Reading Seminar Xx: Lacans Major Work On Love, Knowledge, And Feminine Sexuality

READING SEMINAR XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality Suzanne Barnard Bruce Fink, Editors State University of New York Press READING SEMINAR XX SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture Henry Sussman, Editor READING SEMINAR XX Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality EDITED BY Suzanne Barnard Bruce Fink STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW YORK P RESS A LBANY © 2002 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production and book design, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reading Seminar XX : Lacan’s major work on love, knowledge, and feminine sexuality / Suzanne Barnard & Bruce Fink, editors. p. cm.—(SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5431-2 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-7914-5432-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psychoanalysis. 2. Lacan, Jacques, 1901– I. Barnard, Suzanne, 1963– II. Fink, Bruce, 1956– III. Series. BF173 .R3657 2002 150.19’5—dc2 10 9 8 12002017727 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Introduction Suzanne Barnard 1 Knowledge and Jouissance Bruce Fink 21 Hysteria in Scientific Discourse Colette Soler 47 The Real of Sexual Difference Slavoj Zizek 57 “Feminine Conditions of Jouissance” Geneviève Morel 77 Love Anxieties Renata Salecl 93 What Does the Unconscious Know about Women? Colette Soler 99 Lacan’s Answer to the Classical Mind/Body Deadlock: Retracing Freud’s Beyond Paul Verhaeghe v 109 vi Reading Seminar XX The Ontological Status of Lacan’s Mathematical Paradigms Andrew Cutrofello 141 Tongues of Angels: Feminine Structure and Other Jouissance Suzanne Barnard 171 Contributors 187 Index 189 INTRODUCTION Suzanne Barnard Encore, or Seminar XX, represents the cornerstone of Lacan’s work on the themes of sexual difference, knowledge, jouissance, and love. In this landmark seminar, Lacan maps a critical terrain across philosophy, theology, history, linguistics, and mathematics, articulating certain exemplary points at which psychoanalysis provides a unique intervention into these discourses. Arguing that the subject of psychoanalysis is a consequence of the Enlightenment’s rejection of reality in pursuit of the real, Lacan sets out in Seminar XX to articulate how a psychoanalytic science of the real might transform accepted ideas about sexual difference, being, and knowledge. With his predictable rhetorical flair, expansive reach, and provocative wit, Lacan exposes the founding fantasies of historically dominant systems of thought, illuminating, for example, the Eros characteristic of philosophical and religious assumptions about the “One” of being or God, the ambivalence about the loss of a synthetic cosmology attending modern science, and other key philosophical and scientific assumptions about the subject,