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Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father

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The usual way of misreading [[Lacan]]'s [[formulas ]] of [[sexuation]]<ref>[[Jacques Lacan]], ''The [[Seminar ]] of Jacques Lacan XX: On [[Feminine ]] [[Sexuality]], the Limits of [[Love ]] and [[Knowledge]], 1972-73 ([[Encore]])'', New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.</ref> is to reduce the [[difference ]] of the [[masculine ]] and the feminine side to the two formulas that define the masculine [[position]], as if masculine is the [[universal ]] [[phallic ]] function and feminine the exception, the [[excess]], the [[surplus ]] that eludes the grasp of the [[phallic function]]. Such a [[reading ]] completely misses Lacan's point, which is that this very position of the [[Woman ]] as exception-say, in the guise of the Lady in [[courtly love]]-is a masculine [[fantasy ]] par excellence. As the exemplary [[case ]] of the exception constitutive of the phallic function, one usually mentions the [[fantasmatic]], [[obscene ]] [[figure ]] of the primordial [[father]]-<i>jouisseur</i> who was not encumbered by any [[prohibition ]] and was as such able fully to [[enjoy ]] all [[women]]. Does, however, the figure of the Lady in courtly love not fully fit these determinations of the primordial father? Is she not also a capricious [[Master ]] who wants it all, i.e., who, herself not bound by any Law, charges her knight-servant with [[arbitrary ]] and outrageous ordeals?<br><br>
In this precise sense, Woman is one of the names-of-the-father. The crucial details not to be missed here are the use of plural and the lack of capital letters: not Name-of-the-Father, but one of the names-of-the-father-one of the nominations of the excess called primordial father.<ref>In the domain of politics, populist rhetoric offers a case of the exception which grounds universality: whenever the opinion prevails that politics as such is corrupted etc., one can be sure that there is always one politician to promulgate this universal distrust and thereby offer himself as the one to be trusted, the neutral/apolitical representative of the people's true interests...</ref> In the case of Woman-the mythical She, the Queen from Rider Haggard's novel of the same name for example-as well as in the case of the primordial father, we are dealing with an agency of power which is pre-symbolic, unbridled by the Law of castration; in both cases, the role of this fantasmatic agency is to fill out the vicious cycle of the symbolic order, the void of its origins: what the notion of Woman (or of the primordial father) provides is the mythical starting point of unbridled fullness whose "primordial repression" constitutes the symbolic order.<br><br>
A second misreading consists in rendering obtuse the sting of the formulas of sexuation by way of introducing a semantic distinction between the two meanings of the quantifier "all": according to this misreading, in the case of the universal function, "all" (or "not-all") refers to a singular subject (x), and signals whether "all of it" is caught in the phallic function; whereas the particular exception "there is one..." refers to the set of subjects and
signals, whether within this set "there is one" who is (or is not) entirely exempted from the phallic function. The feminine side of the formulas of sexuation thus allegedly bears [[witness ]] to a cut that splits each woman from within: no woman is entirely exempted from the phallic function, and for that very [[reason]], no woman is entirely submitted to it, i.e., there is something in each woman that resists the phallic function. In a symmetric way, on the masculine side, the asserted [[universality ]] refers to a [[singular ]] [[subject ]] (each [[male ]] subject is entirely submitted to the phallic function) and the exemption to the set of male [[subjects ]] ('there is one' who is entirely exempted from the phallic function). In short, since one man is entirely exempted from the phallic function, all [[others ]] are wholly submitted to it, and since no woman is entirely exempted from the phallic function, none of [[them ]] is also wholly submitted to it. In the one case, the [[splitting ]] is externalized: it stands for the line of [[separation ]] that, within the set of "all men", distinguishes those who are caught in the phallic function from the 'one' who is exempted from it; in the [[other ]] case, it is internalized: every singular woman is [[split ]] from within, part of her is submitted to the phallic function and part of her exempted from it.<br><br>
However, if we are to assume fully the true paradox of Lacan's formulas of sexuation, one has to read them far more literally: woman undermines the universality of the phallic function by the very fact that there is no exception in her, nothing that resists it. In other words, the paradox of the phallic function resides in a kind of short-circuit between the function and its meta-function: the phallic function coincides with its own self-limitation, with the setting up of a non-phallic exception. Such a reading is prefigured by the somewhat enigmatic mathemes that Lacan wrote under the formulas of sexuation and where woman (designated by the crossed-out _) is split between the capitalized Phi (of the phallus) and S(%), the signifier of the crossed-out Other that stands for the nonexistence/inconsistency of the Other, of the symbolic order. What one should not fail to notice here is the deep affinity between the Phi and S(%), the signifier of the lack in the Other, i.e., the crucial fact that the Phi, the signifier of the phallic power, phallus in its fascinating presence, merely gives body to the impotence/inconsistency of the Other.<br><br>
