), February. http://www.e-
flux.com/journal/32/68246/sexual-difference-and-ontology/
performativity, which is hinged upon the notion that linguistic constructions create our reality in

general through the speech acts we participate in every day.4 What this means in terms of our

sexuality is best captured in Sara Salihs statement that that gender is not something one is, it is

something one does, an act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts. How we should interpret this

is that in the current perspective, gender is not given a stable ontology (there is no eternal

category of male or female for example), and instead essential or binary categories of gender

are things which persist via reification, meaning that although there is no real justification for

their existence, essentialist categories like male or female continue to be created by individuals

performing these roles over time. This element of time is critical to Butlers theory, as pointed

out here by Zupancic: sociosymbolic constructions, by way of repetition and reiteration, are

becoming nature.5 What this means is that due to repeated actions which are identified as

performances of male-ness or woman-ness, these categories are both discursively created

and, over a period of time, seen as essential or natural. In many ways, this standpoint is in

conformity with Lacanian theory, which tells us that language [is] constitutive of reality and of

the unconscious.6 What is interesting is that, as Zupancic tells us, Lacanian psychoanalysis is

nonetheless fundamentally incompatible with Butlers thesis. The reason for this necessitates a

short explanation of the larger tenants of Lacanian theory.

For Lacan, a social construction begins with a signifying notion, which is to say that

when something (sexuality, for example) is linguistically identified, it is fundamentally removed

from the real of the matter which is the recipient of linguistic signification. In this act of

signification, what is opened up is the field of the Symbolic, or the realm of linguistic meaning,

4
Dino Felluga, "Modules on Butler: On Performativity." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. January 31 st, 2011,
Purdue U. http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformativity.html.
5
Zupani, Sexual Difference and Ontology.
6
Ibid.
which is fundamentally disconnected from the things which it places meaning on to. A simple

example would be to think of looking up a word in the dictionary. When I look up tree, for

example, in the dictionary, I obviously dont simply find the actual thing which tree refers to,

instead what I find are other signifying words which give further meaning to tree than just the

word itself. This is the structure of the Symbolic in general: a never ending chain of signification

which is fundamentally disconnected from the things it gives meaning to; effectively creating a

space which is separate from what Lacan calls the Real, which is the reality of things that exists

outside of signification. Zupancic describes the Real particularly well in her statement: [the

Real] is neither a symbolic entity nor one constituted by the symbolic; rather, it is collateral for

the symbolic.7 How we should read this is that when we use language to identify or think about

a thing, we are fundamentally thinking about something other than the signified content, that

being our universe of linguistic meaning surrounding the actual thing we are talking about. What

this means is that when we linguistically identify something, and therefore create a new place for

this thing within the symbolic order, something else is created along with this identification, that

being the Real. For further explanation, we can look to Zupancics statement that The signifier

[which is to say the material component of linguistic identification] does not only produce a new,

symbolic reality (including its own materiality, causality, and laws); it also produces, or opens

up, the dimension that Lacan calls the Real.8 Thus, the Real can only exist in relation to the un-

reality of the Symbolic. Because the Symbolic must fundamentally be separated from the

content which it seeks to describe, it is this lack in the Symbolic order which effectually creates

the Real, staining the entirety of signified content. The Real then is not only to be understood

as that which exists before the signifying act, but also as a surplus effect of signification itself; in

7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
the fundamental un-reality which the Symbolic is situated in, the Real is created by those

inevitable gaps which resist signification, or in other words the points where the fundamental

division between the Symbolic and that which it seeks to signify are laid bare.

How are we to apply this notion to sexuality? Here is where the psychoanalytic viewpoint

is at its most radical: sexuality is the Real, which is to say sexuality exists solely as

the curving of the symbolic space that takes place because of the additional something produced

with the signifying gesture.9 This rather complicated sentence should be interpreted as such: the

antagonism of sexual difference doesnt just resist signification; instead the lack inherent in the

act of signification exposes the irreducible antagonism of sexual difference itself. What this

means is that the binary opposition of the discursive categories of male and female is not the

fundamental problem in sexuality, rather, these categories (which are themselves firmly rooted in

the Symbolic) are a reaction to the much more structural crisis that is sexual difference. To make

this more clear, we may think about the situation in this way: in biological sexual difference, we

are not presented with two corresponding opposites in the sense that one is a pure inversion of

the other (a situation which the male/female binary creates), instead what we are met with is a

difference in the pre-signified Real which is fundamentally incapable of a dialectization of

opposites, a project which is doomed to miss its mark. The biologically male body does not

find its inversion in the biologically female body, and vice versa; the two remain, again

irreducibly, different. Zupancics quote from Mladen Dolar may help illustrate this point:

sexual difference poses the problem of the two precisely because it cannot be reduced to the

binary opposition or accounted for in terms of the binary numerical two.10 The creation of

horizontal sexual duality then, that of man and woman, should be read not as the linguistic

9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
manifestation of biological opposites, but instead as the linguistic creation of opposites in the

face of the biological Real, that which exists outside of the linguistic realm of binary opposition.

