Sexual Difference

sexual difference The phrase 'sexual difference', which has come into

prominence in the debate between psychoanalysis and feminism, is not part of

Freud's or Lacan's theoretical vocabulary. Freud speaks only of the anatomical

distinction between the sexes and its psychical consequences (Freud, 1925d);

Lacan speaks of sexual position and the sexual relationship, and occasionally

of the differentiation of the sexes (S4, 153). However, both Freud and Lacan

address the question of sexual difference, and an entry has been included for

this term because it brings together an important set of related themes in

Lacan's work, and because it constitutes an important focus for feminist

approaches to Lacan's work (see Brennan, 1989; Gallop, 1982; Grosz, 1990;

Mitchell and Rose, 1982).

    One of the basic presuppositions underlying Freud's work is that just as

there are certain physical differences between men and women, so also there

are psychical differences. In other words, there are certain psychical character-

istics that can be called 'masculine' and others that can be called 'feminine'.

Rather than trying to give any formal defmition of these terms (an impossible

task - Freud, 1920a: SE XVIII, 17 l), Freud limits himself to describing how a

human subject comes to acquire masculine or feminine psychical character-

istics. This is not an instinctual or natural process, but a complex one in which

anatomical differences interact with social and psychical factors. The whole

process revolves around the CASTRATION COMPLEX, in which the boy fears being

deprived of his penis and the girl, assuming that she has already been deprived

of hers, develops penis envy.

     Following Freud, Lacan also engages with the problem of how the human

infant becomes a sexed subject. For Lacan, masculinity and femininity are not

biological essences but Symbolic positions, and the assumption of one of these

two positions is fundamental to the construction of subjectivity; the subject is

essentially a sexed subject. 'Man' and 'Woman' are signifiers that stand for

these two subjective positions(S20, 34).

     For both Freud and Lacan, the child is at first ignorant of sexual difference and

 so cannot take up a sexual position. It is only when the child discovers sexual

difference in the Castration Complex that he can begin to take up a sexual

position. Both Freud and Lacan see this process of taking up a sexual position

 as closely connected with the OEDIPUS COMPLEx, but they differ on the precise

nature of the connection. For Freud, the subject's sexual position is determined

by the sex of the parent with whom the subject identifies in the Oedipus complex

(if the subject identifies with the father, he takes up a masculine position;

identification with the mother entails the assumption of a feminine position).

For Lacan, however, the Oedipus complex always involves Symbolic identifica-

tion with the Father, and hence Oedipal identification cannot determine sexual

position. According to Lacan, then, it is not identification but the subject's

relationship with the Phallus which determines sexual position.

     This relationship can either be one of 'having' or 'not having'; men have the

Symbolic phallus, and women don't (or, to be more precise, men are 'not

without having it' [ils ne sont pas sans l'avoir]). The assumption of a sexual

position is fundamentally a Symbolic act, and the difference between the sexes

can only be conceived of on the Symbolic plane (S4, 153):

    It is insofar as the function of man and Woman is symbolized, it is insofar as

    it's literally uprooted from the domain of the Imaginary and situated in the

    domain of the Symbolic, that any normal, completed sexual position is

    Realized.

                                                                                                             (S3, 177)

    However, there is no signifier of sexual difference as such which would

permit the subject to fully symbolise the function of man and Woman, and

hence it is impossible to attain a fully 'normal, finished sexual position'. The

subject's sexual identity is thus always a rather precarious matter, a source of

perpetual self-questioning. The question of one's own sex ('Am I a man or a

Woman?') is the question which defineS HYSTERIA. The mysterious 'other sex' is

always the Woman, for both men and women, and therefore the question of the

hysteric ('What is a Woman?') is the same for both male and female hysterics

(S3, 178).

    Although the anatomy/BIOLOGY Of the subject plays a part in the question of

which sexual position the subject will take up, it is a fundamental axiom in

psychoanalytic theory that anatomy does not determine sexual position. There

is a rupture between the biological aspect of sexual difference (for example at

the level of the chromosomes) which is related to the reproductive function of

sexuality, and the unconscious, in which this reproductive function is not

represented. Given the non-representation of the reproductive function of

sexuality in the unconscious, 'in the psyche there is nothing by which the

subject may situate himself as a male or female being' (S11, 204). There is no

signifier of sexual difference in the Symbolic order. The only sexual signifier is

the phallus, and there is no 'female' equivalent of this signifier: 'strictly

speaking there is no symbolization of Woman's sex as such . . . the phallus

is a symbol to which there is no correspondent, no equivalent. It's a matter of a

dissymmetry in the signifier' (S3, 176). Hence the phallus is 'the pivot which

completes in both sexes the questioning of their sex by the Castration Complex'

(E, 198).

