Other Voices 1.3 (January 1999), Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "Re-in/de -fuse"

Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger

Endnotes

(1)  Jaques Lacan, Le sinthôme, unedited seminaire, 9-12-75.
(2)  Judith Butler quotes from Mary Gouglas' Purity and Danger (London, Boston and Henly: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) in: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, N.Y.: Routledge, 1990, p. 132. For Butler, parody is the way out of the phalic model.
(3)  See Rosi Huhn's analysis of Marcel Duchamp's "bride" in catalogue Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger : Matrix - Borderlines, MoMA, Oxford, 1993.
(4)  To use Griselda Pollock's expression.
(5)  For an extensive explanation of the objet a, see: "Woman as Objet a Between Phantasy and Art," in: Complexity - J. of Philosophy and the Visual Arts n°6, 1995.
(6)  The incest taboo established by the paternal Law separates son and mother and produces 'desire' as repressed and infinitely displaced, and 'subject' as split. Desire, as well as the subject, both phallic and patterned upon the male repression of the maternal body, are supposed to account for Desire and Subject in general.
(7)  Having/not having the male organ is the Freudian one and only measure of sexual difference. "For both sexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into account. What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals, but a primacy of the phallus." Freud states this even though, he continues: "Unfortunately we can describe this state of things only as it affects the male child; the corresponding processes in the little girt are not known to us". The infantile genital organization, op. cit., p. 142) Freud used the concept Phallus fabricated to deal with male sexuality to speak of female sexuality as well, so that She doesn't have it and her position is characterized by the penisneid. "Maleness combines subject, activity and possession of the penis; femaleness takes over object and passivity." Lacan's phallic model incorporates Freud's and deviates from it at the same time. For Lacan, the phallus, still echoing on the penis (organ in the real), mainly stands for a symbolic principle: it is a signifier. It is also the only imaginary representation of sex-difference, and 'castration' (having/not-having) is the only passageway to significance. The Symbolic that is presented as a universal structure holding all significance is phallic. It is structured like language by binary oppositions in which relations of exclusion resonate: "it is either him/her or me" for "speech is already caught-up in a network of symbolic couples and opposites" (J. Lacan, (1955-56) Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre III : Les psychoses. Paris : Seuil, 1981, pp.107, 126.). It leans on a male Imaginary and Real, for having/not-having the male sex organ is its paradigmatic emblem, retroactively applied to all early separations: the appearance/disappearance of the mother, the weaning from the maternal breast, etc. Having/not having by cutting and splitting: 'Castration' as equivalent to the 'Oedipus complex' is presented in Lacan's work as the sole transition-process that separates events from the Real while creating the subject as divided and the objet a as phallic. The objet a that escaped the Symbolic is however structured in its terms. The objet a is a trace that remains forever a "cause of the desire" (cause du desire) - and shapes it. Both the objet a - the lacking part-object which is analogous to the 'woman' as an absent real Other, the subject - who emerges in its place (and in place of the 'woman' that turns into a radical Other), and sexuality, are all shaped by this pair: phallus/castration that act to separate from, and to replace the feminine. Not only "the jouissance, sexually speaking, is phallic" (J. Lacan (1972-73), Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre XX : Encore, Paris: Seuil, 1975. p.14 ) but jouissance and desire are also exclusively phallic, for jouissance is based on organ without relations, and any release of something from the corporeal sexual jouissance and partial-dimension to the Symbolic occurs by negation, separation and displacement. Feminine jouissance