Lacan and Sexual Difference
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2011-03-25 · 32:31 · 4,115 words
psychoanalysishegel-dialecticssexuality-genderphilosophy-generalscience-physicscinema-art-culturesubjectivityideologylanguagehistory
Žižek delivers a dense theoretical lecture on Lacan's account of sexual difference, arguing that Lacan re-sexualizes the universe not by restoring pre-modern cosmological myths but by grounding ontology in incompleteness, deadlock, and failure. He traces the formal structure of sexuation through Kant's antinomies, Bohr's interpretation of quantum indeterminacy, Bentham's theory of fictions, and Aristotle's form/matter contradiction, positioning Hegel as the thinker who transposes epistemological impossibility into the thing itself. The lecture also develops Lacan's logic of universality and its constitutive exception across philosophy (Wittgenstein), political theory (Rancière's 'part of no part'), and Marx's categories, while using cinema (Children of Men, Home Alone) and popular culture (Yu-Gi-Oh cards) to illustrate how fiction necessarily supplements reality.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “sexual difference (Lacanian)”
For Lacan, sexual difference is purely formal, not reducible to biological function but a structural principle that organizes the symbolic universe, linked essentially to failure and incompleteness rather than reproductive complementarity.
The modern condition in which a gap opens between cold, mathematicized objective reality and the subjective universe of meaning, Žižek reads its underlying structure as a desexualization of reality.
The underside of modernity's disenchantment: not just a gap between cold objective reality and subjective meaning, but specifically the removal of sexuality from the ontological structure of the universe.
Lacan's move to restore an ontological dimension to sexuality not by returning to pre-modern cosmic mythology but by showing that the structure of reality itself is marked by incompleteness, failure, and antagonism, the formal hallmarks of sexuality.
as “ontology of incompleteness”
The alternative ontology Žižek says Lacan compels us to adopt: reality is structured by deadlock, failure, and non-totalization rather than by positive being, mirroring the logic of sexual difference.
Kant's two sets of antinomies (mathematical and dynamic) are read by Žižek via Joan Copjec as the closest pre-Lacanian approach to sexual difference, the deadlock produced by extrapolating transcendental categories is structurally equivalent to Lacan's not-all.
as “transposition of epistemological limit into the thing itself”
Hegel's move beyond Kant: instead of reading impossibility as a limitation of our knowledge of a reality that exists beyond it, the impossibility is read as a feature of reality itself, the deadlock is ontological.
as “necessity of fiction”
Reality cannot be grasped or experienced without a fictional supplement, following Bentham and Chesterton, fiction is not opposed to reality but is the very condition for our experience of reality to be consistent.
as “theory of fictions (Bentham)”
Bentham's counter-intuitive claim that fictions are not obstacles to reality but necessary supplements to it, the paradox that if you subtract fiction you lose reality itself, cited by Žižek as anticipating Lacan.
Lacan's logical schema: the masculine side is defined by universal function plus a constitutive exception (at least one is not subject to it); the feminine side is the 'not-all', no exception, but therefore non-totalized.
as “pas-tout / not-all”
The feminine formula of sexuation: there is no outside exception, yet for that very reason the set cannot be totalized, an irreducible plurality without a universal that would close it.
Every universality contains a particular element that formally belongs to it yet sticks out and does not fit its frame, the exception that founds the universality rather than merely limiting it.
as “example as exception (Beispiel)”
Following Hegel's wordplay on Beispiel ('plays itself along'), every example is more than the idea it illustrates, the example always exceeds and undermines the concept, making the exemplary relation into the engine of dialectical movement.
as “lalangue”
Lacan's term for language as site of contingent wordplays, puns, and material accidents of signification, invoked here in connection with Hegel's etymological wordplay on 'Beispiel'.
as “absolute example / exception to exception”
The third stage in the Hegelian dialectic of exception: an example which, as a double exception, immediately gives body to universality as such, Hegel's exemplar is Jesus Christ as 'example of example'.
Rancière's concept, endorsed by Žižek: the element of the social body that has no proper place within it and, precisely for that reason, stands for the universality of the whole, the structural equivalent of the constitutive exception.
Stories he reaches for 2
Žižek argues that the 'Asiatic mode of production' is not a positive concept but a negative container: Marx honestly acknowledged formations (ancient Egypt, Incas, China) that didn't fit his Eurocentric series and lumped them together as a constitutive exception. Analogous to Borges' famous list ending with 'dogs not in this list'.
“the so-called Asiatic mode of production is not really a… it's just a kind of a negative container Marx simply threw into that one what didn't fit the others”
Žižek cites Bentham's Theory of Fictions as anticipating Lacan, against naive empiricism, Bentham argues that subtracting fiction doesn't reveal pure reality but destroys it, making fiction a necessary supplement to reality.
“if we take away the fiction we lose reality itself it's impossible to describe to grasp reality without fictions”
Works invoked 8
Capital book
The three moments of the value form at the opening of Capital are invoked as structurally parallel to the three stages in the Hegelian logic of exception: simple exception, generalized exception, absolute exception/universal equivalent.
Children of Men film
Žižek provided DVD commentary for the film and reads the ending (the ship 'Tomorrow') as a dying fantasy functioning as magical fiction within a realist visual register, the highest cinematic achievement. Cuarón is a good director though 'not such a good thinker'.
Home Alone film
Used as example of cinema switching from realism to cartoon logic (physically impossible booby-trap sequence) while maintaining a realist visual surface, illustrating how art can make us experience reality as fiction.
Cited only as the text that opens with Borges' taxonomy of dogs, used to illustrate the logic of the constitutive exception.
Plato's Republic book
Admired by Badiou and being re-translated by him with communist subtitles, but Žižek objects that its underlying notion of justice is corporatist and makes a communist reading fundamentally strained.
Theory of Fictions book
Bentham's text recently reprinted by Verso, praised for the paradoxical thesis that fiction is a necessity; used as an anticipation of Lacan's point that reality cannot be grasped without fictional supplement.
Read as the 'masculine' Wittgenstein, a universal logical structure plus the constitutive exception of 'the mystical' that cannot be spoken. Used to illustrate Lacan's masculine formula of sexuation.
