The Unpredictable Future of Fantasy's Traversal

ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 18 number 4 december 2013

he work of psychoanalytic theorist Jacques T Lacan has long had a vexed relationship to feminist and queer theory because of the heavy emphasis that much contemporary Lacanian discourse places on the doctrine of “sexual difference.” Lacan’s account of the psyche is often explained through reference to his early account of the interlocking imaginary, symbolic, and Real orders. These three registers support the fantasies that animate desiring subjectivity. Whereas the imaginary order is the realm of the specular image and its (mis)recog- nitions, the symbolic is that of language. The imaginary and the symbolic intersect with chris coffman each other and with the Real – the source of the most profound psychical resistance.1 More- over, Lacan claims in his early work that being THE UNPREDICTABLE a subject (rather than a psychotic) requires that one accept the “name of the father” as the FUTURE OF FANTASY’S “ fi ” primordial signi er that grounds the latter TRAVERSAL order (Seminar III 96, 150). Even though Bruce Fink clarifies that any name – not just that of the Father – could serve this function, much contemporary Lacanian discourse insists unconscious investments in constricting life pat- that the law that governs the symbolic order terns (Ruti, “The Fall of Fantasies” 498). must be that of the Father and that “sexual However, that loss clears the ground for a difference” always governs desire (Fink 56).2 future that could be lived otherwise (ibid.). ̌ As a result, feminist and queer theorists such Thus, in a queer reading of Slavoj Zizeǩ’s as Judith Butler have long viewed the Lacanian work, I argue that “(hetero)sexual difference” doctrine of “sexual difference” as unacceptably (the label I give to “sexual difference” to indi- heteronormative.3 cate its heteronormativity) “is the fantasy that However, traversing the fundamental Lacanian psychoanalytic theory needs to tra- fantasy – a movement Lacan first describes in verse in order to fully register the many possible Seminar XI – could open up the possibility of configurations of desiring subjectivities” and ̌ new configurations of language, signification, contemporary genders (“Queering Zizeǩ”). and desire. Traversing the fantasy involves, on However, in that piece I do not address the the one hand, subjective dispossession – that question of what might lie beyond that fantasy is, the subject’s loss of the fantasies that struc- – a matter that “remains unconcluded in ture subjectivity but that also motivate Lacan’s work” itself, as Lorenzo Chiesa observes

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(189). In this essay, too, I resist mapping out the may not be occupied by an actual queer. contours of such a “beyond,” for such a gesture However, on the other hand, he demonstrates would be just as prescriptive and constraining as through analysis of right-wing discourse that the fantasy of (hetero)sexual difference. homosexuality currently occupies this position However, in contrast to theorists such as Lee within a homophobic symbolic governed by Edelman, who repudiates any engagement the ideology of reproductive futurism. with futurity, in this essay I do seek to Edelman advocates embracing the figure of the embrace the productive and unpredictable sinthomosexual – and thereby traversing the futures for the signifier – and for gender and homophobic fantasy of reproductive futurism desire – that traversing the fantasy of (hetero) – rather than engaging in the imaginary and sexual difference would engender. symbolic strategies motivating both mainstream gay politics and Butler’s theories. Though Edel- ’ denying the future man s largest wager is on the potential of the sinthomosexual’s jouissance to undercut repro- Edelman’s 2004 No Future brings Lacan’s work ductive futurism, he also intimates that such a to bear on queer theory by drawing on Lacan’s traversal of the fantasy could also undermine explanation in Seminar XXIII of the way in the logic of “sexual difference,” which he which it is possible to traverse the fantasy by describes as “merely a supposition, merely a embracing the sinthome. The term “the positing” that is part of reproductive futurism’s sinthome” refers to each person’s particular edifice (No Future 139).4 form of jouissance – the experience of ecstasy Presenting “negativity as society’s constitu- that exceeds symbolic inscriptions of desire by tive antagonism,” Edelman starts from the tapping into the drive in the Real. As Yannis Žizekiaň premise that the symbolic and imagin- Stavrakakis writes, for Lacan it is only by ary orders of illusory meaning and recognition embracing the sinthome and “accepting [ … ] cover over an antagonism in the Real (“Antag- an impossible representation [ … ] that it is onism” 822). Thus discussion among queer the- possible to ‘represent’ the impossible or rather orists about No Future (and Edelman’s to identify with the impossibility of its represen- subsequent reassertions of his argument) has tation,” thereby traversing the fantasy (134). largely focused on his work’s exemplification Edelman’s book grafts these ideas into the of what Robert Caserio, in a 2006 PMLA context of queer theory by calling on queers to forum, calls the “anti-social thesis”: the argu- traverse the fantasy of “reproductive futurism” ment that queer sexuality is inherently – the pervasive ideology that holds out the child opposed to society and community. Scholars as the figure for whom the future must be have focused on Edelman’s claim that traversing secured. Edelman asserts that queers should the fantasy of reproductive futurism would embrace the structural position of the reviled entail the wholesale devastation of the symbolic sinthomosexual – a neologism he forms by order of meaning that Edelman equates with the punning on the Lacanian sinthome. The term social, and have not paid much attention to his “the sinthomosexual” designates the queer reading of Žizeǩ or to alternative accounts of figure that a homophobic symbolic order associ- fantasy’s traversal. This is unfortunate, as Edel- ates with the pure jouissance of the drives in the man’s overly pessimistic interpretation of both Real, and therefore with the refusal of reproduc- Lacan and Žizeǩ is largely responsible for the tive futurism. Edelman views “structurally controversial nihilism of No Future – for the determinative violence” against the sinthomo- way in which Edelman’s refusal to posit an sexual as inescapable, even though the identity alternative to reproductive futurism is as vehe- of those who occupy the place of the sinthomo- ment as his justifiable rage against it. While I sexual may change (“Antagonism” 822). On the am very sympathetic to Edelman’s project of one hand, he importantly insists that the sintho- reworking Žizeǩ’s theories for queer ends, I mosexual is a structural position that may or find in the latter’s work an ambivalent