Suffice to [[recall ]] a [[political ]] [[leader]]-what is the ultimate support of his charisma? The [[domain ]] of [[politics ]] is by definition incalculable, unpredictable; a person stirs up passionate reactions without [[knowing ]] why; the [[logic ]] of [[transference ]] cannot be mastered, so one usually refers to the [[magic ]] touch, to an unfathomable je ne sais quoi which cannot be reduced to any of the leader's actual features-it seems as if the charismatic leader dominates this (x), as if he pulls the strings where the Other of the [[symbolic ]] [[order ]] is incapacitated. The [[situation ]] is here homologous to the common [[notion ]] of God as a person criticized by [[Spinoza]]: in their endeavour to [[understand ]] the [[world ]] around them by way of formulating the network of causal connections between events and [[objects]], [[people ]] sooner or later arrive at the point at which their [[understanding ]] fails, [[encounter ]] a [[limit]], and God (conceived as an old bearded wiseman, etc.) merely gives [[body ]] to this limit-we [[project ]] into the personalized notion of God the hidden, unfathomable [[cause ]] of all that cannot be [[understood ]] and explained via a clear causal connection.<br><br>
The first operation of the critique of ideology is therefore to recognize in the fascinating presence of God the filler of the gaps in the structure of our knowledge, i.e., the element in the guise of which the lack in our positive knowledge acquires positive presence. And our point is that it is somewhat homologous with the feminine "not-all": this not-all does not mean that woman is not entirely submitted to the Phallus; it rather signals that she sees through the fascinating presence of the Phallus, that she is able to discern in it the filler of the inconsistency of the Other. Yet another way to put it would be to say that the passage from S(%) to the Phi is the passage from impossibility to prohibition: S(%) stands for the impossibility of the signifier of the Other, for the fact that there is no "Other of Other", that the field of the Other is inherently inconsistent, and the Phi reifies this impossibility into the exception, into a sacred, prohibited/unattainable agent who avoids castration and is thus able really to enjoy (the primordial Father, the Lady in courtly love).<ref>The transsexual subject, by way of installing Woman at the place of the Name-of-the-Father, disavows castration. If one adopts the usual feminist-deconstructionist commonplace, according to which the notion of castration implies that woman, not man, is castrated, one would expect that when Woman occupies the place of symbolic authority this place will be branded by castration; if however, we take into account that both Woman and the primordial father are uncastratable, the mystery immediately disappears.</ref><br><br>
In order to elucidate this paradox, suffice it to reflect on the implications of a discontent that pertains to a certain kind of feminist critique which persistently denounces every description of femininity as male cliché, as something violently imposed onto women. The question that instantly pops up is: what is, then, the feminine "in itself", obfuscated by male clichés? The problem is that all answers (from the traditional eternally feminine, to Kristeva and Irigaray) can again be discredited as male clichés. Carol Gilligan, for example,<ref>See Carol Gilligan, <i>In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development</i>, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Such a feminine substantialism (this word is probably more appropriate than the usual essentialism) often serves as the hidden presupposition of feminist argumentation. Suffice it to recall the standard claim that a woman who actively participates in patriarchal repression (by way of following the male ideals of feminine beauty, focusing her life on raising the children, etc.) is eo ipso a victim of male manipulation and plays a role imposed on her. This logic is homologous to the old orthodox Marxist claim: the working class is, as to its objective social position, progressive. So that when workers engage in the anti-Semitic, right-wing populism, they are being manipulated by the ruling class and its ideology: in both cases, one has to assert that there is no substantial guarantee of the progressive nature of women or of the working class-the situation is irreducibly antagonistic and open, the terrain of an undecidable ideological and political struggle.</ref> opposes to the male values of autonomy, competitiveness, etc., the feminine values of intimacy, attachment, interdependence, care and concern, responsibility and self-sacrifice, etc. Are these authentic feminine features or male clichés about women, features imposed on women in the patriarchal society? The matter is undecidable, so that the only possible answer is, both at the same time.<ref>This ambiguity pertains already to the commonplace notion of femininity, which, in line with Gilligan, associates women with intimacy, identification, spontaneity, as opposed to male distance, reflectivity, calculation; but at the same time, also with masquerade, affected feigning, as opposed to male authentic inwardness-woman is simultaneously more spontaneous and more artificial than man.</ref> The issue thus has to be reformulated in purely topological terms: with regard to the positive content, the male representation of woman is the same as woman in herself; the difference concerns only the place, the purely formal modality of the comprehension of the same content (in the first case this
[[content ]] is conceived as it is 'for the other', in the second case, as it is "in itself"). This purely [[formal ]] shift in modality, however, is crucial. In other [[words]], the fact that every positive determination of what woman is "in herself" brings us back to what she is "for the other" (for man), in no way compels us to the male-chauvinist conclusion that woman is what she is only for the other, for man: what remains is the [[topological ]] cut, the purely formal difference between the "for the other" and "for herself".<br><br>