Read as the 'feminine' Wittgenstein, no outside exception, but language is non-totalizable (only family resemblances, language games). Used to illustrate the not-all.
People invoked 19
Alfonso Cuarón positive
Praised as 'a good cinema director but not such a good thinker', he created the ambiguity in Children of Men (the ship 'Tomorrow' as dying fantasy) without being aware of it, which Žižek takes as the highest cinematic achievement.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Cited as 'my Slovene colleague' for the expression 'even natural sexuality can be sexualized', used to mark the gap between biological function and the formal Lacanian structure of sexuality.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central figure of the lecture, Žižek credits Lacan with reasserting the ontological status of sexual difference through the purely formal structure of sexuation; the formulas of sexuation, the not-all, and the constitutive exception are all deployed from Lacan.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Cited affectionately ('my old guy') for the line 'literature is a luxury, fiction is a necessity', used to corroborate Bentham's and Lacan's point about the necessity of fiction.
Alain Badiou positive
Called 'my good friend', Žižek admires his rehabilitation of Plato against Aristotle and his communist re-translation of the Republic, but disagrees that Plato's corporatist notion of justice is compatible with communism.
Alan Watts negative
Cited as the 1960s Zen popularizer who epitomized the pre-modern cosmological linkage of sexuality to ontology (lovemaking as cosmic spiritual resonance), the position Lacan must avoid regressing into.
Werner Heisenberg negative
Treated as the 'bad guy' of quantum mechanics who read uncertainty epistemologically rather than ontologically, Bohr is set against him as the more radical thinker.
Mentioned only as the channel through which Borges' famous taxonomy appears, at the opening of Les Mots et les Choses.
Jacques Rancière positive
Credited (even 'more than Badiou') for the concept of the 'part of no part', those without proper place in the social body who stand for universality, used as the political illustration of the constitutive exception.
Jeremy Bentham positive
His Theory of Fictions is read as a Lacanian anticipation: fiction is a necessary supplement without which reality cannot be grasped. Žižek says 'don't underestimate it' and credits Bentham with discovering the point before Lacan.
Joan Copjec positive
Cited for her 'classical text' 'The Euthanasia of Reason' which first read Kant's antinomies as anticipating Lacan's notion of sexual difference, Žižek endorses this reading.
Niels Bohr positive
Called 'the good guy', his critique of Heisenberg is read as the quantum-mechanical parallel to Hegel's ontologization of Kantian epistemological limits.
Plato negative
Contrasted unfavorably with Hegel on the example/idea relation (for Plato examples are always deficient with respect to the idea); his state is also criticized for a corporatist notion of justice that makes communist re-readings strained.
Aristotle negative
His ontology of form/matter is shown to contain a self-undermining contradiction (form can be read as either universal or individualizing), setting up the transition to Hegel's solution. Called 'a serious philosopher' but his framework is shown to collapse.
Karl Marx positive
The 'Asiatic mode of production' in Marx's classification is read as a constitutive exception structurally parallel to Lacan's not-all; the three moments of the value form in Capital are invoked as parallel to the three stages of exception.
Jorge Luis Borges positive
The famous taxonomy of dogs (ending with 'dogs not in this list') from a Borges text, quoted by Foucault, is used to illustrate the logic of the constitutive exception in classification.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Repeatedly endorsed as the thinker who transposes epistemological limits into the thing itself, who reveals the excess of example over idea, and whose dialectic is the proper framework for Lacanian sexual difference.
Immanuel Kant positive
Kant's antinomies are read via Joan Copjec as the closest pre-Lacanian approach to sexual difference; but Kant is also the limit to be surpassed, he remains too epistemological, positing a thing-in-itself beyond our categories.
Ludwig Wittgenstein positive
His development from early (Tractatus) to late (Philosophical Investigations) is used as a philosophical illustration of the masculine/feminine formulas of sexuation, universal structure with exception vs. non-totalizable plurality.
What it argues
Lacan's formulas of sexuation and the ontological status of sexual differenceontology of incompleteness, deadlock, and failure as re-sexualization of the universethe necessity of fiction as supplement to realityuniversality, constitutive exception, and the logic of the 'not-all'the step from Kant (epistemological limit) to Hegel (limit in the thing itself)Bohr vs. Heisenberg on the ontological vs. epistemological reading of indeterminacyform and matter in Aristotle and the Hegelian reversal of individuating principle
Dialectical moves 9
“The ability of sexuality to spill over all domains is not the sign of its strength but the sign of its weakness — precisely because it never properly works in its own domain.”
What looks like sexual imperialism (sexuality pervades everything) is actually the index of sexuality's constitutive failure and incompleteness.
“The step from Kant to Hegel: what if we transpose this structure of failure and hindrance into the thing itself?”
The epistemological limit (we cannot know the thing in itself) is revealed as an ontological feature, the impossibility is in reality, not just in our access to it.
“Heisenberg reads quantum indeterminacy epistemologically; Bohr insists this impossibility is in the thing itself.”
The same move as Kant-to-Hegel applied to physics: Bohr is the true materialist because he locates the indeterminacy in nature, not in the observer's limitations.
“If you take away the fiction, you lose reality itself — fiction is not opposed to reality but is its necessary supplement.”
The apparent binary of fiction vs. reality is inverted: reality is the fragile thing that depends on its fictional supplement to hold together.
“The best cinema does not make fiction appear as reality, but makes us experience reality as a magical fiction.”
The task of art is not the realism of illusion but the de-realization of the real, showing the fictional texture immanent in reality.
“Men's real desire is not the naked woman hidden behind their stated interests — on the contrary, the fictional frame (the book, the beach) is the necessary medium through which the desire operates.”
Cynical unmasking gets it backwards: the sublime element (fiction) is not a mask over raw desire but its constitutive condition.
“For Plato the example is always deficient with regard to the idea; for Hegel it is the opposite — there is always more in the example than in the idea itself.”
In Hegel the example exceeds and undermines the concept it was meant to illustrate, making this excess the actual motor of dialectical progression.
“An exception to exception is an absolute example — a double exception that immediately gives body to universality as such.”
