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Contemporary discourse seems to provide a choice in the way sexual identities and sexual difference are described and analyzed. On the one hand, much current thinking suggests that sexual identity is fluid-socially constructed and/or performatively enacted. This discourse is often invoked in the act of overcoming an earlier patriarchal era of fixed and naturalized identities. On the other hand, some modern discourses of sexual identity seem to offer a New Age Jungian re-sexualization of the universe-"Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus"-according to which there is an underlying, deeply anchored archetypal identity that provides a kind of safe haven in the contemporary confusion of roles and identities.
In this volume, contributors discuss a third way of thinking about sexual identity and sexual difference-a direction opened by Jacques Lacan. For Lacan, what we all recognize as sexual difference is first and foremost representative of a certain fundamental deadlock inherent in the symbolic order, that is, in language and in the entire realm of culture conceived as a symbol system structured on the model of language. For him, the logical matrix of this deadlock is provided by his own formulas of sexuation. The essays collected here elaborate on different aspects of this deadlock of sexual difference. While some examine the role of semblances in the relation between the sexes or consider sexual identity not as anatomy but still involving an impasse of the real, others discuss the difference between sexuation and identification, the role of symbolic prohibition in the process of the subject’s sexual formation, or the changed role of the father in contemporary society and the impact of this change on sexual difference. Other essays address such topics as the role of beating in sexual fantasies and jouissance in feminine jealousy.Contributors. Alain Badiou, Elizabeth Bronfen, Darian Leader, Jacques Alain Miller, Genevieve Morel, Renata Salecl, Eric L. Santner, Colette Soler, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic
List of contents
I. Sexual Difference
On Semblances in the Relation Between the Sexes / Jacques-Alain Miller
Psychoanalytical Anatomy / Genevieve Morel
The Curse on Sex / Colette Soler
II. Paternal Prohibition
Freud’s Moses and the Ethics of Nomotropic Desire / Eric L. Santner
Beating Fantasies and Sexuality / Darian Leader
The Collapse of the Function of the Father and Its Effect on Gender Roles / Paul Verhaeghe
III. Feminine Exception
Feminine Jealousies / Genevieve Morel
Noir Wagner / Elisabeth Bronfen
The Thing from Inner Space / Slavoj Zizek
IV. Love
What Is Love? / Alain Badiou
The Case of the Perforated Sheet / Alenka Zupancic
Love and Sexual Difference: Doubled Partners in Men and Women / Renata Salecl
About the author
Renata Salecl is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism and (Per)versions of Love and Hate.
Summary
Describes and analyses contemporary discourse seems to provide a choice in the way sexual identities and sexual difference. This title includes essays that elaborate on different aspects of this deadlock of sexual difference.