This problematic of femininity qua masquerade also enables us to approach in a new way Lacan's earlier attempt (from the late '50s in "The signification of the phallus") to conceptualize sexual difference as internal to the phallic economy, as the difference between "having" and "being" (man has the phallus, woman is the phallus). A reproach that immediately arises here concerns the reliance of this difference on Freud's naïve anthropologist evolutionism whose premise is that the primitive savage doesn't have an unconscious since he is (our, civilized man's) unconscious. Does the attempt to conceptualize sexual difference by means of the opposition of being and having not imply woman's subordination to man, i.e., the notion of woman as a lower, less reflected,
more immediate [[stage]], somewhat in the [[sense ]] of [[Schelling]]'s notion of progression as the passage from [[being ]] to having? That is to say, in Schelling's [[philosophy]], (what previously was) a Being becomes a predicate of a higher Being; (what previously was) a Subject becomes an [[object ]] of a higher Subject: an [[animal]], for example, is immediately its own Subject, it is its [[living ]] body, whereas man cannot be said to be his body, he merely has a body which is thus degraded to his predicate...<br><br>
As a close reading of Lacan's text instantly attests however, the opposition we are dealing with is not that of being versus having, but rather the opposition of to have/to appear: woman is not the phallus, she merely appears to be to be phallus, and this appearing (which of course is identical with femininity qua masquerade) points towards a logic of lure and deception. Phallus can perform its function only as veiled-the moment it is unveiled, it is no longer phallus; what the mask of femininity conceals is therefore not directly the phallus but rather the fact that there is nothing behind the mask. In a word, phallus is a pure semblance, a mystery which resides in the mask as such. On that account, Lacan can claim that a woman wants to be loved for what she is not, not for
what she truly is: she offers herself to man not as herself, but in the guise of a mask.<ref>"It is for what she is not that she expects to be desired as well as loved". Jacques Lacan, <i>[[Écrits]]: A Selection</i>, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.</ref> Or, to put it in [[Hegelian ]] [[terms]]: [[phallus ]] does not stand for an immediate Being but for a Being which is only insofar as it is "for the other", i.e., for a pure appearing. On that account, the [[Freudian ]] [[primitive ]] is not immediately the [[unconscious]], he is merely unconscious for us, for our [[external ]] [[gaze]]: the [[spectacle ]] of his unconscious (primitive passions, exotic [[rituals]]) is his [[masquerade ]] by means of which like the woman with her masquerade, he fascinates the other's (our) [[desire]].<br><br>
Man wants to be loved for what he truly is; which is why the archetypal male scenario of the trial of woman's love is that of the prince from a fairy tale who first approaches his beloved under the guise of a poor servant, in order to insure that the woman will fall in love with him for himself, not for his princely title. This, however, is precisely what a woman doesn't want-and is this not yet another confirmation of the fact that woman is more subject than man? A man stupidly believes that, beyond his symbolic title, there is deep in himself some substantial content, some hidden treasure which makes him worthy of love, whereas a woman knows that there is nothing beneath the mask-her strategy is precisely to preserve this 'nothing' of her freedom, out of reach of man's possessive love...<br><br>
A recent English publicity spot for a beer renders perfectly what Lacan aims at with his notion that "... there is no sexual relation". Its first part stages the well-known fairy tale anecdote: a girl walks along a stream, sees a frog, takes it gently into her lap, kisses it, and of course, the ugly frog miraculously turns into a beautiful young man. However, the story isn't over yet: the young man casts a covetous glance at the girl, draws her towards
himself, kisses her, and she turns into a bottle of beer the man triumphantly holds in his hand... For the woman, the point is that her love and affection (signalled by the kiss) turn a frog into a beautiful man, a [[full ]] phallic [[presence ]] (in Lacan's [[mathemes]], Phi); for the man, it is to reduce the woman to a [[partial ]] object, the cause of his desire (in Lacan's mathemes, the [[objet ]] [[petit a]]). On account of this asymmetry the [[relationship ]] is [[impossible]]: we have either a woman with the frog or a man with the bottle of beer; what we can never obtain is the [[natural ]] couple of the beautiful woman and man... To conclude, two clichés are to be avoided apropos of the [[hysterical ]] [[nature ]] of feminine [[subjectivity]]:<br><br>
-on the one hand, the dismissive treatment of the (feminine) hysterical subject as a confused babbler unable to confront reality, and therefore taking refuge in
impotent theatrical gestures (an example from the domain of political [[discourse]]: from [[Lenin ]] onwards, Bolsheviks regularly stigmatized their [[liberal ]] political opponents as [[hysterics ]] who "do not [[know ]] what they effectively [[want]]");<br><br>
-on the other hand, the false elevation of hysteria to a protest, through woman's body language, against male domination: by means of hysterical symptoms, the (feminine) subject signals her refusal to act as the empty screen or medium for the male monologue.<br><br>
==Source==
* [[Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father|Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father, or How Not to Misread Lacan's Formulas of Sexuation]] ''[[Lacanian ]] Ink''. Volume 10. Fall 1995. pp 24-39. <http://www.lacan.com/zizekwoman.htm>.
[[Category:Articles by Slavoj Žižek]]
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