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Let us finally consider what is surely the most controversial and contested area of [[Lacanian]] [[psychoanalysis]]: the conceptualization of feminine sexuality. Lacan's provocative slogans, such as 'the [[woman]] does not [[exist]]' and 'there is no such [[thing]] as a sexual [[relationship]]', have been greeted with indignation and outrage as well as prolonged and passionate [[defence]]. Lacan's thinking on feminine sexuality is distinguished by two main phases: first, he was concerned to distinguish [[Sexual Difference|sexual difference ]] on the basis of the phallus and here Lacan makes a significant innovation regarding Freudian thinking. For Freud the question of sexual difference 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 involves 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|the subject ]] has two possible alternatives - that of 'having' or 'being' the phallus (Adams 1966b). According to Lacan, masculinity involves the posture or pretence of having the phallus, while femininity involves the masquerade of being the phallus. The second phase of Lacan's thinking on sexual difference comes from a late seminar, seminar XX - Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge 1972-1973 - and concerns the 'structures of sexuation'. In this late phase Lacan continues to develop masculinity and femininity as structures that are available to both men and women and not related to one's biology, but what now determines a masculine and feminine structure is the type of jouissance one is able to attain - what Lacan called [[phallic jouissance]] and [[Other jouissance]]. We will explore these highly controversial ideas below before presenting an example of what Lacan means by [[them]] in the [[form]] of the poetic [[tradition]] of [[Courtly Love|courtly love]].
=Freud and the Enigma of Feminine Sexuality=
Freud based his [[theory]] of the [[Oedipus]] complex and [[infantile]] sexuality on the [[experience]] of boys, and at first he [[thought]] that the same process could simply be transferred to girls but in reverse. Gradually Freud was [[forced]] to acknowledge, by the weight of his own [[clinical]] experience and the research of his colleagues, that this was an untenable [[position]]. Two factors came into play here. First, the realization that, in the final phase of the [[Oedipus complex]], its [[dissolution]], it is not the genitals themselves that are in question but the [[presence]] or [[absence]] of the male [[genital]] [[organ]], the penis. Second, a [[number]] of Freud's followers began to look much more closely at the pre-[[Oedipal]] phase of an [[infant]]'s [[life]] and in [[particular]] at the importance of the [[mother]]/child relationship. Freud came to accept the importance of this early [[Pre-oedipal|pre-Oedipal ]] phase of [[development]], but this meant that he had to revise his early conception of the [[Oedipus Complex|Oedipus complex]]. In the [[Pre-oedipal phase|pre-Oedipal phase ]] both [[sexes]] are equally attached to the mother as the first love [[object]] and what Freud needed to explain was how girls shift from their mother to their father as a [[Love Object|love object ]] for [[The Oedipus Complex|the Oedipus complex ]] to even start.
The Oedipus complex remains fairly straightforward for boys; they initially see their mother as a love object but slowly realize that their mother is also the love object of their father. The father thus becomes a rival for the mother and the boy fears that the father will cut off his penis. The boy resolves this dilemma by giving up the mother as a love object and [[identifying]] with the father. As [[compensation]] for giving up on the mother the boy will be able to have other women as love [[objects]] in the [[future]]. For girls, however, the Oedipus complex has to account for the process whereby girls first give up their initial love-object (the mother). The Oedipus complex for girls, thus, involves an extra, earlier, step. The [[girl]] transfers her love from the mother to the father, because she realizes that neither she nor her mother has a penis, in a process that Freud called penis [[envy]]. The mother is then transformed from an object of love to a rival for the father's affections. At first the girl devalues the mother because she does not possess a penis and then resents her for making her the same. The problem for Freud was that he simply could not then explain why a girl should give up the father as love object and re-[[identify]] with the mother.
The [[Castration Complex|castration complex ]] marks the conclusion and [[resolution]] of the Oedipus complex for boys, that is to say, boys give up on the other as love object. For girls, on the other hand, it is the castration complex that leads up to the Oedipus complex and there is no satisfactory resolution of it. The girl must accept that she does not have the penis in order to transfer her [[desire]] to her father, but in doing so she does not accept this [[loss]] without some kind of compensation. Freud speculated that this compensation takes the form of [[desiring]] a [[baby]] from the father and the female Oedipus complex culminates, not in the [[threat]] of castration, but in the desire for the [[gift]] of a baby from the father. Thus girls never fully resolve their Oedipus complex because they can never completely give up on the other as love object. As we can see, the Oedipus complex for girls is a much more complex affair than for boys and it is also deeply unsatisfactory as a [[concept]].
