What Is Sex? (short Circuits)
by Alenka Zupančič /
2017 / English / PDF
4.8 MB Download
Why sexuality is at the point of a "short circuit" between
ontology and epistemology.
Why sexuality is at the point of a "short circuit" between
ontology and epistemology.
Consider sublimation -- conventionally understood as a substitute
satisfaction for missing sexual satisfaction. But what if, as
Lacan claims, we can get exactly the same satisfaction that we
get from sex from talking (or writing, painting, praying, or
other activities)? The point is not to explain the satisfaction
from talking by pointing to its sexual origin, but that the
satisfaction from talking is itself sexual. The satisfaction from
talking contains a key to sexual satisfaction (and not the other
way around) -- even a key to sexuality itself and its inherent
contradictions. The Lacanian perspective would make the answer to
the simple-seeming question, "What is sex?" rather more complex.
In this volume in the Short Circuits series, Alenka Zupančič
approaches the question from just this perspective, considering
sexuality a properly philosophical problem for psychoanalysis;
and by psychoanalysis, she means that of Freud and Lacan, not
that of the kind of clinician practitioners called by Lacan
"orthopedists of the unconscious."
Consider sublimation -- conventionally understood as a substitute
satisfaction for missing sexual satisfaction. But what if, as
Lacan claims, we can get exactly the same satisfaction that we
get from sex from talking (or writing, painting, praying, or
other activities)? The point is not to explain the satisfaction
from talking by pointing to its sexual origin, but that the
satisfaction from talking is itself sexual. The satisfaction from
talking contains a key to sexual satisfaction (and not the other
way around) -- even a key to sexuality itself and its inherent
contradictions. The Lacanian perspective would make the answer to
the simple-seeming question, "What is sex?" rather more complex.
In this volume in the Short Circuits series, Alenka Zupančič
approaches the question from just this perspective, considering
sexuality a properly philosophical problem for psychoanalysis;
and by psychoanalysis, she means that of Freud and Lacan, not
that of the kind of clinician practitioners called by Lacan
"orthopedists of the unconscious."
Zupančič argues that sexuality is at the point of a "short
circuit" between ontology and epistemology. Sexuality and
knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which
unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as
linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between
being and knowledge in their very negativity.
Zupančič argues that sexuality is at the point of a "short
circuit" between ontology and epistemology. Sexuality and
knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which
unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as
linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between
being and knowledge in their very negativity.