44 coffman combination of pessimism and optimism that – not only of imploding all imaginary and sym- unlike the former’s book – does not exclude agi- bolic misrecognitions, homophobic or other- tation for positive structural change. Žizeǩ and wise, but also of persisting in a utopian space other Lacanian theorists present traversing the of negativity defined by the absence of their fantasy not as a refusal of all forms of futurity strictures. This utopia is not, however, as but rather as a ground-clearing gesture that is radical as Edelman’s rejection of the imaginary directed toward a future. and symbolic makes it seem, for the sinthomo- Edelman’s refusal of all modes of addressing sexual is only able to ignore the symbolic by the future is a problem because it downplays the accepting the space of jouissance that the sym- transformative aims of the very theory of “tra- bolic itself circumscribes. versing the fantasy” upon which he relies. Though Edelman’s argument leaves the Those who voluntarily enter into psychoanalysis sinthomosexual suspended in a place of jouis- are seeking transformation, and, in its clinical sance that does not ultimately challenge the form, “traversing the fantasy” is futurally symbolic’s coordinates, Tim Dean observes oriented, though it offers no guarantees that that the anti-social thesis, with its goal of “the the future that it opens up will be for the shattering of the civilized ego,” promises “not better. If, as Ruti observes, psychoanalysis’s the end of sociality but rather its inception” very goal is to expand the analysand’s options, (“The Antisocial Homosexual” 827).5 The only it is difficult to accept Edelman’s assertion participant in the 2006 PMLA forum to that all modes of futural orientation are danger- engage Edelman’s use of psychoanalysis, Dean ous (Ruti, “The Fall of Fantasies” 498). His attributes No Future’s excessive negativity to version of “traversing the fantasy” exclusively its author’sinflexible interpretation of psycho- emphasizes its phase of subjective destitution, analytic theories of the drive. In “An Impossible suggesting that queers embrace the figure of Embrace,” a further development of his PMLA the sinthomosexual in order to abandon imagin- piece, Dean reminds us that both Freud and ary misrecognitions and the symbolic order of Lacan conceive of the drive as far more unpre- illusory meaning that sustains them. Yet dictable – and far more capable of constructive Edelman disavows the way in which embracing as well as destructive effects – than Edelman the role of the sinthomosexual and “traversing allows. Dean backgrounds the Lacanian argu- the fantasy” creates an opening for a future, ments of his earlier Beyond Sexuality by even though its contours are not immediately using the work not only of Sigmund Freud apparent. and Jacques Lacan but also Guy Hocquenghem Moreover, there are dangers present in the and Leo Bersani to launch his own account of overgeneralizations whereby Edelman appears “new forms of sociability [ … ] that are not unable to imagine scenarios that do no involve grounded in imaginary identity or the struggle complicity – whether as normative subjects or for intersubjective recognition” (“The Anti- as sinthomosexuals – in the fantasy of reproduc- social Homosexual” 827). Unlike Edelman, tive futurism. Though the 2006 PMLA forum whose sinthomosexual embraces the death opposes Edelman’s and Judith Halberstam’s drive, Dean conceives of the drive as “oriented “anti-social” stances to the “utopian” theories as much toward an underdetermined future as offered by JoséEsteban Muñoz and Dean, No toward an always already determined past,” Future instead strikes me – as it does Ruti – and as not “opposed to every form of social via- as a Möbius strip whose ostensibly “anti-social bility” (“An Impossible Embrace” 195, 204).6 thesis” turns into the most radical form of the Even though for Dean “human drives [ … ]do utopian thesis (Ruti, “Why there is Always a not unequivocably support our well-being or Future in the Future” 116). In suggesting that even our survival,” they are “not purely destruc- queers embrace the position of the sinthomosex- tive,” for they also prompt “our inventiveness” ual and dispense with fantasies of reproductive (206). Though his own sources are diverse, here futurism, he holds out the utopian possibility I am interested in developing the implications

45 fantasy’s traversal for Lacanian theory – especially for that of “tra- of what it would mean to “traverse the fantasy” versing the fantasy”–of Dean’s insight that eventually cede to theories of what it would subjective destitution does not involve a perma- mean to identify with the sinthome, there is nent repudiation of the social. some question of whether the two theories are Dean’s account of the drive’s unpredictability distinct, or whether the latter merely elaborates suggests that fantasy’s traversal is initially the former. Lacan addresses “traversing the experienced as a field of immanent possibilities fantasy” at length in Seminar XI, The Four rather than as a new topography that is mapped Fundamental Concepts, but the discussion out in advance. Ruti, too, articulates an alterna- ends with the open question of that process’s tive reading of Lacan in response to No Future “beyond”: he writes that the question of how that finds in the Real a negativity that points “a subject who has traversed the radical phan- not to the permanent obliteration but rather to tasy experiences the drive” has “never been the renewal of subjectivity (“Why there is approached,” even though it points to “the Always a Future in the Future” 114). Though beyond of analysis” (273). Later, in Seminar I strongly concur with Ruti’s view of the XXIII, he uses a reading of James Joyce’s Real’s productive potential, her arguments do experimental writing to rework the question of not address the book’s implications for politics psychoanalysis’s aim, suggesting that it ends – questions that are particularly pressing for when the analysand identifies with the queer theory. sinthome. Seminar XXIII concludes by again Žizeǩ’s work is not the only account of the opening the question of the “beyond” of the political implications of fantasy’s traversal. His treatment, leaving it up to his audience’s theory leads at best to the replacement of the response in the same way that Joyce’s texts, current fantasy by another, and consequently which track their protagonists’ epiphanies, sim- to a new configuration of the imaginary, sym- ultaneously provoke quite different epiphanies bolic, and Real. However, other interpretations in their readers. of Lacan suggest that traversing the fantasy Though scholarship in the twenty-third semi- makes it possible for subjectivity – and indeed nar’s wake has offered rudimentary maps of the politics – to be structured otherwise. In none “beyond” of the psychoanalytic treatment, of these accounts does traversing the fantasy Lacan’s own writings do not offer evidence that entail the thoroughgoing rejection of politics, will definitively settle such disputes. Indeed, signification, and futurally oriented thinking Chiesa observes that the theory of the sinthome that Edelman promotes. Though he is right to prompts a scholarly confrontation “with what criticize Butler’s excessive emphasis on the sym- remains unconcluded in Lacan’swork,” and so bolic, for resignifying its terms and transform- invites “new inventions of his own reinvention ing the imaginary do not get at the kernel in of Freudian psychoanalysis” (189). Though Laca- the Real that keeps constrictive fantasies in nian scholarship in the 1990s all too often took place, his thoroughgoing rejection of all signifi- the form of internecine disputes in which hardli- cation distorts Lacanian theory and overstates ners opposed those who offered more flexible the case against her. In so doing, Edelman interpretations of the sacred texts of the undermines his own effort to traverse the “master,” the questions raised by the sinthome fantasy of reproductive futurism, even though cannot be settled through such constrictive rheto- Lacan’s work itself still holds significant poten- ric. The permanent openness of the question of tial for feminist and queer theory. “the beyond of analysis” is salutary: it is in keeping with the spirit of the theory of “traver- ” beyond the fundamental fantasy sing the fantasy, the very point of which is to clear the ground for a future whose contours Lacan’s theory of “traversing the fantasy” devel- are not available in advance. ops gradually as his seminars progress, and does Current scholarship suggests that there are not take a consistent form. Because explorations several forms that the “beyond” of fantasy can