Freud's speculations on the female Oedipus complex led him to explore the [[nature]] of feminine sexuality but resulted only in a series of unanswered questions. Until the end of his life Freud was bewildered by the enigma of feminine sexuality. He described femininity as a '[[dark continent]]' and never resolved the question 'what does woman [[want]]?' In the 1920s the failure of psychoanalysis to adequately account for the development of [[female sexuality]] gave rise to what has been called the first great debate on feminine sexuality. This debate was initiated through a paper by one of Freud's closest associates, Ernest [[Jones]] (1879-1958), which drew responses from many of the most prominent women [[psychoanalysts]] of the [[time]], including Karen Horney (1885-1952), Melanie [[Klein]] (1882-1960) and Joan Riviere (1883-1962) (see Juliet Mitchell's introduction to Feminine Sexuality (Mitchell and Rose 1982) for an account of this debate). Lacan's [[work]] on feminine sexuality is a continuation of these debates from the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently gave rise to the 'second great debate' in the 1970s and 1980s (see Brennan 1989).
The [[feminist]] critique of psychoanalysis focused on two particularly problematic strands of Freud's thought. First, feminists saw psychoanalysis as propagating a form of [[biological]] [[essentialism]] in the [[sense]] that one's anatomy - whether or not one has or does not have a penis - determines one's sexual [[identity]]. And there is indeed more than a little [[truth]] in this. [[Marie Bonaparte]] (1882-1962), for example, went so far as to argue that 'biology is destiny' and the attempts to revise Freud's '[[phallocentrism]]' by Jones, Bonaparte and Horney had paradoxically resulted in much more deterministic and essentialist theories of sexual development. The second critique advanced by [[feminism]] is that psychoanalysis always defines women negatively in relation to men. For Freud, men are seen as [[active]] agents while women are defined in [[terms]] of [[passivity]]. By the 1960s and early 1970s these two critiques were firmly established and widely accepted within feminism (see Kate Millet's classic feminist [[text]] Sexual [[Politics]] (1977 [1969]) for a clear [[statement]] of these criticisms), and consequently the [[psychoanalytic]] explanation of sexual difference was [[displaced]] through the study of [[gender]] as a [[social]] [[construct]]. It was within this context that Lacan's idiosyncratic formulations of sexual difference were received. Lacan's [[insistence]] that all notions of a [[stable]] fixed identity are a [[fiction]] rather than [[biologically]] given were seen to provide feminists with the possibility of a non-essentialist [[psychoanalytic theory]] of sexual difference.
From a Lacanian perspective the [[unconscious]] is that which undermines any stable or fixed identity and that includes a stable [[sexual identity]]. For early Lacan, sexual difference is not a question of biology but of [[signification]]; masculinity and femininity are not anatomically given but are subject positions defined through their relationship to the phallus as [[signifier]]. As we saw previously, for Lacan, the phallus is a signifier that is related, but not directly equivalent, to the penis and, as [[Jacqueline Rose]] points out, the importance of the phallus as signifier is precisely 'that its status in the development of [[human]] sexuality is something which nature cannot account for' (1996a: 63). The phallus is the signifier of lack. The phallus functions initially as an [[imaginary]] object - an object presumed to [[satisfy]] the mother's desire. It then functions [[symbolically]] through the recognition that desire cannot be [[satisfied]] and that as an object it will remain beyond reach. The rupturing of [[the imaginary]] [[unity]] between mother and [[child]] inaugurates the movement of desire and simultaneously the process of signification. The phallus thus represents a [[moment]] of rupture or [[division]] that re-enacts the fundamental division of the subject. In this sense, the phallus represents lack for both boys and girls, as both sexes are symbolically [[castrated]]. Castration for Lacan is a very different process from that elaborated by Freud and involves a fundamental loss for both sexes, that is to say, the giving up of some part of one's jouissance. In order to come into being as desiring [[subjects]] we are forced to acknowledge the [[impossibility]] of the [[total]] fulfilment of our jouissance. Castration designates that fundamental loss for which the phallus is the signifier. What we [[need]] to keep in [[mind]] here, if we are not to confuse these terms and, more importantly, if we are not to confuse them with the actual [[physical]] organ, is that jouissance is related to the [[drive]] and the [[real]], while the phallus is a signifier and is related to [[the symbolic]]. The 'difference' between a male and a female castration complex, therefore, is how the subject represents this primordial lack or loss, and it is here that the asymmetry of the Oedipus complex becomes [[apparent]]. Boys can 'pretend' to have the phallus, while girls must be the phallus. What does this mean? Having and being the phallus represents two modes of [[identification]] that cover over this primary lack. Through the Oedipus complex boys recognize the mother's desire and lack. They then identify her [[object of desire]] with the father, assuming that he has the phallus. In short, the boy shifts from the mother as a [[lacking]] other to the father as possessor of the phallus. Thus, boys pretend to have the [[Object of Desire|object of desire ]] for the Other (women). This is only 'pretence', however, because they never possessed the phallus in the first [[place]]; the phallus is always elsewhere.
