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Lacan's Discourse on Sexuality Explained

1) The document discusses Lacan's discourse on the relations between men and women, specifically their loving and sexual relations in everyday life as well as in dreams and fantasies. 2) It notes that for animals and humans alike, in the sexual order one must not just be but also appear through imaginary signifiers or "semblants." For men the major semblant is the phallus, making them slaves to appearances, while women are freer and closer to the real of jouissance. 3) A logic is possible if one has the nerve to write the phallic function and formulate the two modes of sexualizing oneself as an argument, which requires going beyond Freudian myths to Aristotle, Pe

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64 views1 page

Lacan's Discourse on Sexuality Explained

1) The document discusses Lacan's discourse on the relations between men and women, specifically their loving and sexual relations in everyday life as well as in dreams and fantasies. 2) It notes that for animals and humans alike, in the sexual order one must not just be but also appear through imaginary signifiers or "semblants." For men the major semblant is the phallus, making them slaves to appearances, while women are freer and closer to the real of jouissance. 3) A logic is possible if one has the nerve to write the phallic function and formulate the two modes of sexualizing oneself as an argument, which requires going beyond Freudian myths to Aristotle, Pe

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santanu6
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Jacques-Alain Miller's Cover-Notes for Lacan's "Of a Discourse that would

not be of the Semblant" (Paris: ditions du Seuil, October 2006)


Translated by Jack W. Stone
A title on first approach enigmatic. In a word: it is a question of the man and the woman
of their most concrete relations, loving and sexual, in their everyday lives, yes, as in their
dreams and fantasies. This has nothing to do, of course, with what biology studies under the
name of sexuality. Must we then leave this domain to poetry, to the novel, to ideologies? One
tries here to give its logic. This is tricky.
In the sexual order, it is not enough to be, one must also appear. This is true of animals.
Ethology has detailed the parade that precedes and conditions coupling: according to the rule, it
is the male who signals his interest in his partner [fait signe sa partenaire de ses bonnes
dispositions], by the exhibition of forms, colors, postures. These imaginary signifiers constitute
what we call semblants. One could also highlight them in the human species, and find in them
material for satire. To find in them material for science, it is advisable to well distinguish them
from the real they at once veil and manifest, that of jouissance.
This jouissance is not the same for both sexes. Difficultly localizable on the side of
woman and, to tell the truth, diffuse and unsituable, the real in play is, on the side of man,
coordinated to a major semblant, the phallus. From which it arises that, contrary to the common
view, the man is the slave of the semblant he supports, while the woman, freer in this regard, is
also closer to the real; that encountering the woman sexually is for the man always to put the
semblant to the test of the real, and has the value of the "hour of truth"; that if the phallus is apt
for signifying the man as such, "all men," feminine jouissance, in being "not-all" taken in the
semblant, constitutes an objection to the universal.
Consequently, a logic is in fact possible, if one has what it takes [le nerf] to write the
SKDOOLFIXQFWLRQLQWKLVZD\- x), and to formulate the two distinct modes, for a subject, of
sexualizing itself, in inscribing itself there as an argument. This elaboration asks us to pass
beyond the myths invented by Freud, the Oedipus and the Father of the horde (Totem and
Taboo); to mobilize Aristotle, Peirce, and the theory of quantification; to elucidate the true nature
of the written, in passing through Chinese and Japanese.
At the end of the journey, we will know how to give its exact value to the Lacanian
aphorism: "There is no sexual rapport."
Jacques-Alain Miller

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