46 coffman take. Lorenzo Chiesa, Edelman, Stavrakakis, traversal of the fundamental fantasy, the and Žizeǩ all synthesize Lacan’s theories of tra- moment of separation from the Symbolic versing the fantasy and embracing the and the subsequent process of symbolic sinthome. Chiesa notes that one possible inscription through a new, individualized fi outcome of fantasy’s traversal is that the Master-Signi er. (189) subject will actively engage in politics by It is easy to discern in Chiesa’s explanation an “ nam[ing] a movement, promot[ing] a new assumption that goes back to Lacan’s Seminar – ’ Symbolic resymbolized through one s individ- III: that in order to avoid psychosis, the fi – ual Master-Signi er/sinthome and struggle subject must be inscribed in the symbolic ” politically to establish its hegemony (Chiesa order through acceptance of a Master-Signifier. 191). In this account, the newly established However, as I argue in Insane Passions,a fi fi Master-Signi er would recon gure the imagin- problem that the third seminar presents for ary, symbolic, and Real, supporting them with feminist and queer theory is that Lacan insists a new fundamental fantasy. Another result that the subject accept the Name-of-the-Father would entail a new form of subjectivity that dis- as the Master-Signifier or else risk psychosis. penses with the imaginary and symbolic desire Though Chiesa’s perspective on traversing the for recognition in the Other, and so with the fantasy recalls the third seminar’s account of conventional Lacanian triad. Ed Pluth, for psychotic structure, he importantly gives instance, views traversing the fantasy and queer theory cause for optimism. In his embracing the sinthome as different means to account, traversing the fantasy could be a way – “ ” a similar end that of voiding of the Other of detaching from “hegemonic fundamental fan- ’ “ and supplanting the subject s previous invest- tasies”–which, in my view, could include those ” “ ment in fantasy with a more direct investment of reproductive futurism and “sexual differ- fi ” in signi ers as such (163). I similarly view ence”–and reconstituting subjectivity along ’ – Lacan s later work for instance, his eleventh the lines of a different fantasy. After fantasy’s – and twentieth seminars as less invested in traversal, symbolic inscription could be the importance of recognition or in a structural- achieved through the acceptance as Master-Sig- ist account of the symbolic order as they are in a nifier of something other than the Name-of- fi more open-ended account of signi cation in the the-Father. Other. These accounts of the end of the psycho- Žizeǩ’s work presents us with a similar ability analytic treatment are both potentially useful to transform the symbolic order, even though he – for queer theory far more so than the bleak disavows its potential to supplant the Name-of- version of Lacan that Edelman presents in No the-Father. For him, traversal of the fantasy Future. leads not to the permanent repudiation of futurity but to the emergence of a new point de rearticulating the fundamental fantasy capiton that grounds a newly configured imaginary, symbolic, and Real. In The Sublime Object For Chiesa, traversing the fantasy is akin to a of Ideology,Žizeǩ argues that politics takes temporary psychosis that undoes the fundamen- place through an “actual symbolic rearticulation tal fantasy to clear the ground for a different via the intervention of the Real of an act” (262). ’ fantasy s emergence. Actual psychosis, by con- This “act” targets the point de capiton that con- “ ’ trast, involves the subject s fundamental nects the imaginary, symbolic, and Real orders, ” fantasy being undone once and for all (184). and supplants it with a different signifier that He asserts that, unlike psychotics, neurotics founds a new symbolic (ibid.). In this account, “ ” can eventually turn their ideological the ground-clearing negativity of the act is fol- – lowed by the emergence of a new order.7 symptom the jouissance imposed by hege- ̌ monic fundamental fantasies – into a nonpsy- Drawing on Zizeǩ’s The Sublime Object of chotic sinthome when they undergo the Ideology, Stavrakakis observes that

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Going through the fantasy entails the realiz- inescapable Real of the drive” (106–07). ation of the lack or inconsistency in the Though I am sympathetic to Edelman’sinsis- Other which is masked by fantasy, the separ- tence on the need for a strategy that intervenes ation between objet petit a and the Other, a in both the Real and the symbolic, his formu- separation which is not only ethically sound lation implodes “sexual difference” and repro- but also “liberating” for our political imagin- ductive futurism while explicitly repudiating ation. (134) the project of developing a viable alternative Traversing the fantasy does not abolish all soci- to them. ality, but it does symbolically recognize “the Edelman himself states that “Sinthomosex- impossibility of social closure” (ibid.). Stavraka- uals could not bring the symbolic order to kis defines politics as this paradoxical gesture of crisis since they only emerge, in abjection, to the putting of this void into language (135). He support the emergence of Symbolic form” claims that it is only during a “brief moment, (106–07; emphasis added). This is because, as after the collapse of an order and before the Dominiek Hoens and Ed Pluth argue, the Laca- articulation of another one,” that one can nian sinthome provides “the grounding prin- “attest to the visibility of the hole in the big ciple of the Symbolic” and, as such, “an Other” (ibid.). Thus for Chiesa, Stavrakakis, enjoyment not outside of but inherent to the ̌ and Zizek,̌ the basic structure of the imaginary, Symbolic” (14). Lacan, too, makes this clear, symbolic, and Real remains intact after fan- arguing that “[I]t is the insistence of the tasy’s traversal, although their contents can subject, albeit that which a signifier represents shift to make way for a new regime. for another signifier, which obliges us to show Edelman’sinflection of Lacan’stheoryof that it is in the symptom that one of these two traversing the fantasy differs from Chiesa’s, signifiers in the symbolic finds its support” ̌ Stavrakakis’s, and Zizeǩ ’sinanimportant (Seminar XXIII 7). In elevating the sinthomo- way. Though Edelman’s neologism – the sexual for refusing to engage the very terms of sinthomosexual – puts a void into language, the symbolic that produces him, Edelman he denies the way in which his book is advocat- suggests that queers should simply abandon ing a form of politics, which he erroneously any attempt at structural change. assumes to involve activity exclusively within He concedes that Butler does show that “the the symbolic order. Edelman instead equates norms of the social order do, in fact, change all forms of politics and attempts at structural through catachresis, and those who once were rearticulation with Butler’s work. He presents persecuted as figures of ‘moralized sexual his theory of the sinthomosexual’srefusalof horror’ may” gain “a place on the public reprofuturity as an alternative to her argument stage” (No Future 107). However, he also in Antigone’s Claim that structural change can insists that this “redistribution of social roles be achieved by resignifying the terms of the doesn’t stop the cultural production of figures, symbolic. He asserts that “Butler’sAntigone sinthomosexuals all, to bear the burden of conduces to futurism’s logic of intelligibility embodying such a ‘moralized sexual horror’” byseekingnomoretowidenthereachof (ibid.). Though I have no argument with Edel- what it allows us to grasp” and “moves, by man’sŽizekiaň assertion that there will always way of the future, toward the ongoing legitima- be a “persistent remainder” that will erupt tion of social form through the recognition that from the Real no matter what shape the sym- is said to afford ‘ontological certainty and dura- bolic order may take, he overlooks the most bility’” (No Future 107). By contrast, “sintho- promising implications of Žizeǩ’s spin on Laca- mosexuals would insist on the unintelligible’s nian theory’s intertwining of the symbolic with unintelligibility, on the internal limit to signif- the imaginary and the Real: that a traversal of ication and the impossibility of turning Real the fantasy that intervenes at the level of the loss to meaningful profit in the Symbolic symbolic and the Real could change the point without its persistent remainder: the de capiton, making something other than

