Jacques Lacan:Sexual Difference

Introduction

The most controversial and contested area of Lacanian psychoanalysis involves the conceptualization of feminine sexuality.

Lacan's thinking on feminine sexuality is distinguished by two main phases.

First, he was concerned to distinguish sexual difference on the basis of the phallus and here Lacan makes a significant innovation regarding Freudian thinking. For Freud the question of sexual differences revolved around the 'castration complex', that is, around whether or not someone 'has' or 'does not have' a penis.

For Lacan, on the other hand, castration is a symbolic process that invovles the cutting off, not of one's penis, but of one's jouissance and the recognition of lack. In order to represent this lack the subject has two possible alternatives - that of 'having' or 'being' the phallus.

According to Lacan, masculinity involves the posture or pretence of having the phallus, while femininity involve the masquerade of being the phallus.

The second phase of Lacan's thinking on sexual difference comes from a late seminar, seminar XX - Encoure: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge 1972-1973 - and concerns the 'structures of sexuation'. In this late phase Lacan continutes to develop masculinity and femininity as structures that are available to both men and women and not related to one's biologi, but what now determines a masculine and feminine structure si the type of jouissance one is able to attain - what LAcan called phallic jouissance and Other jouissance.

We will explore thesehighly controversial ideas below.

Courtly Love

We will present an example of what Lacan means by the terms phallic jouissance and Other jouissance in the form of the poetic tradition of courtly love.