The third move in the dialectic of universality: beyond 'every rule has an exception' and 'everything is an exception' lies the singular element that embodies universality itself (e.g. Jesus Christ as 'example of example').
“For Aristotle, form is supposed to be universal and matter individuating — but equally, form is the individualizing principle. Hegel endorses the second.”
The contradiction internal to Aristotelian ontology is not a defect to be corrected but the productive tension that drives Hegel's speculative idealism.
Claims 13
asserts
Lacan's achievement is to reassert the ontological status of sexual difference while escaping pre-scientific mythology by making sexual difference purely formal.Lacan's project of re-ontologizing sexual difference
asserts
The ability of sexuality to spill over into non-sexual spheres is not a sign of the strength of sexuality but of its inherent weakness — it expands precisely because it never properly functions in its own domain.sexuality and failure
asserts
To sexualize the universe in Lacan's sense means to adopt an ontology of incompleteness and deadlock, not to project human sexuality onto the cosmos.the meaning of re-sexualization in Lacan
reframes
Kant remains too epistemological — he presupposes a reality out there that we simply cannot reach due to the limitation of our categories; Hegel's step is to transpose this structure of failure into the thing itself.Kant vs. Hegel on the limits of knowledge
asserts
Bohr, not Heisenberg, is the truly radical thinker of quantum mechanics, because Bohr insists that the impossibility of simultaneously determining complementary properties is in the thing itself, not merely an epistemological limitation.Bohr vs. Heisenberg on quantum indeterminacy
asserts
Fiction is a necessity, not a luxury — following Bentham, if you subtract fiction from reality you lose reality itself; reality cannot be grasped without its fictional supplement.the necessity of fiction
asserts
Cinema at its best does not reproduce fiction so convincingly that we mistake it for reality, but shows only reality while making us experience it as a magical fiction.the ontological achievement of cinema
rejects
The commonly held view that men's real desire is simply sexual and their stated interests (reading, music) are pretenses is strictly wrong — the fictional frame (reading, the beach walk) is a necessary condition for the desire itself, not a mask over it.cynical reduction of desire to raw sexuality
asserts
The early Wittgenstein is 'masculine' (universal structure plus a mystical exception) while the late Wittgenstein is 'feminine' (no exception, but therefore non-totalizable — only family resemblances and language games).Wittgenstein's development as illustration of sexuation formulas
asserts
For Hegel, unlike Plato, the example is always more than the idea it illustrates — the example undermines the concept and this excess is the engine of dialectical movement.Hegel vs. Plato on the example/idea relation
asserts
Marx's 'Asiatic mode of production' is not a positive concept but a negative container for whatever did not fit the Eurocentric series — a constitutive exception that demonstrates the non-totalizability of the Marxist classification.Marx's categories and the Asiatic mode of production
asserts
Aristotle's ontology of form and matter is self-undermining: on one reading matter is the individualizing principle, but on the opposite equally valid reading, form is the individualizing principle — and Hegel endorses the second.Aristotle's form/matter contradiction
asserts
Badiou's rehabilitation of Plato is admirable but runs into a problem: Plato's notion of justice is corporatist (each at their own place), making a communist reading of the Republic fundamentally strained.Badiou's Platonic communism
Quotes 10
“The ability of sexuality to spill over different spheres is for Lacan not the sign of the strength of sexuality but the sign of its weakness precisely because it never works as it were in its own domain.”Slavoj Žižek · sexuality's constitutive failure
“Literature and fiction are two entirely different things literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.”Slavoj Žižek · fiction as necessity (Chesterton)
“If we take away the fiction we lose reality itself — it's impossible to describe, to grasp reality without fictions.”Slavoj Žižek · fiction constitutive of reality
“Cinema at its best: not to reproduce so well a fiction that we mistake fiction for reality, but to show only reality but to make us experience it as a magical fiction.”Slavoj Žižek · cinema and the real-as-fiction
“You cannot do it directly — you need a fiction to do it.”Slavoj Žižek · mediation of desire through fiction
“For Lacan to sexualize the universe means that we should opt for a different ontology — an ontology of incompleteness, of a deadlock.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian re-sexualization as ontological incompleteness
“Hegel's step is: what if we transpose this structure of failure, hindrance — you cannot get it, you get involved in antagonism — into the thing itself?”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's move from epistemology to ontology
“Bohr emphasizes, in a very refined critique of Heisenberg, that Heisenberg didn't get the point — that this impossibility is in the thing itself.”Slavoj Žižek · Bohr vs. Heisenberg: ontological vs. epistemological indeterminacy
“For Hegel there is always more in the example than in the idea itself — so that the example which is supposed to illustrate an idea effectively always undermines it.”Slavoj Žižek · the excess of example over concept in Hegel
“An exception to exception which is an example which precisely as a double exception immediately gives body to universality as such.”Slavoj Žižek · absolute example / universality through double exception
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
To do a little bit more I hope it will not be too boring today's the test of pure theory today Lacan sexual difference I will try to draw some consequences and tomorrow Hegel the limits of Hegel okay so I warn you it will be theory in a first approach of course there is nothing shocking about the link between ontology I hope it works ontology and sexual difference such a link is the key feature of pre-modern cosmologies which explain the origin of the universe out of some kind of primordial big bang struggle between a masculine and a feminine cosmic principle light and darkness heaven and earth yin and yang and so on back in the hippie era of 1960s when I was young I remember reading a book by Alan Watts the Zen popularizer where he explained how in the simple activity of lovemaking penis penetrating vagina the moving out and in the whole cosmos resonates the two opposing cosmic principles are dancing with each other and I remember how we all fit we all felt so exalted you know so that we could say no it's not just I want to screw that girl it's that I want to do a deeply spiritual thing the whole cosmos will resonate in it and so on what we call modern disenchantment of the universe is not only the assertion of the gap between the meaningless cold objective reality accessible to mathematicized science and the subjective universe of meaning which we project onto reality but underlying this gap is a desexualization of reality and I think it is against this background that one should measure Lacan's achievement he reasserts the ontological status of sexual difference the problem is how can he in a way re-sexualize the universe without regressing into a pre-scientific mythology because for all modern transcendental philosophy sexual difference is de-ontologized it's reduced to an ontic feature of some entities human race some animals and so on of course if one ontologizes sexual difference one is immediately accused of anthropomorphism so again how does Lacan do it okay the first answer is clear that's the first formula then we will go much deeper the first for Lacan sexual difference is purely formal in the sense that sexual difference the way it structures our symbolic universe for Lacan the way sexual difference functions is in the human universe is not immediately linked to biological functions of sexuality so that even I use here the expression of my Slovene colleague Alenka Zupančič even natural sexuality can be sexualized there you can see the formal status of properly