This poses some problems for how gender identity is currently understood. While, of course,

people will not identify with the discursively-created gender category the state assigns to them at

birth (in my personal, properly Lacanian, opinion, it is fundamentally impossible for any subject

to really identify their being with a symbolic category such as gender, considering the gap

between the Symbolic and the Real), what the psychoanalytic viewpoint tells us is that the

creation of new gender subjectivities (non-binary/non-gender conforming/gender-fluid etc.), is a

movement grounded in the same idea of multiplicity which the male/female binary arose out of.

In other words, new gender categories may be seen as the logical conclusion of the symbolic

difference of multiples which gave rise to the division of male and female; they are still engaging

in the ultimately impossible act of assigning sexuality to a symbolic category, when in reality the

entire creation of symbolic categories arose out of this resistance to signification which sexual

difference presents to us. Here we should refer back to Zupancic: 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); it revolves around the fact that the other sex doesnt exist (which is to say that the

difference is not ontologizable), yet there is more than one.11 This applies to the creation of

performatively-constructed genders in the following way: they are correct in their rejection of

identification with the socially constructed categories of male and female, however they falter in

their identification with extra-binary categories which are, for psychoanalysis, presupposed by

the division of male and female. In psychoanalysis, the ontological status of male and female

genders is ruptured by the Real of sexual difference, meaning that the problem of sexuality is not

defined by an antagonism between ontologically stable male and female identities, but rather by
11
Ibid.
the sexual difference as such, the antagonism which provokes the tricky business of symbolic

identification such as the gendered categories of male and female.

This relates to the idea of gender multiplicity in the following way: essentialist,

complementary gender binarism is a failure of the Symbolic to register the irreducibility of the

sexual difference as such, however the solution to this may not be reached by an identification

with gender identities outside of the traditional male and female, since these are still rooted in the

notion of an ontologically stable Symbolic register for gender identity, they in no way effect the

ontological status of entities called genders.12 In other words, these new subjectivities could be

said to be founded upon the same shaky ground as essentialist categories such as male and

female, due to their impossible goal of locating the real sexual essence of the subject within the

Symbolic field of language.

It is critical to note here that the psychoanalytic perspective in no way mitigates the

predicament of trans-identifying individuals or those who suffer from gender dysmorphia;

instead what we may learn from psychoanalysis is a new way to consider the crisis of sexuality

which the trans community has successfully brought to the attention of the mainstream. What

psychoanalysis allows us to do is approach the notion of transgenderism from a position which

avoids the traditionally liberal (and, in a sense, essentialist) stance which tells us that transgender

or gender non-conforming individuals are only a marginalized subgroup which have for whatever

reason, be it chemical, genetic, behavioral, etc., deviated from the heteronormative standard (of

course, this is not to suggest that trans-identifying/expressing individuals dont experience

oppression based on their identity on an obscene level, they absolutely do). Instead,

psychoanalysis gives us a viable way to approach the problem which transgenderism poses to the

12
Ibid.
entire notion of gender itself by situating it in the Real of sexual difference. Trans people, in

their everyday struggles, are not to be seen as exceptions to the bourgeois, cis-gendered,

heteronormative hegemonic sexuality which much of our culture participates in and helps create,

but rather as the logical conclusion of the faults of this symbolic order. The trans experience,

then, should not only be understood as the plight of a group which the majority of culture doesnt

accommodate for, but also as constitutive of the structure of heteronormative culture itself. To

return to the topic of transgender bathrooms, perhaps psychoanalysis offers us a different

solution: rather than the creation of new bathrooms to accommodate for the variety of gender

subjectivities, maybe what we need is an abolishment of male, female, non-conforming, bisex,

etc. categorizations in favor of something like a bathroom for general gender. This reasoning is

made most clear in the genius behind the term LGBT+. Its in this +, for psychoanalysis,

where the predicament of human sexuality is situated. Our actual, traumatic, experience of our

own sexuality is a thing which fundamentally resists a formal symbolic identification; its

something which we will always perceive as incompatible with the normative gender categories

offered to us by the Symbolic. For the purposes of an emancipatory gender politics, this

psychoanalytic insight is crucial. To refer back to Zupancics quote I offered at the beginning of

this essay, there is no reality of our sexual experience because, as things currently stand, it is

rooted in the discourse of the Symbolic, and will remain linguistically disconnected from its

material essence of real sexual difference. Nonetheless, this predicament of sexual un-reality

simultaneously creates serious issues in the Real, one need to look no further than the disastrous

ramifications of the patriarchal structure or the violence committed in the name of transphobia

for proof of this. Perhaps we are here met with an instance where psychoanalysis as a method of

social critique remains more relevant than ever. For psychoanalysis, the courage of the trans or
gender non-conforming community is twofold: not only are they willingly putting themselves at

risk in the public sphere by choosing to express their identity, they also are confronting a

contradiction of human subjectivity which the rest of the populace has yet to face.