Dear Black Tuesday,
Could you come back to this castration story? OK, it's not the penis, it's symbolic, we are missing beings but, in the meantime, the phallus seems to structure absolutely EVERYTHING!
Psychoanalysis seems to have forever nailed down the gender relationship and the primacy of the relationship with the father. It's annoying. Is she capable of thinking beyond patriarchy?
Thank you so much for your work (and Slate, please give us the podcast back!)
Noémie
Dear Noémie,
Allow me to rephrase your question: are WE capable of thinking beyond patriarchy? Basically, you pinpoint the idea that the normal would always deal with the “male norm”, to use Jacques Lacan’s expression. Is this what you are complaining about? Because I don't know if we are capable of thinking collectively about something beyond patriarchy, we are not really there, even if we see here and there jolts of other things that are emerging. But, for the moment, I do not see another norm emerging that would supplant the “male norm”.
On the other hand, there is indeed a breakdown of norms, a multiplicity of singular productions which shows that in fact, we can do without the phallus. It's not me who says it: at the risk of surprising you, it is Lacan himself who puts forward this idea at the end of his teaching.
You have clearly recalled that the phallus in psychoanalysis is not the penis. The phallus is a signifier of absence, of lack, which directs the desire of the subject. But then why call it phallus if it is not the penis? I have obviously not read all the treatises on psychoanalysis, but from what I have read, I have in fact never read a precise sentence which explains why we kept this signifier if, precisely, it is not what it designates. I believe the answer is in that last sentence. This creates a discrepancy. THE…
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