human sexuality like you can imagine a biological what do I mean by this gap between formal structure and immediate reality you can well imagine a couple making love or to put it more brutally copulating but without any excitement doing it as a pure instrumental activity just literally you I can imagine maybe it even happened to me I'm not sure but like you know doing love in a totally non-sexual way on the other hand I can imagine we all know this doing things which have nothing to do with sexuality I mean in the biological sense but they can be somehow sexualized okay maybe you heard it the example I like to use is that of imagine I meet one of you and imagine a very simple act I squeeze your hand we shake hands that's normal but imagine then after the first squeeze I don't let your hand go but I I still hold it and go on squeezing it rhythmically admit it your first association would be there is something pervert in me what do I want and so on and so on no you see the point a purely nothing directly erotic about it but this pure act of protraction repetition somehow sexualizes it but this brings us already to the first key point of Lacan that this ability of sexuality to spill over different spheres is for Lacan not the sign of the strength of sexuality but the sign of its weakness precisely because it never works as it were in its own domain it has to it has to expand so the first indication should be the following one I think for Lacan to sexualize the universe insofar as for Lacan sexuality is inherently linked to failure incompleteness and so on to sexualize the universe means that we should opt for a different ontology ontology of incompleteness of a deadlock and so on which is why I think Joan Copjec was right when in her classical text The Euthanasia of Reason she read as the first philosopher who came close without knowing it to Lacan's notion of sexual difference Immanuel Kant with his two two sets of antinomies mathematical antinomies dynamic antinomies the idea being there that it's exactly in a way the Lacanian not-all you know Lacan's point is that if you extrapolate concepts we use or we are forced to use they are our transcendental a priori to describe reality we get into a deadlock this impossibility of getting it all of to totalize our notion of reality and I claim that the truly subversive thing that Lacan compels us to do is sorry if I sound pretentious I don't have time to dwell with all this now but I will try is that one has to make here a step from Kant to Hegel which means Kant remains too epistemological he still presupposes some objective reality out there just because of the limitation of our categories we cannot get at it Hegel's step is what if we transpose this structure of failure hindrance you cannot get it you get involved in antagonism into the thing itself it's a little bit like you know and I will conclude with sorry for this megalomania quantum physics I was here imprecise till now you know that there is I was convinced now reading closer more closely stuff there is a gap between Heisenberg and Bohr Bohr is the good guy I'm more and more convinced and don't be afraid I will not quote you now the 11th time that boring story about why do you have a horseshoe about your no no what I want to say is that precisely Heisenberg in his uncertainty principle still basically reads this impossibility to get to get to get position and velocity whatever movement at the same time two complementary properties still reads it in an epistemological way while Bohr emphasizes this in a very refined critique of Heisenberg that Heisenberg didn't get the point that this impossibility is in the thing itself okay first how does all this appear within psychoanalysis this incompleteness of society in a Kantian way we can say that the incompleteness of ontology of the structure of reality means that in order to make our experience of reality consistent we have to supplement our experience by some kind of a virtual fiction this as Lacan was aware was already a lesson done by Bentham whose again Theory of Fictions I think it is even now recently reprinted in that Radical Classics or whatever by Verso a choice of don't underestimate it he is precisely not doing what you would have expected a simple British empiricist to do his point is not that we should aim at getting rid of fictions to see reality in a nominalist way the way it really is his point is a nicely paradoxical one yes we can distinguish what is fiction and what is reality but if we take away the fiction we lose reality itself it's impossible to describe to grasp reality without fictions I think that this same point was made in a beautiful way by again haha my old guy Gilbert Keith Chesterton where when he says wonderful quote literature and fiction are two entirely different things literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity so what do I mean by this necessity of fictional supplement years ago I remember seeing a caricature in a German weekly publication I'm not sure I think it was Stern Der Stern but this was like year ago it of course it mocked the male hypocrisy it showed five men each of them asked in a caricature what what would you like to do during your summer holiday and each of them gives an answer but then in this kind of a cloud no it shows what he really thinks each of for example one says I would like finally to have time to read a good philosophical book the cloud shows a naked woman the other one said I would like to go to a serious music concert the cloud shows a naked woman and so on and so on so it's this tasteless point that you know don't bluff we all want to do just like that I claim this is strictly wrong I claim that we all know that we want to do that but the question is in what precise way do we want to do that so much closer to the truth would have been the opposite caricature you ask five men what would you like to do and probably you will get an sincere answer screw many ladies whatever but then the cloud should show you know one of them wants to seduce a lady while reading a book the other one by walking on a beach and so on and so on no it's precisely that you cannot do it directly you need a fiction you need a fiction to do it and I think that even when we are in reality this fiction has somehow to supplement reality in what way here we come to the beauty of things I'm not claiming that oh part of our reality doesn't really exist it's fictional I claim it's almost something of the opposite that even if all we perceive is reality part of it is the way we perceive it in our psychic economy structured like or functions as a fiction and I think this is cinema as already mentioned once maybe here this is cinema at its best not to reproduce so well a fiction stage it so well that we mistake fiction for reality but to show only reality but to make us experience it as a magical fiction I will give you immediately an example about the film to which haha my small moment of glory you buy the DVD you will get comments by me that Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men but now I'm a bad guy I always talk bad against the back against their back on people so I would say that first of course I'm a Hegelian this means when I made those comments I didn't see the film no I don't need reality but more important when I saw the film I discovered something which demonstrates that Cuarón is a good cinema director but not such a good thinker he did something very nice but I checked it up with him wasn't aware of it namely if you saw the movie you know Clive Owen infertility blah blah blah at the very end of the film Clive Owen the hero Theo or whatever and the black girl who is the first after I don't know how many years in entire humanity of getting pregnant go out on a small boat to a sea where some kind of some kind of ship with laboratories in it called Tomorrow where allegedly they will solve the problem of fertility is awaiting of them and Clive Owen wounded dies and the idea is nonetheless she the black girl who is pregnant will get to the ship where they will analyze her she will save humanity restore fertility now to me it seemed so obvious that although it is shot like reality that the proper way to read it that no ship of course that this was this is the dying dream of the hero no that the ship is pure appearance Cuarón wasn't aware of this ambiguity but strangely