    It is this fundamental dissymmetry in the signifier which leads to the

dissymmetry between the Oedipus complex in men and women. Whereas

the male subject desires the parent of the other sex and identifies with the

parent of the same sex, the female subject desires the parent of the same sex

and 'is required to take the image of the other sex as the basis of its

identification' (S3, 176). 'For a Woman the Realization of her sex is not

accomplished in the Oedipus complex in a way symmetrical to that of the

man's, not by identification with the mother, but on the contrary by identifica-

tion with the paternal object, which assigns her an extra detour' (S3, 172).

'This signifying dissymmetry determines the paths down which the Oedipus

complex will pass. The two paths make them both pass down the same trail -

the trail of castration' (S3, 176).

    If, then, there is no symbol for the opposition masculine-feminine as such,

the only way to understand sexual difference is in terms of the opposition

activity-passivity (Sll, 192). This polarity is the only way in which the

opposition male-female is represented in the psyche, since the biological

function of sexuality (reproduction) is not represented (Sll, 204). This is

why the question of what one is to do as a man or a Woman is a drama which

is situated entirely in the field of the Other (Sll, 204), which is to say that the

subject can only Realise his sexuality on the Symbolic level (S3, 170).

    In the seminar of 1970-1 Lacan tries to formalise his theory of sexual

difference by means of formulae derived from Symbolic logic. These reappear

in the diagram of sexual difference which Lacan presents in the 1972-3

seminar (Figurel6, taken from S20, 73). The diagram is divided into two

sides: on the left, the male side, and on the right, the female side. The

formulae of sexuation appear at the top of the diagram. Thus the formulae

on the male side are Exæ (= there is at least one x which is not submitted to

the phallic function) and Vx¢x (= for all x, the phallic function is valid). The

formulae on the female side are Exæ (= there is not one x which is not

submitted to the phallic function) and TGx (= for not all x, the phallic

function is valid). The last formula illustrates the relationship of WOMAN (O

the logic of the not-all. What is most striking is that the two propositions on

each side of the diagram seem to contradict each other: 'each side is defined by

both an affirmation and a negation of the phallic function, an inclusion and

exclusion of absolute (non-phallic) jouissance' (Copjec, 1994: 27). However,

there is no symmetry between the two sides (no sexual relationship); each side

represents a radically different way in which the SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP CAD

misfire (S20, 53-4).

== def ==Lacan’s formalization of sexual difference in his famous "formulas of sexuation," presented by means of an idiosyncratic usage of mathematical symbols derived from symbolic logic and set theory, attempts to distill Freud’s efforts to distinguish the girl’s experience of castration from the boy’s. In the first logical moment of masculine sexuation, an exception to the phallic function—Lacan’s term for the interdiction of castration—is posited, which is then followed by a contradictory assertion of the function’s universality. Though abstracted beyond immediate recognition, it is possible to discern here the logic of the Freudian primal father, who lives in the masculine subject’s fantasy as the exception that proves the universal rule of castration. In the first logical moment of feminine castration, in contrast, it is asserted that there are no exceptions to the phallic function. But there then follows the notion that "not-all" elements of the feminine subject, elements Lacan represents with the symbol designating the negation of the universal quantifier, are subject to the rule of castration. This is the background to Lacan’s controversial assertion that women are "pas-toute." Though numerous feminists, including luce irigaray, have attacked this claim as a rationalization for what they see as women’s secondary status within a patriarchal socio-symbolic order, others have argued that the implication of Lacan’s assertion is simply that women, or more precisely feminine subjects, do not avail themselves to categorization. Whereas masculine subjects routinely abstract themselves in such a way that they constitute a whole paradoxically unified by the exception embodied by the primal father fantasy (a masculine subject, in colloquial terms, can be "just one of the guys"), feminine subjects, so it appears, feature an irreducible element of singularity, one resistant to counting, that renders each of them, one might say, a world unto herself. The implications of Lacan’s suggestive and oft-misunderstood theory of sexual difference for feminism and the theory of sexuality have still to find their full elaboration. One thing, however, remains clear. For Lacan, sex emerges as an impasse resulting from the impossibility of representing sexual difference symbolically and therefore of establishing sexual identities. In contrast to the Anglo-American ideology of "gender," then, which upholds the idea that masculinity and femininity are socially preestablished meanings that may never be fully embodied, sex, in the Lacanian view, refers instead to the impossibility of sexual meanings themselves, of the frustration of every attempt to define sexual difference in positive terms, and therefore of the unforgiving resistance with which sexuality necessarily thwarts the ambitions of our conscious intentions.