exists in this picture as that which "ex-sists," i.e., stands outside. Enveloped in its continuity it aspires to release itself by an-other objet a that will shapes a feminine dimension of desire and an-other unconscious zone; but any meaning formation and any desire are formulated in the phallic model by castration. In the transformational processes language allows: metaphor and metonymy, "jouissance is reduced to the phallic signifier "where there is no possible sublimation or release of the 'woman'. Passability of this continuity to in-form an-other desire is impossible. For further analysis see: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "The With-In-Visible Screen," in Inside the Visible, ed. Catherine de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996.
(8)  Joan Rivière, "Womanliness as Masquerade", in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan, London: Routledge, 1989, p.54. Rivière's "masquarade" concerns hiding female "factual" castration and her castrative wishes, and this concept is therefore inside the phallic model and reinforces it.
(9)  A characteristic move of inversion in Lacan's late theory, as termed by J. A. Miller "Lacan against Lacan".
(10)  J. Lacan, Encore p.59
(11)  Forclosure is a mechanism of a-priori non-inclusion of the signifier, operating in psychosis and analoguous to repression in the level of neurosis where a signifier was included and then pushed under to become unconscious. While repression explicitly fits the Oedipal model of castration, forclusion that is supposed to be pre-Oedipal is still structured as some kind of castration, since it indexes a total presence in the Real and a total absence of passage to the Symbolic, on the presence/absence axis of the phallic paradigm. Thus, the feminine is either 'castrated' in the post-Oedipal era or forclosed in the pre-Oedipal one, and is either way excluded from the Symbolic.
(12)  The word 'rapport' designates all these.
(13)  J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit., p.17, p.35
(14)  Jacques-Alain Miller, Du symptome, op. cit., 2/3/83.
(15)  J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit., p.69
(16)  J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit. p.54.
(17)  J. Lacan, (1964), Le Séminaire Livre XI: Les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1973. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981, p.103
(18)  Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, The Matrixal Gaze, Feminist Arts and Histories Network, University of Leeds, 1995.
(19)  S. Freud, (1919) "The 'Uncanny'". S.E. XVII, London: Hogarth Press, pp. 244, 248.
(20)  S. Freud separate one class of the Unheimlich, to which these two complexes of phantasies belong, from another class, caused by the reappearance of surmounted beliefs. [ed. note: For a fuller discussion of this second class, see Steven Schneider, "Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror" in this issue.]
(21)  What seems to supports my suggestion that the matrixial phantasy can't be subjugated to the castration phantasy is that while a castration phantasy is frightening at the point of its original emergence before its repression, a matrixial phantasy becomes frightening only when it is repressed (Freud, 1919, p. 241) but is not frightening at the point of its original sprouting.
(22)  See: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace" (Conference, Tate gallery, 1993), in: Rethinking Borders, ed. J. Welchman, Macmillan, 1996.
(23)  The originary metramorphoses on the level of joint matrixial impressions are connected to affective tones related to oscillations of touch and pressure, fluctuations of motions and balance (kinesthesia), changing amplitudes of perceived voices and light-and-dark variations - all diffused and shared sensorial impressions that construct (part-) object-relations and their loss in the womb, and subjectivize the partial subjects as matrixial. The apparatus of meaning-donation/production of the non-I (of the archaic Other, and first of all the m/Other) subjectivizes the I (first of all the pre-natal partial subject) and participates via phantasy in the construction of the matrixial objet a for both the I and the non-I and in the co-emergence of their shared subjectivity.