Women, on the other hand, have to undergo the rather more complex procedure of giving up on the [[notion]] of 'having' the phallus before they can identify with the mother and thus become the object of desire for the Other (men). Lacan linked this process through which women must give up an essential part of themselves in order to be the phallus with the concept of masquerade:
To appeal to the notion of women therefore as a homogeneous group is to appeal to an imaginary, and therefore [[illusory]], identity.
Furthermore, when Lacan talks about [[existence]], he is reerring to something at the level of [[The Symbolic|the symbolic]].
If the woman was to exist she would have to exist at the level of the symbolic and this has a number of implications.
=''Encore'': The Theory of Sexuation=
In his early account of sexual difference Lacan had tried to free psychoanalysis from its essentialism and [[normative]], heterosexual, bias by transposing the Freudian [[understanding]] of castration and [[penis envy]] on to the phallus as a signifier of lack. While the notion of masquerade has been extraordinarily productive in terms of analysing the representation of women (see 'After Lacan'), it still [[left]] completely unanswered the question of feminine desire. In 1972-3 Lacan returned to this issue - what can be said about feminine desire - in [[The Seminar|the seminar ]] Encore. In this seminar Lacan further developed the idea that masculinity and femininity are not biologically given, but designate two 'sexed' subject positions that are available to both men and women. What is important in this seminar is that masculinity and femininity are defined not simply in relation to the phallus, but through the type of jouissance that is attainable in each position. Sexual difference, therefore, is determined not as a difference between two discrete sexes but as a result of one's position in relation to jouissance.
Encore is usually read as Lacan's final statement on feminine sexuality, but this is only part of the picture. Seminar XX presents a wide-ranging [[reflection]] on the nature of love, jouissance and the limits of knowledge. Sexual difference is important here because, from a psychoanalytic perspective, it is the ultimate [[limit]] of knowledge. Sexual difference is reducible to neither nature nor [[culture]], but emerges at the point of their intersection. This does not mean that sexual identity is the sum of [[natural]] (biological) and [[cultural]] (signifying) elements, but rather that it is that which is left out of their unity. What Lacan is driving at here is that all structures, whether of the subject or the symbolic, are necessarily incomplete; there is always some [[contingent]] element that is left out, an exception to the rule. Thus, seminar XX should be read as a continuation of the [[project]] Lacan set out in [[seminar XI]], when he began to elaborate the [[objet]] [[petit a]] as the left-over of the real. Encore is also, as we will see, a continuation of [[seminar VII]] and the [[discussion]] of courtly love that Lacan introduced there. Increasingly, in the late Lacan, the drive is associated with the exception and limit; it is the concept of the drive that means that the subject is not wholly determined by the symbolic and marks the limit of the signifier upon the subject. The drive is also the terrain upon which sex is played out.