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“sexual difference” the constitutive antagonism futurity. Because the Real of antagonism is that governs their operation.8 “constitutive of the social,” and so structurally Edelman reaches this impasse and fails to unavoidable, traversing the fantasy does not move beyond it because he frames rearticulation provide an escape from either sociality or dis- in Butlerian terms – as only changing the sym- harmony, nor does it permanently suspend bolic – and not in the terms of Žizeǩ’s The futurity (ibid.). In attempting to make of the Sublime Object of Ideology, according to “brief moment” that follows fantasy’s traversal which rearticulation can more profoundly inter- a permanent state of jouissance, Edelman sus- vene in both the symbolic and the Real. In pends his challenge to reproductive futurism Žizeǩ’s and Chiesa’s accounts of Lacan, we and sexual difference outside of time and cannot do without the imaginary and symbolic, space, and denies the possibility of another no matter how illusory and prone to failure they order’s emergence (Stavrakakis 135). By con- may be, and however dependent they may be on trast, for Stavrakakis – as for Žizeǩ – traversing the Real of the sinthome. Edelman, by contrast, the fantasy involves the repudiation of the assumes that we can do without the imaginary current order through the creation of a tempor- misrecognitions and symbolic misunderstand- ary void that will inevitably be patched by the ings that constitute our very being, and that if articulation of a new regime. This account of tra- we were able to traverse the fantasy by embra- versing the fantasy offers a way of reorganizing cing the position of the sinthomosexual, we the positive contents of the imaginary, sym- could dispense with them along with the ideol- bolic, and Real rather than obliterating their ogies of reproductive futurism and “sexual structural functions. difference” that they support. Indeed, Edelman’s thesis is too utopian to be ̌ viable, at least in Zizekiaň terms, for the subjec- a politics of the signifier, a politics of “ tive destitution involved in traversing the the real fantasy” is for Žizeǩ not a permanent state but rather a temporary, ground-clearing movement The second theory of the “beyond” comes from that opens the way for a new point de capiton a more radical reading of Lacan’s eleventh and and a new structuration of the imaginary, sym- twenty-third seminars. In the latter, Lacan bolic, and Real. If a politicized version of suggests that in Joyce the unconscious has Lacan is dependent on grafting into the social fused with the Real and split from the ego in a his theory of the Real’s constitutive antagonism rupture that frees – and makes dispensable – by proposing that the symptom is “that which is the imaginary order. Chiesa asserts that ideologically thought to introduce disharmony Joyce’s example offers nothing more than an in a society that would otherwise be harmo- idiosyncratic, personal, and apolitical solution: niously uniﬁed under a certain utopian ideal,” one in which the subject has “become his own then it is important to remember that this antag- name, develop[ed] his own sinthome, while onism or disharmony is structural (Stavrakakis coexisting with the hegemonic Other” (191). 133). In the context of queer theory, this It’s worth noting that Lacan himself describes means that homosexuality is not inherently dis- Joyce’s knotting of the unconscious to the ruptive, nor is it inherently anti-social. It only Real as the result of a “mistake,” so Chiesa is appears as such in the context of homophobic right to suggest that the twenty-third seminar’s fantasies. Edelman clearly recognizes this account of Joyce’s rupture of the ego and split- point. But if he is right to suggest that embra- ting away of the imaginary is not meant to be cing the position of the sinthomosexual is a the sketch of a universally applicable theory of viable strategy for traversing the fantasies of subjectivity (Lacan, Seminar XXIII 63). At reproductive futurism and “sexual difference,” the same time, it is important to remember he is nonetheless wrong to assume that this that all manifestations of the sinthome occur allows for an escape from either sociality or at the place of “an error” (43). To say that a

49 fantasy’s traversal particular sinthome is a “mistake” does not in which is situated the chain of the signifier necessarily indicate that it is pathological, for that governs whatever may be made present of all subjects are constituted through the errors the subject – it is the field of that living being that their unique sinthomes suture. Chiesa in which the subject has to appear” (203). This nonetheless claims that Joyce was “a non-trig- process both constitutes and splits the subject, gered psychotic” whose position “in between however. He explains that “The subject is neurosis and psychosis” means that he “does born in so far as the signifier emerges in the not initially need to traverse any fundamental field of the Other. But, by this very fact, this fantasy” in order to produce the “partially indi- subject – which was previously nothing if not viduated symbolic” that Lacan describes (189). a subject coming into being – solidifies into a For other subjects, though, a successful treat- signifier” (199). After the birth of the subject ment could either precipitate a form of subjec- comes “separation,” and ’ tivity akin to Joyce s or lead to an entirely By separation, the subject finds, one might different outcome. say, the weak point of the primal dyad of Though Chiesa implies that Joyce’s subjectiv- the signifying articulation, in so far as it is ity is not viable and that “he needs to create his alienating in essence. It is in the interval founding Master-Signifier” in order to avoid between these two signifiers that resides the psychosis, Lacan is anything but clear on this desire offered to the mapping of the subject point in Seminar XXIII – or, for that matter, in the experience of the discourse of the in earlier seminars such as XI and XX Other he has to deal with, let us say, by (Chiesa 189). Chiesa’s assertion indicates a way of illustration, the mother. It is in so far as his desire is beyond or falls short of bias toward the structuralist premises behind what she says, of what she hints at, of what Lacan’s account of the nexus of the imaginary, she brings out as meaning, it is in so far as symbolic, and Real in Seminar III and other his desire is unknown, it is in this point of works. This slant is also clear in Chiesa’s, Stav- ̌ lack, that the desire of the subject is consti- rakakis’s, and Zizeǩ’s insistence that a new tuted. The subject – by a process that is not fantasy must emerge at the end of analysis. without deception, which is not without pre- Their stance speaks to a discomfort with the senting that fundamental twist by which what later Lacan’s open-ended engagement with post- the subject rediscovers is not that which ani- modern fragmentation, a concern that is legible mates his movement of rediscovery – comes not only in his remarks on Joyce’s punning and back, then, to the initial point, which is innovative linguistic strategies but also in that of his lack as such, of the lack of his aphanisis. (219) Seminar XI and Seminar XX. Though Lacan’s own designation of Joyce’s psychical As Lacan’s casual reference to the role of the structure as a “mistake” suggests that he, too, mother in this passage suggests, Seminar XI con- does not fully embrace the postmodern, the tinues to describe gender roles and familial con- “slippery slope” fallacy of reasoning drives figurations in ways that are now antiquated. Chiesa’s concern that “a hypothetical society While the explicitly homophobic discourse of of fully sinthomatic beings of language [ … ] Seminar III is absent from Seminar XI,inthe would inevitably” be catastrophic because of latter he still describes structures of desire in het- the resultant “fragmentation of the symbolic erosexual terms. He also claims that “the field of into many symbolics” (191; emphasis added). the Other” is, “strictly speaking, [ … ]the A significant difficulty with this claim is that Oedipus complex”–a concept long since discre- the term “the symbolic” recedes as Lacan’s dited by contemporary feminist and queer theory work progresses. Seminar XI, for instance, (204). However, given his emphasis that the gives sustained attention to the concept of the Other is the realm of the signifier, these concepts Real, but forgoes the term “the symbolic” in – however problematic – should be understood as favor of an emphasis on the signifier and the clusters of signification that are available for chal- Other. He writes that “The Other is the locus lenge and transformation.

