Formulas of Sexuation & 'No Sexual Relationship'

In his words 39

“you masturbate with a real partner — basically you remain in your fantasy you just use the other as a prop as some plastic tool even if this plastic tool is breathing”
~12:52 The Function of Fantasy in the Lacanian Real · masturbation with a real partner / inexistence of the sexual relationship

“Real sex is just masturbation with a real partner.”
1:00:31 Voyeurism and Digital Identity · sex as masturbation with a real partner

“Usual sex is, I claim, masturbation with a real partner. It's a real partner, but it's really masturbation.”
22:48 Another End is Possible · sex as masturbation with a real partner

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

joke · in 17 of its talks

coffee without cream / coffee without milk

A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk. Even though the result is identical, the absent supplement matters, Hegelian negativity in a joke.

example · in 9 of its talks

Dating agencies: 'find love without the fall'

French and American dating agency advertisements promise busy women that they can 'find yourself in love without the fall', for Žižek the very thing these agencies eliminate is what makes love love.

example · in 9 of its talks

Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios

Žižek describes his book rewriting Antigone in three alternate-history versions: (1) Sophocles' original; (2) Antigone wins the argument with Creon but this triggers revolt and ruin; (3) the Chorus executes both Antigone and Creon as traitors establishing Jacobin terror. He us…

example · in 9 of its talks

Malcolm X and the loss of roots as emancipatory starting point

Malcolm X (the X standing for lost African roots) refused the game of searching for original African identity (à la Roots) and instead proposed using the dispossession of roots as a chance to build a new, freer universality, which is why he became a Muslim (the Umma as communi…

example · in 8 of its talks

Brassed Off coffee invitation

A woman invites a man up for coffee; he says he doesn't like coffee; she says she has none, the double withdrawal of coffee produces erotic meaning far more charged than a direct proposition.

example · in 7 of its talks

Da Vinci Code / Da Vinci, sex displaced onto Jesus

In The Da Vinci Code there is no sex between the protagonists, but Jesus himself has to make love to cover for the absence of sex between Robert Langdon and the heroine. In Angels & Demons, sex present in the novel is removed from the film.

Apartheid justified in multiculturalist terms7 Native Americans prefer 'Indians'7 Porn actor consults Pornhub mid-scene6 Stalin's dialectical synthesis on money in communism6 Goldwyn's New Clichés memo6 Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation6 Niels Bohr's horseshoe7 V for Vendetta morning after6 Starbucks ethical consumerism6 Asiatic Mode of Production5

Where it comes up 142

236 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

The Reflection of Life in Hegel2009 · 2:11:29

23:26 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel

… no no no what I what I wanted to say er is that this is but again that's elementary this is what er what er what Lacan means with there is no sexual relationship.

24:00 masturbation with a real partner

… we understand usually er masturbation as sex with an imagined partner you masturbate but you imagine doing it with another then real sex is masturbation with a real partner.

1:21:04 formulas of sexuation

are we to understand the so-called, you know we are talking now about this so-called formulas of sexuation er male-female.

+2 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek On Jacques Lacan (Full Lecture)pub. 2017-01-05 · 4:34:05

1:21:24 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel

… Again, Lacan was well aware that if you remain at this level of "there is no sexual relationship," you are in danger of falling again into yet another version of this, you know, oooh, this wisdom of, "oh reality is ultimately a primordial conflict, war, and so on." You need something more.

2:01:09 formulas of sexuation

… I wonder, you know, that going back to the formulas of sexuation and your rectification of Lacan but also the admission that you can easily say "man is not woman" it’s logical, but you cannot say "woman is not man" because there is always a domain beyond sexual difference.

2:08:04 pure subjectivity is feminine

… That pure subjectivity is feminine.

+3 more in this talk

Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 2 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:36:06

23:27 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel

… No no, what I wanted to say is that this is—but again, that's elementary—this is what Lacan means with "there is no sexual relationship." That it's never you and your partner alone.

24:11 masturbation with a real partner

… Then real sex is masturbation with a real partner.

1:21:30 non-all (pas-tout)

… For women it's "non-all" (*pas tout*), which means no universality but—this is what people tend to forget—also no exception.

+3 more in this talk

The Function of Fantasy in the Lacanian Real2012 · 1:25:19

1:25:04 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel

rapport sexuel yeah yeah yeah there is no sexual relationship yeah.

17:58 masturbation with a real partner

… but you imagine whatever you want the best Lacanian inversion of this would have been that most of the time real sex has the structure of a masturbation with a real partner that is to say that basically you remain in your fantasy you just use the other as a prop as some plastic tool even if this plastic tool is …

~40:09 non-all (pas-tout)

this one I will try to make it it’s a risky reading that I’ll put it like this some people misread Lacan as if he is claiming men are fully in the symbolic order woman is non-all half out and so on and then some …

+1 more in this talk

Is it possible to Move Beyond The Transcendental?2016-11-01 · 2:15:01

27:41 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel

… -wing and left-wing deviation I think that the correct, Stalinist Lacanian, my god, way is that from the Lacanian standpoint Lacan's axiom *il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel*, there is no sexual relationship, is not an axiom which only underlies human sexuality determining it as fundamentally antagonistic.

35:54 formulas of sexuation

… atical antinomies exactly fit, and it's shocking that Lacan never writes this was not afraid sorry was not aware of it, exactly fit Lacan's formulas of sexuation.

~2:09:48 non-all (pas-tout)

exception. Women are non-all because there is nothing in a woman which is not within the symbolic order. So it is as if there is something, I mean Miller still, I confess it, he is basically a genius, he is my introduction to Lacan. But …