enough most of my friends were almost most of the people that I talked to claimed that liked precisely this radical ambiguity although it's shot like reality it functions like a magic deus ex machina apparition or to give you another example that I already used in my books I watched them three-four times they're boring because of my son those Home Alone series did you notice something like two-thirds of the film is more or less not quite realistic but then the reason we watch at least I do this kind of films is that you know for usually it's the last minutes when the small kid sets the trap and then all horrid things you know happen to the two bad guys now that is pure cartoon logic physically impossible like you know the bad guy his head starts burning so he runs to the toilet puts his head into the toilet bowl but the the the small evil child predicted this so of course instead of water there is oil there is gasoline there so alcohol so the head explodes like in but again what I like is how it's still shot realistically in the sense of supposed to be part of reality but somehow we know we passed from reality to fiction in a way this I think again is for me at least the cinematic art at its best and this is again how our reality is structured so okay let's now go on patiently about how Lacan tries to formalize sexual difference of course we you probably know the ABC which is Lacan proposed the so-called formulas of sexuation where the masculine side is defined by the universal function and its exception like all X all entities are submitted to a certain function but then there is one which is at least one which is the exception masculine side the feminine side you have the paradox of non-all le pas-tout there is no exception but for that very reason the set is non-all non-totalized to give you a simple philosophical example of this I think that for Lacan the passage from early to late Wittgenstein would have been a clear example the early Wittgenstein is masculine you know it proposes his Tractatus a certain universal structure with the exception of the mystical and so on and so on what the late Wittgenstein does is he no longer talks about this mystical exception there is no exception but for this reason you cannot totalize language instead of simple universal structure you get only this partial family resemblances and so on and so on so again you get first universality with an exception then you get this irreducible plurality of language games there is nothing outside them but they are not all you cannot totalize them it's a little bit like another reference to my terrifying experiences with children for five years I'm totally terrorized I spend hundreds of dollars for if some of you have also the misfortune of having children or knowing that do you know what is Yu-Gi-Oh those magic cards blah blah no my son doesn't have too many of them just around I would say no and but what fascinates me and I think we adults are already too senile too stupid even to understand is that I think they are a nice example of the feminine non-all because in contrast to a standard either card game or chess game where you have certain universal rules and then you have elements and you have to use them obeying those rules the madness you really must be a child with your far superior to us memory is that here each card in a way brings its own rule you know it's the point is not that you have a card which is simply worth more than another card within a certain set of rules no you must look closely at those small letters which say if you have this card and if you have an attack card you see it on the opponent's side then you can revive another card and kill all the opponents on condition that the opponent doesn't have that it's absolute nightmare I mean but I like this idea it's incredibly complex and I just admire small children they can they can remember thousands of cards literally all these double triple tricks okay let's go on Lacan's logic of universality and its constitutive exception is not as simple as it may appear it's not simply you know this old wisdom haha an exception to every universality no no it's not wisdom Lacan is very precise here first it goes still we will go much more in detail later now first abstract level first I think we have three steps here first there is Lacan's thesis an exception to every universality every universality contains a particular element which while formally belonging to this universality sticks out doesn't fit its frame I will not bore you with the examples that I am already bored by them that I always use like in Marx for example I claim that in the Marxian classification of the modes of production obviously the and here I am an honest anti-eurocentrist that the so-called Asiatic mode of production is this kind of exception I mean if you read Marx closely you will see what is going on no Marx originally did propose just the eurocentric series that is to say primitive whatever you call them tribal societies slavery feudalism capitalism and whatever the hell is maybe coming after now then Marx honestly he was honest enough to notice that there are some societies social formations modes of production which fit neither of these and I claim a close analysis demonstrates that the so-called Asiatic mode of production is not really a it appears to be a positive concept but in reality it's just a kind of a negative container Marx simply threw into that one what didn't fit the others you know it's like the joke from Borges quoted at the beginning of Foucault Les Mots et les Choses where you have that famous list of categorization of dogs at the end you have all the dogs which doesn't belong to this list or whatever I mean of course it's not as simple as that but you can see how Marx was struggling and wasn't himself wasn't sure if you can really put ancient Egypt ancient Incas ancient China at all if you can really put them within the same umbrella so again we have the exception then you have to do the next step and I hope you will notice if you know Marx here the parallel between this gradual expansion of the exception and the so-called three moments stages of the expression of the value form in the at the beginning of Marx's Capital then you of course discover that everything is an exception that every and this is the basic rule of Hegel I already made this point I would like to repeat it this is what I like about Hegel you know here you can see that Hegel was a materialist in a radical sense for Plato Platonists and here I have a problem with my good friend Alain Badiou I totally sympathize with his rehabilitation of Plato against Aristotle but I think there are some problems like you know if Plato's state is something it's a based on a corporate image of society the notion of justice that you find there is precisely this corporate notion of justice means each at his or her own place and I claim that you there is nonetheless no way to although Badiou is now as you probably know re-translating Plato's Republic it's almost finished incidentally into French with the subtitle Republic or about communism no trying to re-read it as a comm it's a wonderful thing what he is doing he is for example replacing when Plato says a sophist is trying to seduce the crowd Alain put into translated as a corrupted bourgeois journalist is publishing an article and so on in the popular press but I think that here you get a problem so for Plato example is always deficient with regard to an idea no like examples are imperfect but for Hegel there also is always a gap between an idea and the way you try to exemplify it but for Hegel it's the opposite that it's true you exemplify an idea and there is more in the example than in the idea itself so that the example which is supposed to illustrate an idea effectively always undermines it and one can even say that this is one of the basic matrices of the Hegelian process how do things go on in Hegel's dialectic you have a certain notion form of life and Hegel doesn't criticize it so that he measures it by an ideal standard he just says let's exemplify it let's look how it works and then the example itself gives more you probably know again one of the great moments of Hegelian what Lacan calls lalangue reference to wordplays contingency of language Hegel does here a consciously wrong etymology you know that the German term for example is Beispiel something