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Lacan himself writes in Seminar XI that between the masculine and feminine positions, “What the subject has to free himself of is the for instance – the seminar’s explicit assertion aphanisic effect of the binary signifier and, if of the phallus’s contingency and its open- we look at it more closely, we shall see that in ended account of signification suggests that sub- fact it is a question of nothing else in the func- jectivity and desire need not always be grounded tion of freedom” (219). Shortly thereafter he on the acceptance of the primacy of the Name- begins to discuss the way that traversing the of-the-Father or the phallic signifier. That is, fundamental fantasy can be achieved through even though Lacan’s own reasoning does not analysis. It is important to note that traversing go this far, Seminar XX nonetheless opens up the fantasy simultaneously targets the imagin- the possibility of thinking of structures of ary, symbolic, and Real – so the subject’s desire and signification that are not anchored process of releasing her or himself from “the by the phallic signifier or governed by the aphanisic effect of the binary signifier” goes fantasy of (hetero)sexual difference. beyond the symbolic resignifications advocated Others similarly suggest that release from a by Butler. Seminar XI suggests that it is poss- symbolic order governed by a Master-Signifier ible for the subject to traverse the fundamental could be salutary rather than catastrophic. Ed fantasy and release him or herself from the very Pluth’s Signifiers and Acts offers an interpret- ideologies of (hetero)sexual difference on which ation of Lacan’s work on traversing the fantasy his exposition relies. and on the sinthome that does not require the Indeed, Lacan will go on in Seminar XX to emergence of a new Master-Signifier for assert that “the apparent necessity of the success. Pluth’s interpretation of Lacan dis- phallic function turns out to be mere contin- penses with the need for traversing the fantasy gency” (94). This statement differs significantly to lead to a newly configured fundamental from his notorious claim in his 1958 essay on fantasy. This frames the “beyond” of fantasy’s “The Signification of the Phallus” that the traversal in a way that suggests that refusing phallus is “the privileged signifier of that mark to acquiesce to a symbolic grounded in paternal in which the role of the logos is joined with law need not necessarily be psychotic. Pluth the advent of desire” (287). While that essay draws heavily on Seminar XI to describe fan- does note that a subject’s “anatomical” sex tasy’s traversal as leading to a “subjectivity of does not determine her or his position with the act” that is distinct from the form of subjec- respect to the phallus, Seminar XX goes tivity that precedes it.9 Unlike the latter, which farther by marking the phallic signifier as is supported by fantasy, the former entails an itself contingent (282). Lacan also emphasizes engagement with signifiers that is not totalizing in Seminar XX that the Other is not organized and not motivated by the desire for recognition in any coherent or systematic way. He writes: from the Other. In this stance, Pluth finds not only a new form of subjectivity but also [T]here is no Other of the Other. The Other, another mode of Lacanian politics. that is the locus in which everything that can Pluth emphasizes that the “subject of the act” fi be articulated on the basis of the signi er is able to use signifiers, but does so for purposes comes to be inscribed, is, in its foundation, other than demanding recognition. Joyce’sfre- the Other in the most radical sense. That is – why the signifier, with this open parenthesis, quent punning and coining of neologisms a marks the Other as barred. (81) practice to which Lacan pays careful attention – represent for Pluth the more inventive uses This differs markedly from the language of nor- of signifiers that are possible for the “subject malization that appears in his discussions of the of the act”: they participate in the act’s engage- symbolic order in Seminar III. And while the ment “in something like a reinvention of the ideology of (hetero)sexual difference does con- Other” (155).10 Paul Verhaeghe and Fredérić tinue to pervade Seminar XX – it is here that Declercq further explain that by the time of Lacan elaborates the supposed antinomy the seminar on the sinthome, Lacan supplanted

51 fantasy’s traversal his earlier emphasis on the way in which the closing passages and diagrams of Lacan’s symbolic order is secured by the Name-of-the- seminar on The Sinthome, which invoke the Father with “the opposite idea: that there is no unconscious, the ego, the imaginary, and the Other of the Other” (71). As I have shown, Real, but do not include the symbolic. Lacan introduced this idea even earlier in his Pluth argues that even though Lacan ceases career. According to the latter theory, the key to speak of the act and of traversing the element is the “function” of the Master-Signifier fantasy in his final seminars, emphasizing –“separation – and its operative character, instead the need for the analysand to embrace meaning that the operative function is a signif- and enjoy the sinthome, the two theories both ier” (ibid.). Even though “In Freud’s time, raise the question “of what remains of the this signifier was linked to the real father [ … ] Other after the act, and what can be done with this is a mere historical contingency” (ibid.).11 what could be considered a de-Othered sym- Thus, even though Lacan offers the Oedipus bolic” (163). He observes that for Jacques- complex and the Name-of-the-Father in Alain Miller, Seminar XXIII as examples of the sinthome, in the sinthome one forms a partnership with he also opens up the possibility of supplanting something of the Other at the level of enjoy- them with other formations (6). He explains ment – one enjoys the Other through one’s that the sinthome “is produced at the very sinthome, and this enjoyed Other, which place where an error occurs in the knot’s seems to occur in the form of an “enjoyed layout”–at “the place where the knot slips, meaning” or sens-jouis, is contrasted to the where there is a lapsus of the knot” (43). In Other as a site that guarantees meaning and other words, the sinthome takes an individual confers recognition. What happens after the and idiosyncratic – rather than a universal – voiding of the Other is that rather than an form that is not necessarily governed by the investment in fantasy, which is mediated by the Other, there is a direct investment in sig- Name-of-the-Father or the Oedipus complex. nifiers as such; and it is on this basis that a As Verhaeghe and Declerq put it, in Seminar partnership with the Other, on the level of XXIII enjoyment, is forged. (Ibid.) ’ Lacan invites everyone to follow Joyce s Pluth considers this outcome to be equally the example and to create their own sinthome case for the subject of the act (of fantasy’stra- at the place of the lack of the Other; the versal, derived from Seminar XI) as for the aim of this creative act is to be able to func- subject that has come to enjoy his or her tion without the signifier of the Name-of- the-Father, that is, the Other. (75) sinthome. Signifiers and Acts also allows for a new poli- This “creative act,” according to Juliet Flower tics of the signifier that intervenes in the Real, MacCannell, “transforms the traditional and so implicitly counters Chiesa’s false symptom and the symbol alike into a new assumption that politics is impossible from hybrid form: a linguistic, or linguistically Joyce’s position. Chiesa’s presumption surpris- modeled, formation that somehow permits ingly overlooks several decades of scholarship jouissance to flow through it rather than be that documents the way in which Joyce’s (and repressed and hidden by it” (Verhaeghe and other modernist writers’) experimental language Declercq 75; MacCannell 53). It is noteworthy does not evade but rather offers a fresh that Verhaeghe, Declercq, MacCannell, and approach to political questions. The politics of Pluth all emphasize the term “signifiers” language and gender animates the psychoanaly- rather than “the symbolic order.” This suggests tic feminist approaches to Joyce that Cixous and that this new mode of subjectivity is not necess- Kristeva initiated in the 1970s, and the politics arily inscribed in the symbolic and subject to a of Irish resistance to domination by the Master-Signifier simply by virtue of engaging British Empire drives the postcolonial in signification. This is in keeping with the approaches to Joyce pioneered by scholars

