> Psychoanalysis didn't simply investigate (critically or otherwise) 'the way
> in which human beings form their identity qua ideology.' It has been one
> of the _ideological_ disciplines through which such 'identities' have been
> _historically constructed_.
Agreed. It would be foolish to think that any discipline has escaped ideological entanglements (even critical theory gets boarded sometimes).
> (in contrast to the two-gender, one-sex model of
pre-modern understanding)
In even my most generous reading of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, I don't quite see this. In *this* world of images, shadows, and appearances, it was still two gender and two sex (for P and A). Perhaps their doctrine of souls departs this. But I'm interested.
> ...If we put all of this together, Freud's argument might work as follows.
> Whatever polymorphous perverse practices might have obtained in the distant
> past, or today among children and animals, the continuity of the species
> and the development of civilization depended on the adoption by women of
> their correct sexuality.... [Yoshie: And Lacan doesn't say otherwise --
> hence Kristeva's, Butler's, and others' tortured attempts to put the
> Lacanian premise to feminist purposes.]
BTW - thanks for the comments about Freud. But I must admit, and should qualify, my interest in Freud stems mostly from Civ and Dis and Fut of Ill... (being a religionist and all).
On Lacan - Zizek argues that the position that Butler attributes to Foucault is actually Lacan's position, and the position she attributes to Lacan is actually Foucault's. Likewise, I really liked Butler's critique of Kristeva in Gender Trouble... However... Butler's problem is that she has an undialectical obsession with content and, in the end, might simply provide us with a politics of style and rhetoric (literally) (from Marsha Hewitt's critique to Zizek's to Salecl's).
> >First, Lacan doesn't say that there are two sexes - more
> >like two social-imaginary formations which tend to
> >predominate.
> In this sense, Lacan is no better, for he can't imagine anything else. The
> only difference between Freud and Lacan is that Lacan shows little explicit
> interest in biology and that Lacan is more interested in reconciling us
> with how we 'fail' (as opposed to Freud's interest in 'helping' us adjust
> ourselves to the social ideals of the gloomy civilization).
Freud's psychosociological work isn't interested in reconciliation - he's well aware of the paradox - the only way for psychoanalysis to be "successful" is to create a world in which psychoanalysis doesn't exist. That's a crude way of putting it... Freud was aware that there is no "cure" for the discontents of civilization... therapy is an ad hoc strategy of accommodation. It necessarily fails. This is what the Frankfurt School defends. Lacan picks up on this in Freud (not in the FS). He's not so much interested in failure, as forging new metaphors that further subjectivize the form and content of pathological phenomena. Lacan explicitly notes that there are or could be third and fourth sexes and genders. But historically these have not emerged as hegemonic... so his critique is targeted on two - and almost exclusively on the masculinist idea of courtly love...
Have you read the anthology, Third Gender, Third Sex? Any thoughts on that?
> The civilization and its discontents are as eternal for
Lacan as for Freud, for Lacan's Real has the transcendental
priority to history (much as Heidegger's Being does). In
this sense, Lacan is Platonic.
Not quite. The Real is simply what the word implies. It's simply the stuff of the universe. Conceptually, you can't do anything with it. Once this stuff is touched... in takes the form of the symbolic and the imaginary fills in the gaps. Lacan certainly doesn't ascribe to a two world metaphysics. The Real is simply a presupposition of things are... it is the vanishing mediator between a specific paradox: let's say a reporter is at the scene of an accident. Does the reporter "objectively" describe the accident from their perspective, leaving themself out? Or do they describe the accident with their body in the picture? In either case - the reporter in question must accomplish an impossible act. Either to suppress themself from the scene, or stand outside of themself. Hence, the dilemma of the Real.
> Moreover, whether in the versions offered by Lacan or Judith Butler or
> others of similar persuasions, there is no space for historical
> explanations for the gendered division of labor (and its change that
> follows the changes in the mode of production and social reproduction).