which as it were plays itself along and for Hegel this is precisely example like I want only this but that shitty example comes along and ruins it no I mean I get more than I asked for in an example okay so so then we have this paradox that every example is an exception but then we have the third stage which would have fitted somehow this notion of universal equivalent in Marx in Hegel that nonetheless all examples like exceptions are not equal that if all examples are exception there is always an exception to exception which is an example which precisely as a double exception immediately gives body to universality as such and in this precise sense Hegel for example you should be careful to notice these details he calls Jesus Christ an example of example or an absolute example precisely in this sense that you know everything is an example but then you get an absolute example an absolute exception which is precisely the place where in the guise of its opposite universality itself comes to exist okay the classical example again known to all of you what Jacques Rancière even more than Badiou conceptualized as that part of the social body the part of no part which is those who are without proper place within the social body and as such stand for its universality okay but let's go on so the starting point of Lacan's formulas of sexuation is Aristotle why Aristotle as you know this is the ABC of history of philosophy you all know that for Aristotle an entity ontological unit as it were something existing is composed of form and matter morphē hylē whatever I'm not good at that now there is a problem here as all perspicuous readers of Aristotle noticed you find to put it very simply an inconsistency or contradiction here which undermines such the very foundation of Aristotelian ontology on the one hand in a more traditional Platonic mode Aristotle claims that form is universal while matter hylē is the individualizing element no like to put it very simply these are chairs their idea is the same they all this chair and that chair or if there were to be others the same they all imitate copy realize the same universal idea what makes them different is the stuff the matter the no otherwise if you take away the matter this and this would be absolutely the same namely the same idea matter multiplies them at the same time Aristotle nonetheless a serious philosopher is intelligent and honest enough to also pursue the opposite path namely that precisely if you take the form away from this and this chair all you get is the formless universal matter so you see the point that it's precisely you can also claim that it's precisely the opposite if I take the form away we just get the neutral base stuff matter so that it is form not matter which is the individualizing principle of course Hegel is absolutely for this second solution because it's much closer to his idealism that the plurality the concrete content comes out of the self-movement
To do a little bit more I hope it will not be too boring today's the test of pure theory today Lacan sexual difference I will try to draw some consequences and tomorrow Hegel the limits of Hegel okay so I warn you it will be theory in a first approach of course there is nothing shocking about the link between ontology I hope it works ontology and sexual difference such a link is the key feature of pre-modern cosmologies which explain the origin of the universe out of some kind of primordial big bang struggle between a masculine and a feminine cosmic principle light and darkness heaven and earth yin and yang and so on back in the hippie era of 1960s when I was young I remember reading a book by Alan Watts the Zen popularizer where he explained how in the simple activity of lovemaking penis penetrating vagina the moving out and in the whole cosmos resonates the two opposing cosmic principles are dancing with each other and I remember how we all fit we all felt so exalted you know so that we could say no it's not just I want to screw that girl it's that I want to do a deeply spiritual thing the whole cosmos will resonate in it and so on what we call modern disenchantment of the universe is not only the assertion of the gap between the meaningless cold objective reality accessible to mathematicized science and the subjective universe of meaning which we project onto reality but underlying this gap is a desexualization of reality and I think it is against this background that one should measure Lacan's achievement he reasserts the ontological status of sexual difference the problem is how can he in a way re-sexualize the universe without regressing into a pre-scientific mythology because for all modern transcendental philosophy sexual difference is de-ontologized it's reduced to an ontic feature of some entities human race some animals and so on of course if one ontologizes sexual difference one is immediately accused of anthropomorphism so again how does Lacan do it okay the first answer is clear that's the first formula then we will go much deeper the first for Lacan sexual difference is purely formal in the sense that sexual difference the way it structures our symbolic universe for Lacan the way sexual difference functions is in the human universe is not immediately linked to biological functions of sexuality so that even I use here the expression of my Slovene colleague Alenka Zupančič even natural sexuality can be sexualized there you can see the formal status of properly human sexuality like you can imagine a biological what do I mean by this gap between formal structure and immediate reality you can well imagine a couple making love or to put it more brutally copulating but without any excitement doing it as a pure instrumental activity just literally you I can imagine maybe it even happened to me I'm not sure but like you know doing love in a totally non-sexual way on the other hand I can imagine we all know this doing things which have nothing to do with sexuality I mean in the biological sense but they can be somehow sexualized okay maybe you heard it the example I like to use is that of imagine I meet one of you and imagine a very simple act I squeeze your hand we shake hands that's normal but imagine then after the first squeeze I don't let your hand go but I I still hold it and go on squeezing it rhythmically admit it your first association would be there is something pervert in me what do I want and so on and so on no you see the point a purely nothing directly erotic about it but this pure act of protraction repetition somehow sexualizes it but this brings us already to the first key point of Lacan that this ability of sexuality to spill over different spheres is for Lacan not the sign of the strength of sexuality but the sign of its weakness precisely because it never works as it were in its own domain it has to it has to expand so the first indication should be the following one I think for Lacan to sexualize the universe insofar as for Lacan sexuality is inherently linked to failure incompleteness and so on to sexualize the universe means that we should opt for a different ontology ontology of incompleteness of a deadlock and so on which is why I think Joan Copjec was right when in her classical text The Euthanasia of Reason she read as the first philosopher who came close without knowing it to Lacan's notion of sexual difference Immanuel Kant with his two two sets of antinomies mathematical antinomies dynamic antinomies the idea being there that it's exactly in a way the Lacanian not-all you know Lacan's point is that if you extrapolate concepts we use or we are forced to use they are our transcendental a priori to describe reality we get into a deadlock this impossibility of getting it all of to totalize our notion of reality and I claim that the truly subversive thing that Lacan compels us to do is sorry if I sound pretentious I don't have time to dwell with all this now but I will try is that one has to make here a step from Kant to Hegel which means Kant remains too epistemological he still presupposes some objective reality out there just because of the limitation of our categories we cannot get at it Hegel's step is what if we transpose this structure of failure hindrance you cannot get it you get involved in antagonism into the thing itself it's a little bit like you know and I will conclude with sorry for this megalomania quantum physics I was here imprecise