52 coffman such as Vincent Cheng.12 As MacCannell points to their impossible plight and created the con- out, in Seminar XXIII Lacan himself ditions under which their cause might have approaches Joyce’s wordplay as a form of resist- been taken up. For Pluth, this kind of politics ance that is conditioned by his political situation “calls into question the very organizing prin- as an Irishman subject to Imperial English (47). ciple of the political”–in the case of the She reminds us, moreover, that Cixous – whose migrant workers, “the limiting principle that own research on Joyce was already well under the ‘people’ to be represented in the state are way by the time she met Lacan – served as ‘citizens of France’” – and “brings an Lacan’s assistant during the initial stages of impasse” in the political field “into significa- the work that would eventually lead to his tion” (Pluth 154). Though, on the surface, seminar on the sinthome. Ruti further observes Pluth’s argument resembles Butler’s account that Cixous’s “The Laugh of the Medusa” uses of symbolic resignification, his theory differs “the annihilation of the normative order as a from hers by using the signifier to engage the means for constituting new forms of sociality, unsymbolizable Real and to force its contents generosity, and love,” and goes on to find simi- into representation. If queer scholars such as larly productive energies in Lacan’s seminar on George Haggerty, Lynda Hart, and Valerie the sinthome – even though Ruti surprises by Rohy are right to argue that homophobic downplaying the two theorists’ most significant societies stage queerness as the impossible differences (“Why there is Always a Future in Real, Pluth’s account of the Lacanian act – the Future” 116). Pluth’s book, too, appeals to with its ability to touch the Real and bring its Lacan’s reading of Joyce to emphasize the impasses into signification – offers the possi- more generative approach to signification that bility of shifting the terrain of signification. distinguishes Lacan’s “subject of the act” from Though Žizeǩ’s work does this too, Pluth the subject of fantasy, thereby allowing the differs by allowing for outcomes other than former a new mode of engaging in politics. another fantasy’s emergence. Following Žizeǩ and Alain Badiou, Pluth In both cases, such a ground-shifting gesture is claims that “a movement’s inability to articulate distinct from Edelman’s embrace of the abjected a specific demand, in contrast to movements position of the sinthomosexual, who is bound by that are quite specific and goal oriented, is an a strict interpretation of Lacan that equates all important marker of its political status” signification with the politics of the symbolic because its purely negative stance short-circuits that No Future refuses. Though the sinthomosex- the trajectory of desire that “always [ … ] lurk ual’s jouissance brings the workings of the drive [s] beyond the demands a group makes” (140– into representation, and so seems as if it could 41). However, Pluth goes beyond the politics lead to a viable politics, Edelman’s refusal of of the negative gesture by going on to theorize, all politics actively denies the value of taking via Badiou’s Peut-on penser la politique?, the up queers’ cause. His reading of Lacan equates potential for acts within the realm of politics all signification with a politics that seeks to that do not demand recognition from the change the symbolic without touching on the Other but rather directly intervene in the Real Real. Though traversing Lacan’s and some Laca- by asserting “an impossible existence” and shift- nians’ own fantasy of “sexual difference” could ing the terrain of signification (154). By way of open up the prospect of a regime other than example, Pluth calls attention to Badiou’s analy- that of reproductive futurism and “sexual differ- sis of a group of non-citizen migrant workers ence,” Edelman’s rejection of all signification – that rallied in the early 1980s under the cry: of any politics that involves the signifier – pre- “We want our rights!” (152–53). For Badiou, empts this possibility. the act of staking a claim to rights to which However, his stance does not necessarily the workers, as non-citizens, were not yet follow from Lacan’s theory of the sinthome, entitled was important not because it succeeded which Hoens and Pluth describe not as a – for it did not – but because it called attention refusal of meaning but as an investment in

53 fantasy’s traversal

“enjoyment-in-meaning” in the sense of the the closure of meaning is impossible. Pluth “production of meaning” enacted by poetic reminds us that for Lacan “an act does not language (11). Though they note that “[T]he just involve doing something, it involves doing sinthome is not concerned with the meanings something with signifiers” (101). Edelman, produced, but with the activity of production however, makes the same mistake with which itself,” what is important is that the sinthome Pluth (overly hastily) charges Žizek:̌ making does not involve a rejection of all signification the “act” involved in traversing the fantasy “a but rather a newfound relationship to signifiers negation of any relation to signifiers whatso- (ibid.). Indeed, as Ruti insists in response to No ever” (132).14 Future, if we read Lacan’s theory of the Whereas Edelman would have us dismiss all sinthome in a way that allows “for the possi- attempts to change the law simply because some bility that the signifier does not invariably of their advocates are motivated by the desire obey the dictates of the normative symbolic – for personal recognition, Pluth demonstrates that it is capable of poetic and innovative inter- that engaging in a politics of the signifier does ventions”–then “it becomes necessary to not necessarily constitute a demand for recog- rethink the relationship between the symbolic nition from the Other. He observes that and the real; it becomes conceivable that the fi unruly energies of the real can sustain and revi- An act is certainly using signi ers in some fi ” way [ … ] and is thus bound up with the talize, rather than merely weaken, the signi er fi “ ” Other as a site of signi ers in general. But ( Why there is Always a Future in the Future fi 13 the Other as mere site of signi ers should 119). And while some might be tempted by a not be confused with the Other as a site common but misguided critique of deconstruc- capable of granting recognition and guaran- tion to shift the blame for Edelman’s nihilism teeing identity and meaning. (117) from Lacan onto his reliance on Paul de Man’s work, the queer theorist’s repudiation of all In rightfully targeting the latter uses of signif- attempts at signification comes from neither iers, Edelman overlooks the way in which the French psychoanalyst nor the Belgian other deployments of them could be felicitous deconstructionist. Neither the former, in point- for queer theory and politics. ing out the symbolic’s failure to achieve mean- ’ ing s closure, nor the latter, in insisting on its another scene’s emergence indeterminacy, rejects all forms of signification. These theorists insist, rather, on signification’s Though all of these accounts of the “beyond” of unpredictability. While Edelman similarly fantasy’s traversal undermine Edelman’s argu- identifies the desire for meaning’s closure as ment that it leaves queers with no future, traver- an especially problematic feature of the fantasy sing the fantasy is not a surefire way of achieving of reproductive futurism, he makes it seem as structural transformation, nor are we guaran- if this impossible desire renders all attempts teed that those changes will be for the better. at signification futile. Chiesa observes that in traversing the fantasy To the contrary: as Pluth suggests, it is poss- “the subject’s encounter with the real lack ible to have a relationship to signification and beneath his ideologized fundamental fantasy even to the future that is not driven by the forces him to assume the lack in the universal” kind of perpetually unfulfilled desire that (191). However, the subsequent “resymboliza- Edelman rejects. Pluth’s and Ruti’s willingness tion of lack is [ … ] always carried out at the to engage the signifier is a helpful counterpoint level of the particular” (ibid.). Though I have to Edelman’s argument in No Future, which – challenged his claim that Joyce’s resymboliza- despite some nods in the introduction to the tion has no political efficacy, Chiesa’s larger need to fight for equal rights and to embrace point remains valid: individual instances of tra- the position of the sinthomosexual – would versing the fantasy might or might not reconfi- abandon all attempts at signification because gure the positive terms of the symbolic (ibid.).