=There is No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship=
Before turning to the example of courtly love, let me say something about one of Lacan's most perversely scandalous remarks about sexuality: there is no such thing as a [[sexual relationship]]. This formulation by Lacan is often understood, incorrectly I should add, in a similar vein to that of ex-US President Bill [[Clinton]]'s equally scandalous remark that he did 'not have [[sexual relations]]' with Monica Lewinsky, a remark that nearly brought down his presidency. Bill Clinton took 'sexual relations' in this context to apply in a completely limited and literal sense to genital sex and thus, fortuitously for him, to exclude any other form of sexual [[activity]]. Lacan is not talking about sexual relations in this sense and is not suggesting that [[people]] do not have sexual relations with each other, of whatever form. Lacan is referring to a much more fundamental relationship than this - to the impossibility of a perfect sexual union between two people. Perhaps one of the most pervasive cultural [[fantasies]] we have today is of finding our perfect partner and of having a completely [[harmonious]] and sexually fulfilling relationship with our 'other half'. Indeed, many of the psychotherapies today are driven by the desire to achieve [[harmony]] and [[balance]] within families, between people and above all between the sexes. For Lacan this is a pernicious [[fantasy]] and the [[role]] of psychoanalysis is to reveal how any harmonious relationship is fundamentally impossible. It is precisely because masculinity and femininity represent two non-complementary structures, defined by different relationships to the Other, that there can be no such thing as a [[Sexual Relationship|sexual relationship]]. What we do in any relationship is either try to turn the other into what we think we desire or turn ourselves into that which we think the other desires, but this can never exactly map onto the other's desire. In other words, the 'major problem of male and female subjects is that they do not relate to what their partners relate to in them' (Salecl 2002:93). In a sense, we always miss what we aim at in the other and our desire remains [[unsatisfied]]. We can never be One, as Lacan says. It is this very asymmetry of masculinity and femininity in relation to the phallus and the objet a that means that there can be no such thing as a sexual relationship. According to Lacan, at least, masculine and feminine types of jouissance are [[irreconcilable]]. Let me now conclude this chapter with an example that Lacan takes from literature of the non-existence of women and the failure of the sexual relationship - that of the medieval tradition of courtly love [[poetry]].
=Courtly Love=
The Lady is the objet a (or das [[Ding]], as Lacan calls it in this seminar) - that impossible object [[cause]] of desire that inaugurates the movement of desire itself. Crucially, then, she is not only unattainable but never existed in the first place; she is an idealized [[image]] for which there is no real equivalent. In [[The Metastases of Enjoyment]] Žižek points out that Lacan is careful here not to elevate the Lady to the status of a '[[sublime]]' spiritualized object; she is rather an 'abstract character' - 'a cold, distanced, inhuman partner' who functions like an [[automaton]] or [[machine]]: '[T]he Lady is thus as far as possible from any kind of purified spirituality: she functions as an inhuman partner in the sense of radical [[Otherness]] which is wholly incommensurable with our [[needs]] and desires' (1994:90).
If the Lady of courtly love can be said to act as a [[mirror]] upon which the male lovers project their idealized [[images]] and fantasies, then this can only take place if the mirror is there already. This surface, the Lady, 'functions as a kind of black [[hole]] in [[reality]], as a limit whose Beyond is inaccessible' (Žižek1994:91). In other words, she is exactly the kind of figure that one can have no empathetic relationship with whatsoever. She is that [[traumatic]] Otherness that Lacan designates as [[The thing|the Thing ]] or [[the Real]].
This is the structure of courtly love that continues to resonate with contemporary audiences and Žižek gives as an example of this Neil Jordan's 1993 [[film]] The Crying [[Game]]. The Crying Game centres on the 'love' affair between a member of the IRA, Fergus, on the run in [[London]], and a beautiful hairdresser, Dil. While Fergus falls in love with Dil, she 'maintains an ambiguous ironic, sovereign distance towards him' (1994:103). Eventually Dil gives way to Fergus's advances, but before they make love Dil retires to another room and changes into a semi-[[transparent]] nightgown. As the camera slowly follows Fergus's [[gaze]] and covetously moves down Dil's body, in one of the most startling moments in [[recent]] [[cinema]], we suddenly see 'her' penis. Dil is a transvestite. Repulsed, Fergus pushes her away and throws up. After this failed sexual [[encounter]] their relationship is reversed and Dil becomes obsessively in love with Fergus, while he remains distant towards her. What we see here, therefore, is precisely the asymmetry that Lacan describes in all sexual relationships between 'what the lover sees in the loved one and what the loved one [[knows]] himself to be' (1994:103). This is the inescapable deadlock of all sexual relationships, according to Lacan. Dil's love for Fergus is so absolute and unconditional that Fergus slowly overcomes his aversion to her. As the IRA tries to draw Fergus back into its activities, Dil shoots and kills Fergus's ex-lover and IRA operative, Jude. Fergus assumes [[responsibility]] for the killing and is imprisoned. The film ends with Dil visiting Fergus in prison, dressed once again as a provocatively [[seductive]] woman. They are now separated by the glass partition denying them any physical contact. For Žižek, this scenario encapsulates the impossibility of the sexual relationship.