till now you know that there is I was convinced now reading closer more closely stuff there is a gap between Heisenberg and Bohr Bohr is the good guy I'm more and more convinced and don't be afraid I will not quote you now the 11th time that boring story about why do you have a horseshoe about your no no what I want to say is that precisely Heisenberg in his uncertainty principle still basically reads this impossibility to get to get to get position and velocity whatever movement at the same time two complementary properties still reads it in an epistemological way while Bohr emphasizes this in a very refined critique of Heisenberg that Heisenberg didn't get the point that this impossibility is in the thing itself okay first how does all this appear within psychoanalysis this incompleteness of society in a Kantian way we can say that the incompleteness of ontology of the structure of reality means that in order to make our experience of reality consistent we have to supplement our experience by some kind of a virtual fiction this as Lacan was aware was already a lesson done by Bentham whose again Theory of Fictions I think it is even now recently reprinted in that Radical Classics or whatever by Verso a choice of don't underestimate it he is precisely not doing what you would have expected a simple British empiricist to do his point is not that we should aim at getting rid of fictions to see reality in a nominalist way the way it really is his point is a nicely paradoxical one yes we can distinguish what is fiction and what is reality but if we take away the fiction we lose reality itself it's impossible to describe to grasp reality without fictions I think that this same point was made in a beautiful way by again haha my old guy Gilbert Keith Chesterton where when he says wonderful quote literature and fiction are two entirely different things literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity so what do I mean by this necessity of fictional supplement years ago I remember seeing a caricature in a German weekly publication I'm not sure I think it was Stern Der Stern but this was like year ago it of course it mocked the male hypocrisy it showed five men each of them asked in a caricature what what would you like to do during your summer holiday and each of them gives an answer but then in this kind of a cloud no it shows what he really thinks each of for example one says I would like finally to have time to read a good philosophical book the cloud shows a naked woman the other one said I would like to go to a serious music concert the cloud shows a naked woman and so on and so on so it's this tasteless point that you know don't bluff we all want to do just like that I claim this is strictly wrong I claim that we all know that we want to do that but the question is in what precise way do we want to do that so much closer to the truth would have been the opposite caricature you ask five men what would you like to do and probably you will get an sincere answer screw many ladies whatever but then the cloud should show you know one of them wants to seduce a lady while reading a book the other one by walking on a beach and so on and so on no it's precisely that you cannot do it directly you need a fiction you need a fiction to do it and I think that even when we are in reality this fiction has somehow to supplement reality in what way here we come to the beauty of things I'm not claiming that oh part of our reality doesn't really exist it's fictional I claim it's almost something of the opposite that even if all we perceive is reality part of it is the way we perceive it in our psychic economy structured like or functions as a fiction and I think this is cinema as already mentioned once maybe here this is cinema at its best not to reproduce so well a fiction stage it so well that we mistake fiction for reality but to show only reality but to make us experience it as a magical fiction I will give you immediately an example about the film to which haha my small moment of glory you buy the DVD you will get comments by me that Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men but now I'm a bad guy I always talk bad against the back against their back on people so I would say that first of course I'm a Hegelian this means when I made those comments I didn't see the film no I don't need reality but more important when I saw the film I discovered something which demonstrates that Cuarón is a good cinema director but not such a good thinker he did something very nice but I checked it up with him wasn't aware of it namely if you saw the movie you know Clive Owen infertility blah blah blah at the very end of the film Clive Owen the hero Theo or whatever and the black girl who is the first after I don't know how many years in entire humanity of getting pregnant go out on a small boat to a sea where some kind of some kind of ship with laboratories in it called Tomorrow where allegedly they will solve the problem of fertility is awaiting of them and Clive Owen wounded dies and the idea is nonetheless she the black girl who is pregnant will get to the ship where they will analyze her she will save humanity restore fertility now to me it seemed so obvious that although it is shot like reality that the proper way to read it that no ship of course that this was this is the dying dream of the hero no that the ship is pure appearance Cuarón wasn't aware of this ambiguity but strangely enough most of my friends were almost most of the people that I talked to claimed that liked precisely this radical ambiguity although it's shot like reality it functions like a magic deus ex machina apparition or to give you another example that I already used in my books I watched them three-four times they're boring because of my son those Home Alone series did you notice something like two-thirds of the film is more or less not quite realistic but then the reason we watch at least I do this kind of films is that you know for usually it's the last minutes when the small kid sets the trap and then all horrid things you know happen to the two bad guys now that is pure cartoon logic physically impossible like you know the bad guy his head starts burning so he runs to the toilet puts his head into the toilet bowl but the the the small evil child predicted this so of course instead of water there is oil there is gasoline there so alcohol so the head explodes like in but again what I like is how it's still shot realistically in the sense of supposed to be part of reality but somehow we know we passed from reality to fiction in a way this I think again is for me at least the cinematic art at its best and this is again how our reality is structured so okay let's now go on patiently about how Lacan tries to formalize sexual difference of course we you probably know the ABC which is Lacan proposed the so-called formulas of sexuation where the masculine side is defined by the universal function and its exception like all X all entities are submitted to a certain function but then there is one which is at least one which is the exception masculine side the feminine side you have the paradox of non-all le pas-tout there is no exception but for that very reason the set is non-all non-totalized to give you a simple philosophical example of this I think that for Lacan the passage from early to late Wittgenstein would have been a clear example the early Wittgenstein is masculine you know it proposes his Tractatus a certain universal structure with the exception of the mystical and so on and so on what the late Wittgenstein does is he no longer talks about this mystical exception there is no exception but for this reason you cannot totalize language instead of simple universal structure you get only this partial family resemblances and so on and so on so again you get first universality with an exception then you get this irreducible plurality of language games there is nothing outside them but they are not all you cannot totalize them it's a little bit like another reference to my terrifying experiences with children for five years I'm totally terrorized I spend hundreds of dollars for if some of you have also the misfortune of having children or knowing that do you know what is Yu-Gi-Oh those magic cards blah blah no my son doesn't have too many of them just around I would say no and but what fascinates me and I think we adults are