54 coffman

Some traversals may take the form of individual Laplanche, and makes a far more compelling solutions that have no political force, while case for the drive’s capacity to produce heteroto- others may engage in a viable mode of politics. pias than does No Future. Indeed, de Lauretis Edelman’s No Future has, as I suggested observes that despite her and Edelman’s pro- above, its own mode of attempting to traverse jects’ uncanny similarities, they “diverge” the fantasy, one whose relationship to politics because she declines to make a “programme,” is vexed. Teresa de Lauretis rightfully observes an “ethical position,” of embracing the death that one can discern in Edelman’s rhetoric “the drive (Freud’s Drive 87). But what she misses, intimation of a political project,” though one commenting again on her and Edelman’s simi- both “affirmed and denied” through the simul- larities three years later in GLQ, is that this taneity of the book’s call to jouissance and its subtle difference between their projects is critique of Butler’s politics of the signifier. crucial. Whereas Edelman’s book deploys rheto- She finds in Edelman’s irony –“The dissonance ric and figuration in the service of his call to between [his] tone and words”–the trace of identify with the drive by embracing the figure “two contrary impulses toward affirmation and of the sinthomosexual, hers, by contrast, negation” (“Queer Texts” 257). On the one emphasizes that the drive itself has a figural hand, she finds that the book’s polemic enacts capacity – one whose similarity “to the most a queer “manifesto” against reproductive futur- highly wrought forms of writing” prompts her ism and literality, and so participates in politics; suggestion that “a theory of the drive might on the other, its persistent irony performs a well allow the figural dimension of writing into negativity that undoes the illusory order of the space of thinking and suspend the demand literal meanings on which politics depends for rational, scientific, referential coherence” (257–59). As a “figure of negativity,” Edelman’s (Freud’s Drive 84). De Lauretis’s attention to writing distinguishes itself from purely referen- the drive’s own figural potential opens up the tial discourse by actively undercutting very possibilities for heterotopias that Edel- language, making words “mean something else man’s more tightly bound framework forestalls. or displac[ing] them onto another scene” (259). While I welcome the heterotopic figurations However, this scene does not necessarily take of the drive that de Lauretis envisions, and the form of a “heterotopia,” as de Lauretis while I find much to admire in psychoanalysis’s suggests (ibid.). Whereas Foucault characterizes Freudian and Laplanchian modes, I nonetheless “heterotopia” as the “incongruous [ … ] linking see queer theory’s Lacanian inflection as together of things that are inappropriate” and prompting something different: a traversal of that share no common ground, the tightly homophobic fantasy that clears the ground for woven argument of No Future is anything but a new fundamental fantasy, or even a new fragmentary (xvii). Indeed, her comments on relationship to signifiers altogether.15 Though Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto – in it is conceivable that a newfound relation to sig- which de Lauretis finds a “charge of negativity” nifiers could entail a heterotopia, it could take that exposes a new “critical space” for view – many other forms as well: the results of fan- resemble Pluth’s and Badiou’s account of poli- tasy’s traversal are never set out in advance. tics’ negativity far more than Foucault’s vision Despite the book’s argument for traversing of heterotopia. Her suggestion that queer the fantasy of reproductive futurism, I am not theory displaces queer politics “onto another convinced that No Future has had this effect. scene” is apt, however, especially given psycho- Indeed, de Lauretis suggests that No Future analysis’s formulation of fantasy as a “scene.” may be as “unreadable” as Edelman’s neolo- Other kinds of queer theory may well produce gism, the sinthomosexual: “A word, a book, a the heterotopia that de Lauretis envisions. Her task without a future” (“Queer Texts” 258). own Freud’s Drive (2008) explores the unpredic- Reflecting in 2011 on No Future and other tably figural properties of the drive’s negativity books that followed in the wake of her 1990 con- as conceived by Sigmund Freud and Jean ference and 1991 issue of differences on “Queer

55 fantasy’s traversal

Theory” as a “project at once critical and politi- signifier that the collective embrace of his cal,” de Lauretis raises newfound doubts about sinthome might otherwise provoke (No Future the compatibility of queer theory and politics. 153–54). Even though Edelman recruits Yet we might consider a more expansive defi- Lacan’s emphasis on the imaginary’s and the nition of “politics” than she proposes when symbolic’s failures for a polemic that hyperboli- she claims that “literality, or referentiality, is a cally calls for us to refuse all politics and signif- mainstay of political discourse” and that “rheto- ication – not just a politics such as Butler’s that ric is primarily instrumental” (257). Scholars fails to intervene in the Real – it is also possible have long found in experimental writers’ to read Lacan elsewise: as promising both the figural language, rhetorical performances, displacement and the renewal of queer politics. punning, and reworking of established genres Edelman’s extremist stance is unhelpful for a deep engagement with politics. Nor is the queer theory because it does not address the realm of politics purely referential, as de Laure- more practical problems that a heterosexist tis assumes. To the contrary: everyday political and cissexist symbolic order regulated by discourse is often saturated with metaphors and “sexual difference” presents for LGBTQI other figures of speech, and psychoanalytic fem- persons. As Gayle Salamon demonstrates by inists such as Cixous have reworked the appar- reading Lacan’s essay on “The Agency of the ently straightforward genre of the manifesto in Letter in the Unconscious” against legal docu- ways that are highly political and proliferate sig- ments, Lacan’s argument that the Law of the nification beyond the merely referential. Father regulates the symbolic order cannot Though I concur with de Lauretis that No account for the complexities created by the Future gains its theoretical purchase from a fig- various legal constructs of “sex” that lead to dis- urality that undercuts and displaces referential crepancies between city, state, and local docu- meaning, I see no reason to deny that this is, ments that indicate gender: for example, to the in and of itself, a form of politics. impossible situations created for the transper- This is not, however, the same thing as saying son that holds some documents indicating that Edelman’s argument is successful. His call “male” and others indicating “female.”16 that queers embrace the sinthomosexual’s jouis- Those in same-sex relationships, too, encounter sance does promote traversal of the fantasy, and numerous problems brought about by the No Future attempts to enact such a movement inscription of “sexual difference” as the “letter through its vehement mockery of the symbolic of the law,” from denial of medical benefits and imaginary edifices of reproductive futurism and hospital visitation rights to immigration and “sexual difference.” Thus, despite Edel- injustices that force couples either to live apart man’s vehement repudiation of futurity – a or to break the law to remain together. In the refusal that he admits to be impossible – his face of these problems it is no help whatsoever book’s conceptual framework and arguments to claim, as do some Lacanians, that the ideology both point to the possibility of a future of “sexual difference” does not oppress queers beyond fantasy’s traversal. However, the because its logic is independent of biological book’s refusal to engage any notion of a future sex, or to assert, as does Edelman, that queers leaves readers ill-equipped to imagine a world should embrace the structural position of the organized otherwise or, more modestly, to be sinthomosexual that is produced by and actively able to navigate its uncertain terrain. Edelman’s maintains a homophobic symbolic. For those argument only leads to what Chiesa calls encountering such problems, a politics that “coexist[ence] with the hegemonic Other”–a can alter the symbolic via the Real is vital. coexistence that involves ironizing rather than Though it is certainly true that some gays and supplanting the structuring terms of the sym- lesbians seek personal validation through legal bolic and the Real (191). Edelman’s thorough- recognition – a mode of mainstream gay and going rejection of the symbolic order and its lesbian politics that Edelman rightfully chal- illusory meanings forestalls any future for the lenges – other queers might be motivated to

