Heft - Institut für Theorie ith

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89
One
Splits
into
Two
To be sure, language constantly attempts
to capture the sexual di≠erence by its
means, and perhaps this defines a very
basic linguistic gesture. The most general
classification of nouns, in most languages,
follows precisely the sexual pattern
in order to establish the roughest of
divides, that into masculine and feminine
gender. This opposition, supposedly
taken from nature, is used as the
most elementary guideline to sort out
the vocabulary. But the spectacular
metonymic proliferation in all directions
testifies to the impossibility of the
task. When anything can be grammatically
sexed, then nothing can be, and
the very instrument of such classification
is ruined by its own success. In
François Tru≠aut’s Jules et Jim there is
a famous line where Oskar Werner, as a
German, tells Jeanne Moreau (not merely
a French woman, but a French woman
par excellence): “What a strange language
is French where ‘l’amour’ is masculine
and ‘la guerre’ feminine!” In German,
with “die Liebe” and “der Krieg,” it
is the opposite, supposedly how it should
be if we are to follow “a natural pattern.”
In Germany love is the domain of women
and war is the domain of men, while
in France, reputed for its hang for perversion,
it seems to be the other way
round. “Make love not war!” would have
a completely di≠erent meaning and
impact in Germany or in France. So taking
the sexual di≠erence as the pattern
of grammatical gender makes for the
general confusion. The infinite possibilities
of extension in any direction
make the di≠erence flourish, while the
guiding principle becomes completely
blurred. Everything can be accounted
for, and squeezed into the mold, in terms
of gender, except for the sexual difference
itself which serves as the model.
The di≠erence on which everything may
be modeled persists as a real which cannot
itself be seized as a di≠erence. 14
If there is a real of sexual di≠erence, a
real which makes for its two, irreducible
to the two of count or the expansion of
One, then it can be most simply and
economically epitomized by Lacan’s
dictum: “There is no sexual relation” / “Il
n’y a pas de rapport sexuel.” There is a
two, but there is no relation. The program
for this series on the Figure of Two
invoked among other things the image
of the two, the satisfaction or the spell
provided by a symmetrical image, a
doubling structuring the image. Perhaps
the best known figure of such an
image is the image of yin-yang and its
disposition in the Tao sign. It is an
image which has massively served as
support for an entire cosmology, ontology,
social theory, astronomy. It gives
figure precisely to the two (and only
two) poles of masculine and feminine,
and the image is formed in such a way
that they complement and complete
each other, in perfect symmetry. There
is a circle, and the circle itself is divided
by the half-circle lines. The masculine
and the feminine principle, their conflictual
complementarity, are taken as the
clue which informs every entity, indeed
the entire universe. What does this image
convey? There is a strong thesis presented
in it which one could spell out
like this: there is a relation. There is a
sexual relation. Every relation is sexual.
The relation exists emphatically, conspicuously,
in a demonstrative manner,
in the complementarity of the masculine
and the feminine, in their perfect
balance, the perfect match, and can
serve as a paradigm for everything else.
Everything can be interpreted in the
light of this image. This thesis implies
and manifests even more: there is sense.
The image serves as the visual embodiment
of sense that can provide everything
else with sense. Sense consists in
the relation. The paradigm that regulates
sense also regulates the sexual
relation. 15 It has the power to bestow
sense, stemming from the two. So this
sign states: one divides into two, and
the two merge into one. Exactly the
opposite from the other notorious Chinese
dictum: one divides into two, but
two does not merge into one. For Lacan
the Aristotelian ontology is like our
western version of yin-yang, it makes
analogous assumptions about ὕλη and
μoρφή, matter and form, the feminine
and the masculine. Ontology is always
secretly sexualized, it is premised on
the hidden assumption about the relation.
16 So the thesis that there is no
sexual relation implies a strong ontological
thesis: there is an irreducible
two, but no relation, not even, and especially
not, the relation of count. There is
the Other (of the unconscious, of sex),
but it cannot be counted for one. It lacks,
it does not exist, but nevertheless, and
this is the whole problem, its non-existence
does not amount to a simple zero,
a nothing.
What, if anything, is the Other? Of what
the Other is the name? It is the Other of
the symbolic, but naming the locus
where the symbolic slips – the Other is
the Other of the bug, not of the order –
and this is the place where the unconscious
sneaks in and where the subject
of desire takes its slippery hold. And the
Other is the Other of sex, of the body, of
enjoyment, the surplus enjoyment, the
drive, the partial objects, the heterogeneous
excess which is the bug of sexuality
and can never be assigned to its
place. Those are the two directions of
the initial discovery of psychoanalysis,
and the notion of the Other takes them
together under the same roof, it names
together, under one heading, in the
same framework, that which in language
and in the body presents both
lack and excess. And this lack / excess
emerges precisely at the interface of
bodies and languages, at the interface
of these countable entities, at their
overlapping, their infringing of one
upon the other.
14 - The same goes for the difference
between activity as masculine
and passivity as feminine, the
common image describing the
sexes, which greatly preoccupied
Freud. In the New
Introductory Lectures he speaks
about this spontaneous
assumption and advises against
it: “Es erscheint mir unzweckmäßig
und es bringt keine neue
Erkenntnis,” Sigmund Freud,
“Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur
Einführung in die Psychoanalyse,”
in: Freud, Studienausgabe
(note 8), vol. 1, p. 547. This is an
imaginary difference, an image
that we impute to sex, which
may be telling, but it is not an
affair of knowledge.
15 - Lacan comments briefly on
yin-yang in The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-Analysis,
Harmondsworth 1977, p. 151.
16 - See Lacan, Encore (note 9), p. 76.