{"id":6826,"date":"2009-10-27T14:21:07","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T19:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6826"},"modified":"2011-02-17T10:58:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T15:58:41","slug":"female-feminine-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/10\/27\/female-feminine-feminist\/","title":{"rendered":"female feminine feminist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology<\/em>. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004.<\/p>\n

How does that subject become a political subject?<\/span> Is there a relationship between female and feminist subjects? To answer these questions, we need next to consider the relationship between the formation of female and feminist subjects. In the Lacanian account of the production of the female subject, while the phallic function may fail to secure the position of the not all<\/span>, that position may also resolve into normative \u2018masculine\u2019 or \u2018feminine\u2019 Oedipal identifications. These \u2018normative\u2019 identifications reflect norms of how to be a sexuated subject<\/strong>, and as such are fictional representations of \u2018masculinity\u2019 and \u2018femininity\u2019. While these Oedipal norms may (and do) fail, they nevertheless represent masculine and feminine identity. Although all identifications are labile, they work to secure the otherwise \u2018unstable\u2019 female subject within the ideals of \u2018masculinity\u2019 or \u2018femininity\u2019.<\/p>\n

For Lacan, all speaking beings are inscribed on either side of the Graph of Sexuation (S20: 79). Subjects are by definition sexed, and therefore have masculine or feminine structures.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The female subject can \u2018choose\u2019 to take up a place on the masculine side of sexuation. Lacan describes how \u2018[o]ne ultimately situates oneself there by choice \u2013 women are free to situate themselves there if it gives them pleasure to do so. Everyone knows there are phallic women<\/strong>\u2019 (S20: 71). This female subject takes up a masculine position in phallic identification<\/strong>. This is a subject position of identification with the Law of the Father. 90<\/p>\n

In this position, it is not that the female subject exhibits \u2018masculine\u2019 traits, but rather that she refuses to recognize that she does not have the phallus<\/span>. In this position, the subject accepts the terms by which the Law of the Father defines \u2018masculinity\u2019 and \u2018femininity\u2019, with a concomitant privileging of masculine identity and consolidation of the father\u2019s law.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, the female subject can take up a feminine position. That position also requires a masculine identification, insofar as the female subject identifies with the Law of the Father and the operation of the phallus (as the mark of desire) (Evans 1996: 220). In the Lacanian account, the female subject recognizes that the father has what she does not, the phallus. She arrives at the feminine position through the desire for the phallus and its symbolic substitute, the child of the father. For that female subject, the phallus\/child operates as the objet a<\/span>, or the object of desire. Unsurprisingly, that position is arrived at with difficulty because of the absence of the threat of castration and the necessity of identification with the other (masculine) sex<\/strong>. These operations of normative Oedipal identification<\/span> confront the female subject with a Symbolic order that says all and nothing. In both positions, the female subject identifies with the Law of the Father, the phallic signifier becomes a masculine all<\/strong>, rendering her not all<\/span> as a nothing.<\/p>\n

The female subject appears to be caught within a symbolic field that appears as a universal and transcendental, rather than a contingent, order. These normative identifications<\/strong> do not disrupt a phallocentric subject or socio-symbolic order. They do not disrupt the operation of the phallic signifier, nor contend that other signifiers could structure the subject or the Symbolic order.<\/p>\n

However, a fundamental tenet of psychoanalytic theory is the \u2018problematic, if not impossible, nature of sexual identity\u2019; the contingency of sexuation, the failure of identity, and the incompleteness of the symbolic field (Rose 1982a: 28). For psychoanalysis, \u2018femininity\u2019 is a symptom of that contingency, failure and incompleteness. It is a symptom because female subjectivity is an \u2018indetermination\u2019 of a not all<\/span>, posited as an exception to the phallic function. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For this reason, the \u2018riddle\u2019 of femininity has proven to be a source of much difficulty for psychoanalysis. For example, both Freud and Lacan begin by understanding the production of the female subject in the same identificatory structures as the male subject, but in their later work come to recognize the inadequacy of this account. They encounter the difficulty that the phallus \u2018guarantees\u2019 the masculine but not feminine subject<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Phallic identification does not determine the female subject because it does not necessarily secure, nor is it secured in, her formation. How, then, do we provide an account of the identificatory instability of the female subject? 91
\n<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. How does that subject become a political subject? Is there a relationship between female and feminist subjects? To answer these questions, we need next to consider the relationship between the formation of female and feminist subjects. In the Lacanian account of the production … Continue reading “female feminine feminist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,90,114,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-resistance","category-sexuation","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6826"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6835,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826\/revisions\/6835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}