already too senile too stupid even to understand is that I think they are a nice example of the feminine non-all because in contrast to a standard either card game or chess game where you have certain universal rules and then you have elements and you have to use them obeying those rules the madness you really must be a child with your far superior to us memory is that here each card in a way brings its own rule you know it's the point is not that you have a card which is simply worth more than another card within a certain set of rules no you must look closely at those small letters which say if you have this card and if you have an attack card you see it on the opponent's side then you can revive another card and kill all the opponents on condition that the opponent doesn't have that it's absolute nightmare I mean but I like this idea it's incredibly complex and I just admire small children they can they can remember thousands of cards literally all these double triple tricks okay let's go on Lacan's logic of universality and its constitutive exception is not as simple as it may appear it's not simply you know this old wisdom haha an exception to every universality no no it's not wisdom Lacan is very precise here first it goes still we will go much more in detail later now first abstract level first I think we have three steps here first there is Lacan's thesis an exception to every universality every universality contains a particular element which while formally belonging to this universality sticks out doesn't fit its frame I will not bore you with the examples that I am already bored by them that I always use like in Marx for example I claim that in the Marxian classification of the modes of production obviously the and here I am an honest anti-eurocentrist that the so-called Asiatic mode of production is this kind of exception I mean if you read Marx closely you will see what is going on no Marx originally did propose just the eurocentric series that is to say primitive whatever you call them tribal societies slavery feudalism capitalism and whatever the hell is maybe coming after now then Marx honestly he was honest enough to notice that there are some societies social formations modes of production which fit neither of these and I claim a close analysis demonstrates that the so-called Asiatic mode of production is not really a it appears to be a positive concept but in reality it's just a kind of a negative container Marx simply threw into that one what didn't fit the others you know it's like the joke from Borges quoted at the beginning of Foucault Les Mots et les Choses where you have that famous list of categorization of dogs at the end you have all the dogs which doesn't belong to this list or whatever I mean of course it's not as simple as that but you can see how Marx was struggling and wasn't himself wasn't sure if you can really put ancient Egypt ancient Incas ancient China at all if you can really put them within the same umbrella so again we have the exception then you have to do the next step and I hope you will notice if you know Marx here the parallel between this gradual expansion of the exception and the so-called three moments stages of the expression of the value form in the at the beginning of Marx's Capital then you of course discover that everything is an exception that every and this is the basic rule of Hegel I already made this point I would like to repeat it this is what I like about Hegel you know here you can see that Hegel was a materialist in a radical sense for Plato Platonists and here I have a problem with my good friend Alain Badiou I totally sympathize with his rehabilitation of Plato against Aristotle but I think there are some problems like you know if Plato's state is something it's a based on a corporate image of society the notion of justice that you find there is precisely this corporate notion of justice means each at his or her own place and I claim that you there is nonetheless no way to although Badiou is now as you probably know re-translating Plato's Republic it's almost finished incidentally into French with the subtitle Republic or about communism no trying to re-read it as a comm it's a wonderful thing what he is doing he is for example replacing when Plato says a sophist is trying to seduce the crowd Alain put into translated as a corrupted bourgeois journalist is publishing an article and so on in the popular press but I think that here you get a problem so for Plato example is always deficient with regard to an idea no like examples are imperfect but for Hegel there also is always a gap between an idea and the way you try to exemplify it but for Hegel it's the opposite that it's true you exemplify an idea and there is more in the example than in the idea itself so that the example which is supposed to illustrate an idea effectively always undermines it and one can even say that this is one of the basic matrices of the Hegelian process how do things go on in Hegel's dialectic you have a certain notion form of life and Hegel doesn't criticize it so that he measures it by an ideal standard he just says let's exemplify it let's look how it works and then the example itself gives more you probably know again one of the great moments of Hegelian what Lacan calls lalangue reference to wordplays contingency of language Hegel does here a consciously wrong etymology you know that the German term for example is Beispiel something which as it were plays itself along and for Hegel this is precisely example like I want only this but that shitty example comes along and ruins it no I mean I get more than I asked for in an example okay so so then we have this paradox that every example is an exception but then we have the third stage which would have fitted somehow this notion of universal equivalent in Marx in Hegel that nonetheless all examples like exceptions are not equal that if all examples are exception there is always an exception to exception which is an example which precisely as a double exception immediately gives body to universality as such and in this precise sense Hegel for example you should be careful to notice these details he calls Jesus Christ an example of example or an absolute example precisely in this sense that you know everything is an example but then you get an absolute example an absolute exception which is precisely the place where in the guise of its opposite universality itself comes to exist okay the classical example again known to all of you what Jacques Rancière even more than Badiou conceptualized as that part of the social body the part of no part which is those who are without proper place within the social body and as such stand for its universality okay but let's go on so the starting point of Lacan's formulas of sexuation is Aristotle why Aristotle as you know this is the ABC of history of philosophy you all know that for Aristotle an entity ontological unit as it were something existing is composed of form and matter morphē hylē whatever I'm not good at that now there is a problem here as all perspicuous readers of Aristotle noticed you find to put it very simply an inconsistency or contradiction here which undermines such the very foundation of Aristotelian ontology on the one hand in a more traditional Platonic mode Aristotle claims that form is universal while matter hylē is the individualizing element no like to put it very simply these are chairs their idea is the same they all this chair and that chair or if there were to be others the same they all imitate copy realize the same universal idea what makes them different is the stuff the matter the no otherwise if you take away the matter this and this would be absolutely the same namely the same idea matter multiplies them at the same time Aristotle nonetheless a serious philosopher is intelligent and honest enough to also pursue the opposite path namely that precisely if you take the form away from this and this chair all you get is the formless universal matter so you see the point that it's precisely you can also claim that it's precisely the opposite if I take the form away we just get the neutral base stuff matter so that it is form not matter which is the individualizing principle of course Hegel is absolutely for this second solution because it's much closer to his idealism that the plurality the concrete content comes out of the self-movement