Copyright © 1999, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, all rights reserved

Endnotes (1) Jaques Lacan, Le sinthôme, unedited seminaire, 9-12-75. (2) Judith Butler quotes from Mary Gouglas' Purity and Danger (London, Boston and Henly: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) in: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, N.Y.: Routledge, 1990, p. 132. For Butler, parody is the way out of the phalic model. (3) See Rosi Huhn's analysis of Marcel Duchamp's "bride" in catalogue Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger : Matrix - Borderlines, MoMA, Oxford, 1993. (4) To use Griselda Pollock's expression. (5) For an extensive explanation of the objet a, see: "Woman as Objet a Between Phantasy and Art," in: Complexity - J. of Philosophy and the Visual Arts n°6, 1995. (6) The incest taboo established by the paternal Law separates son and mother and produces 'desire' as repressed and infinitely displaced, and 'subject' as split. Desire, as well as the subject, both phallic and patterned upon the male repression of the maternal body, are supposed to account for Desire and Subject in general. (7) Having/not having the male organ is the Freudian one and only measure of sexual difference. "For both sexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into account. What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals, but a primacy of the phallus." Freud states this even though, he continues: "Unfortunately we can describe this state of things only as it affects the male child; the corresponding processes in the little girt are not known to us". The infantile genital organization, op. cit., p. 142) Freud used the concept Phallus fabricated to deal with male sexuality to speak of female sexuality as well, so that She doesn't have it and her position is characterized by the penisneid. "Maleness combines subject, activity and possession of the penis; femaleness takes over object and passivity." Lacan's phallic model incorporates Freud's and deviates from it at the same time. For Lacan, the phallus, still echoing on the penis (organ in the real), mainly stands for a symbolic principle: it is a signifier. It is also the only imaginary representation of sex-difference, and 'castration' (having/not-having) is the only passageway to significance. The Symbolic that is presented as a universal structure holding all significance is phallic. It is structured like language by binary oppositions in which relations of exclusion resonate: "it is either him/her or me" for "speech is already caught-up in a network of symbolic couples and opposites" (J. Lacan, (1955-56) Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre III : Les psychoses. Paris : Seuil, 1981, pp.107, 126.). It leans on a male Imaginary and Real, for having/not-having the male sex organ is its paradigmatic emblem, retroactively applied to all early separations: the appearance/disappearance of the mother, the weaning from the maternal breast, etc. Having/not having by cutting and splitting: 'Castration' as equivalent to the 'Oedipus complex' is presented in Lacan's work as the sole transition-process that separates events from the Real while creating the subject as divided and the objet a as phallic. The objet a that escaped the Symbolic is however structured in its terms. The objet a is a trace that remains forever a "cause of the desire" (cause du desire) - and shapes it. Both the objet a - the lacking part-object which is analogous to the 'woman' as an absent real Other, the subject - who emerges in its place (and in place of the 'woman' that turns into a radical Other), and sexuality, are all shaped by this pair: phallus/castration that act to separate from, and to replace the feminine. Not only "the jouissance, sexually speaking, is phallic" (J. Lacan (1972-73), Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre XX : Encore, Paris: Seuil, 1975. p.14 ) but jouissance and desire are also exclusively phallic, for jouissance is based on organ without relations, and any release of something from the corporeal sexual jouissance and partial-dimension to the Symbolic occurs by negation, separation and displacement. Feminine jouissance exists in this picture as that which "ex-sists," i.e., stands outside. Enveloped in its continuity it aspires to release itself by an-other objet a that will shapes a feminine dimension of desire and an-other unconscious zone; but any meaning formation and any desire are formulated in the phallic model by castration. In the transformational processes language allows: metaphor and metonymy, "jouissance is reduced to the phallic signifier "where there is no possible sublimation or release of the 'woman'. Passability of this continuity to in-form an-other desire is impossible. For further analysis see: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "The With-In-Visible Screen," in Inside the Visible, ed. Catherine de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996. (8) Joan Rivière, "Womanliness as Masquerade", in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan, London: Routledge, 1989, p.54. Rivière's "masquarade" concerns hiding female "factual" castration and her castrative wishes, and this concept is therefore inside the phallic model and reinforces it. (9) A characteristic move of inversion in Lacan's late theory, as termed by J. A. Miller "Lacan against Lacan". (10) J. Lacan, Encore p.59 (11) Forclosure is a mechanism of a-priori non-inclusion of the signifier, operating in psychosis and analoguous to repression in the level of neurosis where a signifier was included and then pushed under to become unconscious. While repression explicitly fits the Oedipal model of castration, forclusion that is supposed to be pre-Oedipal is still structured as some kind of castration, since it indexes a total presence in the Real and a total absence of passage to the Symbolic, on the presence/absence axis of the phallic paradigm. Thus, the feminine is either 'castrated' in the post-Oedipal era or forclosed in the pre-Oedipal one, and is either way excluded from the Symbolic. (12) The word 'rapport' designates all these. (13) J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit., p.17, p.35 (14) Jacques-Alain Miller, Du symptome, op. cit., 2/3/83. (15) J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit., p.69 (16) J. Lacan, Encore, op. cit. p.54. (17) J. Lacan, (1964), Le Séminaire Livre XI: Les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1973. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981, p.103 (18) Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, The Matrixal Gaze, Feminist Arts and Histories Network, University of Leeds, 1995. (19) S. Freud, (1919) "The 'Uncanny'". S.E. XVII, London: Hogarth Press, pp. 244, 248. (20) S. Freud separate one class of the Unheimlich, to which these two complexes of phantasies belong, from another class, caused by the reappearance of surmounted beliefs. [ed. note: For a fuller discussion of this second class, see Steven Schneider, "Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror" in this issue.] (21) What seems to supports my suggestion that the matrixial phantasy can't be subjugated to the castration phantasy is that while a castration phantasy is frightening at the point of its original emergence before its repression, a matrixial phantasy becomes frightening only when it is repressed (Freud, 1919, p. 241) but is not frightening at the point of its original sprouting. (22) See: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace" (Conference, Tate gallery, 1993), in: Rethinking Borders, ed. J. Welchman, Macmillan, 1996. (23) The originary metramorphoses on the level of joint matrixial impressions are connected to affective tones related to oscillations of touch and pressure, fluctuations of motions and balance (kinesthesia), changing amplitudes of perceived voices and light-and-dark variations - all diffused and shared sensorial impressions that construct (part-) object-relations and their loss in the womb, and subjectivize the partial subjects as matrixial. The apparatus of meaning-donation/production of the non-I (of the archaic Other, and first of all the m/Other) subjectivizes the I (first of all the pre-natal partial subject) and participates via phantasy in the construction of the matrixial objet a for both the I and the non-I and in the co-emergence of their shared subjectivity.