56 coffman change the legal system for more pragmatic Žižek,” by targeting both orders “traversing the reasons, such as living in the same country as fantasy” of (hetero)sexual difference would one’s partner or eliminating the problems obviate this disagreement. created by inconsistent gender assignments on 3 See, for instance, Butler’s Gender Trouble, Bodies legal documents. Political efforts to alter the That Matter, and Undoing Gender. While it is easy to “letter of the laws” that oppress queers are not find support in Seminar III for her reading of the necessarily motivated by “the governing symbolic order as heteronormative – Lacan’s dis- fantasy of achieving Symbolic closure” and course is at its most homophobic in that seminar, gaining recognition in the Other, as Edelman invoking phrases such as “sexual normalization”– assumes (14). he moves away from these concepts in his sub- In this account, queer theory, like the Laca- sequent work (189). As Roudinesco demonstrates, Lacan went on to critique the normalizing practices nian sinthome, need not abolish all signification. of ego psychology (Jacques Lacan 250–52; Jacques Rather, queer theory can prompt fresh significa- Lacan & Co. 270–76). Moreover, he eventually tions that will insist, like letters in the uncon- revised his early account of signification, as Pluth scious, not only on the displacement of the shows. Žižek’s reactions to Butler have only current fantasy but also on another scene’s further polarized this debate, as he relies heavily emergence. Whether this entails the consti- on Lacan’s account of “sexual difference” from tution of a new fantasy or the Seminar XX without discussing the implications of production of fresh significations the psychoanalyst’s move away from terms such that do not seek recognition in as “the symbolic” in this phase of his work. For Ž ž ’ the Other, such a queer theory i ek s responses to Butler, see The Ticklish entails not the refusal but the Subject and their dialogue with one another and Laclau in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. For renewal of politics. her replies to Žižek, see Bodies That Matter and her contributions to Contingency, Hegemony, notes Universality. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer from 4 See my essay entitled “The Sinthomosexual’s Angelaki for helpful comments on an earlier Failed Challenge to (Hetero)sexual Difference” version of this essay. for an extended discussion and critique of this aspect of No Future. 1 Fink and Shepherdson both observe that there are two senses of the “Real” in Lacan. The first, 5 Approaching an earlier version of Edelman’s “presymbolic” sense of the term can be thought argument from the perspective of political of either as “mythical “ (Shepherdson 47) or as a theory, Brenkman similarly asserts that “Queer- “hypothesis” (Fink 27) produced from within the ness is not outside sociality; it is an innovation in terms of the symbolic, whereas the second, “post- sociality” (“Queer Post-Politics” 180). Though symbolic” sense of the Real “is characterized by Brenkman’s follow-up piece, “Politics, Mortal and impasses and impossibilities due to the relations Natal,” is salutary for its insistence on the way in among the elements of the symbolic order itself” which neither the social nor the political field are (Shepherdson 27; Fink 27). as totalizing as Edelman’s reading of the Lacanian symbolic assumes, the former nonetheless does 2 For examples of contemporary Lacanians’ insis- not fully answer Edelman’s insistence upon the fig- tence on the foundational role of “sexual differ- urality of his call for queers to embrace the death ence,” see Copjec (“The Fable of the Stork” and drive. By contrast, Dean’s and de Lauretis’s sub- Read my Desire) and Žižek (contributions to Contin- sequent psychoanalytic interventions push the dis- gency, Hegemony, Universality and The Ticklish cussion toward a more precise assessment of No Subject). These two theorists have been involved Future’s inscription of the drive. in an extended dispute with Judith Butler over the status of “sexual difference,” which Butler 6 It is also important to note that in “The Anti- views as symbolic and available for resignification social Homosexual” Dean hints at a moderation and which Copjec and Žižek instead view as Real of the Lacanian orthodoxies of Beyond Sexuality by and intractable. Yet as I argue in “Queering insisting that “The symbolic law of reproductive

57 fantasy’s traversal futurism is not as encompassing or determinative feeling fully present to ourselves” (122). Ruti’s as Lacanians like Edelman seem to think” (827). deliberately hesitant diction – her ellipses, her con- This expansion of Dean’s theoretical framework cession that the moment of subjective disposses- continues in “An Impossible Embrace.” sion is not complete self-presence but merely “the closest we ever get to” it – simultaneously “ Ž ž ” 7 As I argue in Queering i ek, this aspect of props up and self-reflexively distances Lacan’s insis- Ž ž ’ i ek s work offers queer theory an alternative tence that the belief in total self-presence is an ima- “ ” to sexual difference and reproductive futurism, ginary and symbolic illusion. This rhetorical though this is a future that he persistently denies. strategy is one way of figuring the “post-humanist” 8 It must be noted, however, that Žižek resists the reading of Lacan that her review of Edelman pro- idea that “sexual difference” could be anything motes, an interpretation of which I am not fully other than a fundamental antagonism. See my persuaded. I am nonetheless struck by her “ ” article entitled “Queering Žižek” for a reading of repeated emphasis on the immediacy of feeling and response to this resistance. as the guarantor of this post-humanist, post-Real reality. This focus on feeling recalls Snediker’s 9 See especially Pluth 130–32 for a discussion of case for the importance of attending to the imma- the theory of traversing the fantasy that Lacan nence of affect, yet Ruti importantly reclaims the offers in Seminar XI. productive potential of the “negative” experience of self-shattering that his theory rejects. 10 See Pluth 107–14 for an extended discussion of Lacan’s analysis of puns. 14 Pluth’s criticism of Žižek glosses over the different stages of his thought and overlooks 11 Given Verhaeghe and Declercq’s recognition of the point at which he theorizes traversal of the the contingency of the Name-of-the-Father, it is fantasy as holding the potential to rearticulate the unfortunate that they conclude what is otherwise terms of the symbolic via an act of the Real. For a forward-thinking article by reiterating Lacan’s a discussion of these points in Žižek’s work, see arguments in Seminar XX: Encore about the my essay entitled “Queering Žižek.” respective positions taken by “[t]he man” and “Woman” (76). What seems to me remarkable 15 De Lauretis’s argument in Freud’s Drive is less about Seminar XXIII is the way in which the persuasive on the subject of Lacan: she concedes theory of the sinthome, though clearly connected too quickly to Laplanche’s view of Lacan as to Lacan’s view of the impossibility of sexual placing, through an “accent” on “the signifier, relationship, divorces it from the conceptions of nothing more than a new accentuation of the masculinity and femininity from Seminar XX death drive” (LaPlanche qtd in de Lauretis, Freud’s that continue to dominate much Lacanian Drive 83). This runs parallel to the excessively nega- scholarship. tive reading of Lacan that I critique earlier in Edel- man’s No Future and in Pluth’s reading of Žižek. 12 See especially Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” and The Exile of James Joyce, and Kristeva, 16 See “Withholding the Letter: Sex as State Prop- Desire in Language and Revolution in Poetic Language. erty,” chapter 7 of Salamon’s Assuming a Body. 13 Though Ruti’s and my responses to No Future share the view that Edelman’s relentless negativity obscures the cause that Lacan’s theory of the bibliography sinthome gives for optimism, the difference Brenkman, John. “Politics, Mortal and Natal: An between our approaches lies in my stronger inter- Arendtian Rejoinder.” Narrative 10.2 (2002): 186– ’ est in Lacan s implications for politics and her 92. Print. greater interest in using Lacan’s theory of embracing the sinthome to ground what she calls a “post- Brenkman, John. “Queer Post-Politics.” Narrative humanist” account of the self-identical subject 10.2 (2002): 174–80. Print. (“Why there is Always a Future” 114). This Butler, Judith. Antigone‘s Claim. New York: agenda manifests most explicitly when she claims Columbia UP, 2002. Print. that moments of subjective “dissolution” nonetheless “make us feel [ … ] well [ … ] immediately real. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive They may in fact be the closest we ever get to Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.

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