Is Lacan a Sexist - Essay Example

Lacan: A Sexist? The sexual characteristic of a person has always been a debatable issue at any time. Often, a person is judged by gender and not by capabilities and knowledge. It is a well-known fact that the female gender is considered as subordinate of its male counterpart. Though the latter statement can be considered as very conservative and unreasonable, there are still groups of people who do agree with the above mentioned idea. Jacques Lacan is said to be one of those people who are considered as a sexist. What is a sexist? How can a person be considered as one? The dictionary meaning of the word sexism according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women.” It has one of the oldest forms of discrimination together with racism. The term sexist pertains to those people who just by a person’s gender or sexual preference will be judged without further analyzing his/her background and capabilities. Sexism has the same principles as racism. The only difference is that instead of considering a person’s race, it is the person’s gender or sexual characteristic that is taken into account towards that person’s judgment. Jacques Lacan is a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. The ideas that Lacan presented can be considered as a better version of Freud’s. Though Lacan’s ideas are influenced by that of Freud’s, it is constituted from a structuralist point of view. Further reading on the author’s works testifies that his viewpoint was not influenced only by the works of Freud, but of Darwin as well. (Evans 38-42; Lacan 1-3). His works said to have impacted a number of areas in the psychological and philosophical disciplines including what is perceived as the feminist theory or gender inequality. According to Evans (38-39), “whether used in the clinic or the seminar room, Lacan’s ideas are hopelessly inadequate because they are predicated on a false theory of human nature.” It was a strong statement that was put up against the theories of Lacan since it is also being based on other theories such as those of Freud and Darwin. However, in the analysis of Evans, there is quite an emphasis that was given to term that Lacan used in his theories. This is the term libidinal that derived its root from the term libido. It is a scientific term used mainly in the field of medicine, yet there is a connotation for this term which is inkling towards the male sexual characteristic (Evans 45-50). In the essay that was published by Evans towards the works of Lacan, there was a quote by the French psychoanalyst that the author cited. The statement in Evans work was: “by the early 1950s, the mirror stage was no longer simply a moment in the life of the infant, but ‘a permanent structure of subjectivity’, an ‘essential libidinal relationship with the body image’” (Evans 45-46). Such emphasis towards the pronunciation of the word libidinal is not just evident on the quotation which was cited by Evans. In the works of Lacan, it seemed that the word was given over exposure that the reader will not miss out what is being emphasized, the domination and evolution of the male sexual characteristic (Lacan 1-7). One can even conclude that the term was given over-exposure towards the works of Lacan. A reader can be exposed to the idea that the psychoanalyst is giving favorable studies and theories towards the male gender and disregarding the female counterpart. There are also other ways that Lacan can be concluded as a sexist. According to Pattalung et al., there is a sexist language that a person or a sexist uses without any confirmation from the person. Accordingly, one can conclude that the person or the author is a sexist. There are 5 types of sexist language that can be observed in the way that sexists construct their sentences (Pattalung and University of North Texas 32-33). Continuing on the proposal of Pattalung et al., the first type of sexist language is that “there are words like mankind, chairman, or the use of generic pronouns which exclude women such as ‘he’” (32). This was quite evident when Gallop (179) quoted one of the works of Lacan regarding sleep. The setup that Lacan used included three figures and, as expected, the three figures are all male: child, father, and old man. Another term that was used by Lacan was the pronoun celui or ‘the (masculine) one.’ There is quite an emphasis towards the male gender in this example. In the first context, it was just a mere connotation of a term that one can use in formulating a conclusion. However, in this second context, it is becoming evident that there is clear emphasis on the male sexual characteristic in Lacan’s works. Further reading on the analysis of Gallop towards the works of Lacan is quite disturbing. There is what is being pertained to as the dead child dream. Though the term child is on the neutral grounds towards gender, it was linked to the dead father dream. Child then turns into father, and father is pertaining again to the male gender. Can it be that a child can be a mother eventually? The word father in the second statement can be omitted and another term can be used. Instead of using father, the term adult or person can be substituted so that the whole context cannot be inkling towards the male gender. The child was continuously pertained to in the account as son. Cannot it be a daughter? Is it truly necessary for Lacan to use male nouns and pronouns when pertaining to what should be in neutral form? (Gallop 179) Gallop quoted a statement from Lacan: “But just as much a Father who would be perfectly the master of his desire, which would be worth as much for the subject” (181). As a reader goes further in the text, there is quite a redundant pronunciation of the words father, master and himself. It does not take a genius to analyze that these terms are of the male gender. There is not even a glimpse of maybe a female pronoun or even a neutral one. The emphasis is strictly on the male side of the human species. Thinking of the quotation that was previously stated, it was quite interesting to see the words father, master and desire in a single sentence. Desire is a very passionate and strong term to be used by any person per se. Just by mere using it in context together with words pertaining to the male gender, makes it pretty strong evidence on how dominating Lacan would want the male sexual characteristic to be. According to Pettigrew and Raffoul, reading the works of Lacan is like re-reading the whole Oedipus Complex that originated from Freud. Though quoting from the 2 authors: “Lacan insists that all subjects are equally castrated and that the entry into the symbolic order is contingent on recognizing our mutually castrated positions. …The attempt to translate the Hegelian dialectic of aggressivity, Oedipus, and castration result in psychoanalytic categories of difference being asked to function as universals. The result is a confusion of a particularly dangerous kind – the symbolic is co-opted by the imaginary” (286). The text goes on and on, yet still pointing down into the fact that the Oedipus complex has influenced the theories of Lacan. There might be contradictions and complications towards Lacan and Freud, yet both boil down into one conclusion: it is the male sexual characteristic that dominates the world or the universe in general. Even in a world where women have proven so much to be treated equally, there are still ideas and thoughts that bring down the female capabilities not because it is lesser in quality, however, because it was performed and being enacted by a female person. Instead of proposing to move forward and accept the existence of another gender, Lacan proposed to step back towards the theories of Freud. There have been leaders and workers that have proven their worth despite of being discriminated because of their gender. Females are just as capable and as human as their male counterpart. There is no need to treat any female unequally because of their gender. Humans are created equally. Therefore, what a man can do, woman can do it as well. Works Cited Evans, Dylan. From Lacan to Darwin. The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative. Eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005, pp.38-55. Print. Gallop, Jane. Reading Lacan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Print. Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. Oxon, OX: Routledge, 2005. Print. Lacan, Jacques. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Ecrits: a Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977. 1-7. Print. Pattalung, Piengpen and University of North Texas. An Analysis of Sexist Language in ESL Textbooks by Thai Authors Used in Thailand. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest LLC. Print Pettigrew, David, and Francois, Raffoul. Disseminating Lacan. New York, NY: State University of New York, 1996. Print. “Sexism.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2008. Print. Read More