> This lack of connection between gender/sex/'sexuality' and labor in
> Lacanian analyses also makes for a theory of the eternal present (or the
> eternal 'absence').
What are you talking about? Lacan definitely requires historical explanations, he relies on them implicitly. However historical is also psychical history... so one can have both and psychoanalysis can do a psychoanalytic reading of historical events (are their any other kinds?). Take Lacan's reading an Antigone as one example. But also consider, is he doing a historical reading or is he using the story to illustrate a psychoanalytic concept?
> Last but not the least, feminists do _not_ need psychoanalysis or
> deconstruction to repudiate gender without repudiating bodies. If
> anything, psychoanalysis is a metaphorical hindrance, not a springboard.
> And deconstruction and other French theories practically hand over
> biological and other sciences to the Right at the level of practice (if not
> in 'science studies'). And as Stephen Jay Gould, Ruth Hubbard, etc. have
> argued, we can't afford to do that.
I'd really like you to develop this argument... Freud pretty much outlines, in excellent detail, the world according to a patriarch. You don't think this is helpful for feminism? as a key source of understanding how sexist and misogynist frameworks produce and reproduce themselves? (or should we cast Freud aside and lose a valuable resource for understanding the world according to man?)
> toward communism with an X-sex, zero-gender model...
Ok - this is interesting. Zizek (following Lacan!) argues that nature is an X, and that all "interpretations" of nature are ideologically loaded (imaginary significations) .... so his approach is that "nature says nothing" ... which is in agreement with what you are saying here. If X-sex and zero-gender mean that "nature says nothing" and that all of our encounters with nature are retroactive impositions of what it means... tautological constructions which impose, create, identify, categorize, compartmentalize, and dominate "stuff" ... If this is what you are actually saying, and not that X-sex and zero-gender is an impartial or objective or neutral reading... then we are approaching all of this with a like mind (except toward communism... unless communism is an X as well).
********* (you also wrote this)
> A lesson of 'personal responsibility' (= Zizek's
> post-critical return to Kant) seems like an indispensable
> accompaniment to the ghost of 'social democracy' in the
> age of neoliberalism (Laclau & Mouffe). Not my cup of
> tea, but Rob Schaap might like it (despite his dislike of
> things postmodern). To me, it sounds like a Bill Clinton
> or a Tony Blair with a Slovenian accent.... Yoshie
You'll have to do better than that. Zizek ran for the presidency of Slovenia's liberal democratic party - with an anti-nationalist platform (focusing on women's rights and the environment). His party won, and he came in fourth. He's been completely open about the compromises that his party made, the "dirty deals" that lead them to power. The party had one real task: to make sure the right-wing nationalists don't get into power. I'm pretty sure that we won't see Clinton and Blair disclosing their compromises, their backroom deals. But you are wielding a double edged sword here - either Zizek and friends could have gone further to the left (thereby letting the right-wing nationalists into power) (and you'd probably criticize that) or campaign left of centre (and you are criticizing that). So what do you think should have been done (in the spirit of speculation)?
When I toss my vote, I vote left of centre, a strategic compromise in a three/four party system (left of centre New Democratic Party moving right, right of centre Liberal Party, and right wing Conservative Party - with an even further right wing Reform Party) (who just lost in their attempt to "unite the right"). Although this is a compromise, I'm not willing to pursue my idealism to the extremes (besides, Canada doesn't have an anarchist party to the best of my knowledge). If it was strategically wise to do so, I'd vote Liberal. We live in a world where power exists. If we don't grab it, someone else will. Now I'm sure I'm open to ridicule here - but if there is a choice between right-wing nationalism and liberalism, I'd chose liberalism, recognizing that my choice was in fact an evil one. Yes, there is always a third and fourth and fifth way - and we need to exploit this. But sometimes practical wisdom needs to intervene. Our hands are already stained. I have little patience for those who stand back and continue to wash them, pretending to uphold the high moral ground.
ken