Additional note on a-sexuation. From the heteros-patriarchal fantasy to the a-stateless fantasy (2022)

Additional note on a-sexuation

From the heteros-patriarchal fantasy to the a-stateless fantasy

 

Published online, January 2022.

Thanks to Hélène C. for encouraging further acrobatics. For the love of feline writings.

 

[with hyperlinks]

 

NB: following “A-sexuation: perversion of the phallic and function of castration”.

 

A-sexuation formulated in writings such as these extends and also responds to the sexuation written by J. Lacan known as “Sexuation”: is this tenable? Sexuation where we read the writing of the heteros-patriarchal fantasy aiming to cure the love of sex (in the sense of sex curing love — where love envisions the Phallus).

Any other comment could stop there. But, that was without considering that the precious nuance lodged at the heart of these writings engages us in the unfinished exploration of the not-all phallic, as this same J. Lacan proposed.

The not-all, more interesting than the simple contradiction of the all without needing to be contrary, emerging from the flaw, the irreducible separation that made us have to think the visible difference of the sexes even if it meant ignoring their depths; the not-all that allows for the support of an incision, sublimation of the flaw, since it is targeted by our thought against a background of extension.

We can, however, take for granted what has been brought out by previous analysts. The most central of these achievements consists in considering libido and desire, in particular, as necessarily heteros, in the sense that the other is never quite the same (even in appearances, always “deceptive”); let us propose the writing of the formulas of a-sexuation, following those that established the benchmark of the heteros-patriarchal fantasy, sexuation outside the phallus, giving to the present time and the discourse that dominates it the care of perverting at will the approach to the cause of desire by the speaking-being.

Henceforth, let us rely on the writing of the not-all heteros-patriarchal fantasy, which has no need to proliferate into innumerable designations whose list seems infinite (it is so by structure and by logic), but which nevertheless gains its necessary relative independence, especially at this moment of new significant emergence among sexes and genders, in the midst of this same moment so reactionary in the development of psychoanalysis. The fantasy not-all heteros-patriarchal, which aims, distinctly from the heteros-patriarchal fantasy, to cure gender of sex (in the sense of sex curing gender — where gender envisions object a), is the a-stateless fantasy.

There is, evidently, the mark of the destiny of identity which has ceased to be a single imaginary focal point, necessary as much as inconsistent, to become, under the effects of evolving discourse, an object of covetousness assimilable to genital sex: residues of an attempt to say no to castration, often falling into its refusal (at least as much as we observed previously concerning the heteros-patriarchal fantasy).

In doing so, let us free the fantasized psychoanalyst as object a instead of the semblance — who claims not to be situated by their very belief — thanks to the not-all of Jacques the patriarch who deserves better than believers; let us restore to his beautiful loves their anarchisms and sublimations of writings: then the function of the analyst, semblance of the a, is also illuminated by occupying the function of a/Other of the sexual, by which sexuation beyond-the-phallus imposes in the hollow of the body to resolve what no longer holds as an enigma outside it (where we are, it seems, in our changing psychic economy).

It would be surprising if psychoanalytic theory could not be pushed further in the exploration of continents that remained dark in every era where some progress becomes discernible, never finished. Still no harmonious solution, no theoretical system or coherent thought to provoke science; too many feverish radicalizations on the part of the phallus-bearers of psychoanalysis: all circumstances that force humility before the primary (and not secondary) effects of the non-sexual relation of speaking-beings.

We only have to continue, without refusing to welcome what is said and invented, from sets to liberalizing dissimilarities where object a also holds as the object without cause, in reality (in the Imaginary), capable of satisfying what is at play in the present era of the image of the image that we live in our virtualities. Where we can question whether the modulations of our lives suggest that there would be more and more Men (regardless of anatomy), in the sense of the reading of sexuation supporting the quest for the partner through object a; and equally an inflammation of the blinded by desire (The woman who does not exist), abandoned to the deflated balloon of the phallic symbol, from which one must cure oneself with great blows of perversion of the loving relationship for lack of ever being able to reach sex itself, but only the sex that allows itself to be excited.

Perhaps these are effects of capitalist discourse, neoliberalism, or even psychoanalysis having circulated knowledge about the sexual (knowledge difficult to bear)? Perhaps… In the meantime, let us not deprive ourselves of describing the processes at work that differ from the existing theoretical corpus, on the one hand, and on the other hand, let us observe the openings towards other areas of knowledge that have remained pending until now.

In order to pursue, or follow this a-stateless fantasy that is asserting itself in current psychoanalytic clinical practice, it would be necessary to develop each quality and each nuance from the couch where this knowledge is deposited. For everything suggests that this modulation of our apprehension of reality, escaped from the psychic forms we force upon it, will be neither satisfactory nor definitive, nor even effective in revealing the denial of the prior fantasy before reabsorbing it into new forms probably preventing the crushing of revealed knowledge: the non-relation can only increase in its effects, as its structure imposes itself unalterable, ever more revealed by the fantasies withering within it under the pressure of certain truths.

That being said, for the writing of the formulas from the said formulas, few satisfactory possibilities exist. Thus, by repeatedly turning and returning the modules of the four writings that give sexuation, it turns out that a-sexuation can only be written by reducing the former from a to the point where they reduce themselves. Thus (as a joke):

A way of writing the “not-all” in relation to the “all,” and of reducing its fracture. Phi dissipates, in the wake of the a that always eludes even when it becomes master of the orientation of a sex. After which only the not-all/all relation remains, where the all is the denominator, while the not-all is the numerator.

From fractions, we know, moreover, that the numerator tells us how many parts are used, while the denominator tells us into how many parts the whole is divided. But here there is no whole in the numerator, instead the not-all that the whole cannot divide (whereas the inverse would be possible, to lead to the effacement of the not-all, but we already perceive tendencies in other models). The not-all, always greater than the whole that breaks its teeth on it.

A numeration starting from the incision and no longer from what signifies fullness, supported by our unconscious knowledge and clinical teachings. A result freed from the entirely phallic performativity that robs the signifier of not being a performative, just as the phallus is so easily represented in the reality that deceives us on the path of our supposed desires in the trace of some phallic stakes; while the cause of desire, that which escapes ordinary misunderstanding better than the phallus, maintains that what will be sought is not there in the first place: closer, in my opinion, to the reality of the object of desire and its cause compared to the formulas of sexuation so comforting of the heteros-patriarchal fantasy: a question of civilization and perhaps cultural urgency… but the 1970s had their reasons; the 2020s have demands for positivism that tend towards the absolute of limitless jouissance for lack of an understanding of beings who speak to each other (when they still try to do so)

Perhaps, by this path, we could better approach the convocations of plural Jouissance and the possibility of opposing its processes, without shrinking from the practices of the impossible to which a better access to the infinite opens us… Not without the phallus, but very much outside it. Finally! (if this frees us from the excesses of patriarchy, for example, past and present, it is progress; if it leaves us disoriented to accuse others of being the new limits of the self, then it is a rather serious problem).

 

2022 compels us to it. Best wishes.