Derrida Vis--vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis

Chapter 8 Sexual Difference

8 Sexual Difference Introductory Remarks: Mutual Misrecognition In ‘‘Choreographies,’’ Derrida formulates the question of sexual difference as follows: ‘‘Must one think ‘difference’ ‘before’ sexual difference or taking off ‘from’ it?’’1 This question immediately lends itself to two equally misconstrued answers, related to how one determines both ‘‘sexual difference’’ and ‘‘difference.’’ On the one hand, Lacanians make the claim that one must think difference as taking off from sexual difference. However , this claim presupposes an understanding of ‘‘sexual difference’’ as Real (traumatic) and by no means, therefore, subject to a formal binary determination. As Žižek puts it: ‘‘if sexual difference may be said to be ‘formal,’ it is certainly a strange form—a form whose main result is precisely that it undermines every universal form which attempts to capture it. . . . Far from constraining the variety of sexual arrangements in advance , the Real of sexual difference is the traumatic cause which sets their contingent proliferation in motion.’’2 If one does not recognize this complexity , it becomes easy to mistake the Lacanian claim concerning the priority of ‘‘sexual difference’’ over ‘‘difference’’ for an argument that all concrete variations of sexual life are ‘‘constrained’’ by an implicit, pseudotranscendental , normative condition of binary sexual difference, or what Judith Butler calls ‘‘ideal gender dimorphism.’’3 It is in consequence of this mistake, Žižek argues, that Butler imposes on Lacan the view that social life is ‘‘based in fictive and idealized kinship positions that presume 237 the heterosexual family as constituting the defining social bond for all humans .’’4 In other words, granted that because of their diversity ‘‘sexed bodies do not fit squarely within ideal gender dimorphism,’’ sexual difference in Lacanian discourse is nevertheless said to serve as an ideal (a measure by which one may separate normal from perverted sexuality) that reality can never match.5 The basic fault in Butler’s account, then, according to Žižek, lies in an interpretation that attributes to Lacan a binary determination of ‘‘sexual difference’’ that he demonstrably does not adopt.6 On the other hand, on Žižek’s reading, Derrida patently argues that one must think ‘‘difference’’ before ‘‘sexual difference,’’ reading ‘‘difference ’’ here as a neutral ‘‘freeplay’’ of sexual arrangements that is inevitably betrayed by determinate sexual difference. Žižek reads this as the illegitimate hypostatization of absolute difference, which is covertly the hypostatization of sameness. In his words, philosophers as different as Alain Badiou and Fredric Jameson have pointed out, regarding today’s multiculturalist celebration of the diversity of lifestyles, how this thriving of differences relies on an underlying One, that is, on the radical obliteration of Difference, of the antagonistic gap. The same goes for the standard postmodern critique of sexual difference as a ‘‘binary opposition’’ to be deconstructed : ‘‘there are not only two sexes, but a multitude of sexes and sexual identities.’’ In all of these cases, the moment we introduce ‘‘thriving multitude,’’ what we effectively assert is the exact opposite: underlying all-pervasive Sameness.7 Žižek has good grounds for his objection to what he calls ‘‘the standard postmodern critique of sexual difference as a ‘binary opposition’ to be deconstructed.’’ However, the path through Derrida’s reading of Heidegger in ‘‘Geschlecht’’ conclusively demonstrates (thus, hopefully, justifying its tortuousness) that this standard postmodern critique does not suffice as a characterization of ‘‘Derrida’s operation.’’ Žižek, here, attributes to Derrida a determination of ‘‘difference’’ (as freeplay) that he demonstrably does not adopt. Rather, for Derrida, ‘‘difference’’ connotes the différance that one may say, mimicking Žižek, is the ‘‘traumatic cause’’ that sets in motion the contingent proliferation of different sexual arrangements. In short, what I hope to have demonstrated by the end of this chapter is that both Derrida and Lacan deconstruct the presupposition that there is primordially a determinate characterization of sexual difference (e.g., binary ), for the sake of uncovering a more primordial kind of difference, allied with the traumatic Real, for which ‘‘sexual difference’’ and différance are synonymous nicknames. 238 Derrida Vis-à-vis Lacan This means, briefly, that sexual difference is never actually present, since it has no intrinsic character, sense, or meaning. But because it occurs, it is therefore not not-present, and for this reason, it repeats as that which cannot be erased. It occurs, then, as that which both calls for interpretation and resists (eludes, exceeds...