{"id":6973,"date":"2009-10-27T18:08:36","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T23:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6973"},"modified":"2011-02-19T20:17:57","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T01:17:57","slug":"real-of-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/10\/27\/real-of-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"real of woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology.<\/em> Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. p 127-131<\/p>\n

The production of the excluded \u2018reality\u2019 of women is evident in, for example, the case of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n

Before feminist activism in this area, social discourses did not represent the \u2018experience\u2019 of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment<\/strong> existed as a social practice, but it was not possible to articulate that experience as such within the symbolic economy of existing social discourses. These experiences were literally \u2018not spoken of\u2019<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Yet at the same time, the sexual harassment of women is a social practice that is produced by gendered social relations. The social discourse produces both the practice and its disavowal<\/span>. The exclusions of social fictions can be traced to the operation of a phallic Symbolic order that produces discourse as discourse and subject as subject.<\/p>\n

In Lacanian terms, the production of the real<\/span> of women as an excluded term of discourse is linked to the impossibility of symbolically rendering women in a phallocentric Symbolic order<\/span>. The Lacanian position links the excluded real<\/span> of women to the symbolically repudiated female body of the Mother in a phallic Symbolic order. In feminist terms, this symbolic economy renders \u2018women\u2019 as either the phantasy of The<\/span> Woman or as an excluded term. In this formulation, feminist discourses articulate the founding symbolic repudiation of the excluded real of women.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike social fictions, feminist discourses render the real<\/span> of women not as lack but symbolize and reinscribe it into the signifying chain. This reinscription shifts the relation of symbolic elements within the chain, producing a new chain of signifiers. This reinscription produces a new discourse and thus a different representation of women.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead, the a<\/span> should be understood as analogous to the Lacanian concept of the Real<\/span>. This concept is one of Lacan\u2019s most difficult and complex, as he uses it in many linked senses and its meaning changes over the course of his work. … Lacan posits the Real<\/span> as excess, impossibility and lack. In Lacan\u2019s earlier work, it is a material plenitude which exceeds the Symbolic order, and in which nothing is lacking … In Lacan\u2019s later work, the real<\/span> is impossible (\u2018le r\u00e9el, c\u2019est impossible\u2019) (S17: 143). It is a logical obstacle that cannot be represented within the symbolic (S17: 143). For this reason, the Real<\/span> is also lack in language, because it marks that which the Symbolic cannot symbolize<\/strong>. No signifying chain can represent it in its totality \u2013 hence its impossibility. Something must always fall out of discourse, which is its excluded a<\/span>. 131<\/p>\n

In this way, the Real can also be understood as the hole in the Symbolic order<\/strong>, the impossibility on which that order is predicated and the absence that it encircles. 131<\/p>\n

It is not the matching of a signifier to its correlative signified, because there is no metalanguage able to tell the truth about truth and no transcendental signifier that can fix meaning as a correlate of reality (Lacan 1965: 16, \u00c9c: 867\u2013 868). Knowledge is a discourse of the Real<\/span>, diffracting it through the prism of discursive structures. The production of a new signifying chain represents a different relation to the Real<\/span>, and with it a new \u2018real\u2019.<\/p>\n

My account of feminist knowledge does not understand the Real<\/span> as a fixed entity that the act of knowing passively uncovers. Rather, it is the constitutive \u2018outside\u2019 <\/strong>of the existing limits of discourse. An effect of the excess plenitude of the Real<\/span> is theoretical and political possibility.<\/p>\n

If the Symbolic order does not represent the totality of being, then language can take a different form, can represent a different relationship to the Real<\/span>, and can represent a different Real<\/span>. It becomes possible to signify the Real<\/span> differently<\/span>. Such a conception grants a utopian dimension to knowledge, for if it is not immutable, then the world that it represents is not given, and it can describe a different Real<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, knowledge exists in both a present and a future signifying relation to the Real<\/span>. If the Real<\/span> is an impossible plenitude, it becomes possible to accept that we can never fully know or represent it, while also accepting that it offers a multiplicity of possibilities<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There can be other symbolic exclusions from discourse, such that the operations of discourse are less costly to those excluded others of the Symbolic order.<\/p>\n

We need not conflate the lack in the symbolic with a Symbolic that represents femininity as lack. To claim that it is possible to change a signifying relation to the Real<\/span> (and with it the signifying relation to object, self and others) is not to claim that it is possible to obtain a mystical fusion with the plenitude of the Real<\/span>, in which language is adequate to its all and the speaking being suffers no loss. My conception of feminist discourse assumes that there is no knowledge that can ever provide a full and adequate representation of the world. Rather, knowledge is necessarily incomplete, situated and partial, such that it cannot ever represent all, or be a transcendental Truth.<\/p>\n

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology.
\nFlorence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. p 132.
\nhttp:\/\/site.ebrary.com\/lib\/oculryerson\/Doc?id=10098962&ppg=145<\/p>\n

Copyright ? 2004.\u00a0 Routledge.\u00a0 All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. p 127-131 The production of the excluded \u2018reality\u2019 of women is evident in, for example, the case of sexual harassment. Before feminist activism in this area, social discourses did not represent the \u2018experience\u2019 of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment existed as a social practice, … Continue reading “real of woman”<\/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":[124,45,8,12,40,119,72,98,94,114,15,118,106,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-discourses","category-badiou","category-discourse","category-fantasy","category-lack","category-language","category-objet-a","category-resignify","category-sexual-difference","category-sexuation","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-the-act","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973","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=6973"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6983,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973\/revisions\/6983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}