In her keynote address at the Philosopher’s Rally, Elisabeth von Samsonow made a striking observation. The incest prohibition, she remarked, is not so much a family knot, as it is an ontological knot. Moving into the third millennium, she contended, would require that we overcome the incest prohibition. My jaw dropped to the ground. Was she advocating for all of us to have sex with our mothers and sisters?
Yet in claiming that the incest prohibition is an ontological knot, that it is not an issue of family romances, it was quite clear that she was– I think –talking about something quite different. What she seemed to be saying was that the philosophical discourse of ontology has hitherto been organized around the incest prohibition and, in particular, a structure of masculinity. In chapter 6 of The Democracy of Objects, I attempt to demonstrate that philosophy is organized around the masculine side of the graph of sexuation (the left side above). This is the basic structure of ontotheology and theism, where one term is privileged above the others as present to itself, without division and split, and as the sovereign that both legislates over all the others and as the origin of all the others. This structure is what I playfully refer to as “phallusophy”. \
read on!
Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, I try to show how the masculine side of the graph of sexuation is the side of semblance or illusion and how it is the feminine side of sexuation that presents us with the truth of being. In Seminar 17, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Lacan opposes the discourse of the analyst to the discourse of the master. The master is associated with the masculine side of the graph of sexuation and is characterized by the barred subject perpetually trying to both regain and eradicate the remainder (a). Indeed, we see the unconscious fantasy of the master appear in the lower portion of the graph of sexuation in the relation between $ and a. A subject united with the objet a would be an object in complete possession of itself, completely transparent to itself, without anything within itself or the world escaping from it. It would be both a sovereign legislator and the master of all within itself and about it.
This fantasy, then, would be the unconscious fantasy of phallusophy. Sometimes this fantasy will take the form of the Cartesian subject that is completely transparent to itself, at other times it will take the form of the Baconian lord of nature, at other times it will take the form of the Hegelian subject where subject and substance are identical to one another. In all instances there will be the repression, eradication, and disavowal of the objet a or remainder that escapes mastery. Yet as the graph teaches us, the remainder always returns or repeats, always coming back. Phallusophy thus finds itself endllessly repeating as it tries to master and regain this fleeting remainder that always escapes.
This fantasy that animates phallusophy would be one of the reasons philosophy endlessly tends towards idealism. Already, in the beginning, we witness Parmenides declaring that thought and being are identical (a claim that will later be repeated by Hegel and Badiou). If the phallusopher is so eager to claim the identity of thought and being, to declare the conceptuality of being, then this would be because such an identity would guarantee the mastery of all being and our ability to have and know being in advance without having to take detours through the world, sensation, and materiality. For after all, what is that which is given to the subject if not thought, conceptuality (which Kant calls “spontaneity” and activity), text, and intentionality? It is in these domains that the subject is present to itself, identical to itself, and in mastery of itself. Phallusophy will then become the drive to tame the world in terms of this self-possession so that we might become little gods or sovereigns.
It is here that we encounter the incest prohibition as an ontological knot as described by von Samonsow. In this pursuit of mastery philosophy will have to probit all of that that doesn’t fit the schema of transparency and self-possession: sensation, matter, work, technology, engineering, cooking, interpersonal relations, the body, etc. Already we see it happening in Plato with his general degradation of the body, senses, and the work of the servant boy in Meno. Everywhere these things that are anterior to thought, that cannot be mastered in advance by thought or a priori, will be prohibited or reviled in philosophy. And not by mistake, all of these things will be equated with femininity. The body prohibited in the incest prohibition will be the body of mother earth. And if woman (what I call the “queer”) becomes so anathema to the phallusopher, then it is because she is a perpetual reminder that the truth of the discourse of the master is $, the divided subject, or that the self-possessed subject, the transparent subject, the master, and the sovereign is always a sham, imposter, illusion by virtue of being mediated by all these things that have been excluded by phallusophy. If phallusophy is to become philosophy, to move beyond the discourse of the master and phallusophy, then the first step would consist in redeeming all of these allegedly “irrational” surds.
April 25, 2012 at 11:28 pm
This is a much richer treatment of the incest prohibition than – say – what Derrida renders relative to Levi-Strauss in “Structure, Sign, and Play.” Thanks. It is odd that the deconstructive modality that presents itself as the undoing of mastery by denaturalizing its possibility in the abstract thereby reasserts mastery under something like Schlegel’s “permanent parabasis.” This lends an unintended credibility to those who see deconstruction as “nihilistic” while lending more force to one who is — in most respects — mistakenly labeled a nihilist, Nietzsche. For him, I think, the demands of the world could only be registered in a constant creativity in the encounter between the idealistic tendency of concept, its gravitation toward ossification, and the uncooperative demands of becoming in the world.
April 26, 2012 at 3:37 am
I think the incest prohibition can be understood in quite another way, without skewing to either gender but with otherwise similar conclusions. Given its general appearance alongside totemism, one can see culturally encoded exogamy as the requirement of a union between two “species” — say, the fox and the crow — who patently cannot produce offspring. That’s quite a knot! What is prohibited by exogamy is in fact total identification of the totem with the body, which would ensue if one were the child of two foxes, or two crows. One would then become the fox or the crow materially, which is precisely what totemism strives to prevent by prohibiting the incorporation of another being by the human. You are what you don’t eat, and something is born besides your body. Two conditions that can only be maintained through mastery.
April 26, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Interesting post.
Two questions: Why “Was she advocating for all of us to have sex with our mothers and sisters? ” and not something like “Was she advocating for all of us to have sex with our parents and siblings?”
And, in the last sentence why “redeeming”? At the moment I can’t come up with an alternative ending to the sentence to illustrate my question. But I guess it has to do with being unsure how much irony and how much plain meaning to assign to it. Hope this makes some kind of sense.
April 27, 2012 at 3:01 am
”At other times it will take the form of the Hegelian subject where subject and substance are identical to one another.” This is a misreading of Hegel. Substance becomes the subject only through a process of dissolution wherein certainty and transparency is lost. The only reason objective substance can become the subject is because it is mediated through consciousness, through a consciousness that can only know itself as an object of itself. Subject as substance is absolutely not a tautological A=A.
April 27, 2012 at 11:24 am
Of course it’s not the tautological A = A, Doug. For him it the identity of identity and difference. However this doesn’t change the fact that the Logic undergirds the system and that being is comprehended in advance through these categories.
April 27, 2012 at 2:10 pm
I can’t quite follow, I get the principle of trying to include reality into concept, then finding there is always more. I’m not sure why this should be considered a masculine trait though, does that mean that all science that seeks to unify theories is masculine?
And I know very little about Lacan, but if the “graph of sexuation” itself is supposed to be based on structures such as the prohibition of incest (in whatever abstracted form), then wouldn’t getting rid of that idea mean getting rid of both sides, including the one you say represents the truth of being?
April 27, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Hi Josh,
I outline the detail and connection in detail in chapter six of The Democracy of Objects.
April 27, 2012 at 3:35 pm
“However this doesn’t change the fact that the Logic undergirds the system and that being is comprehended in advance through these categories.”
Being is not understood in advance by Hegel, but only retroactively as the force or desire for certainty is taken up as an object for itself by a self-consciousness that only emerges through time.
May 2, 2012 at 11:15 pm
[...] demonstrations– and they were <em>demonstrations</em> –were made, the phallusophers came along and mucked everything up. Suddenly a debate about whether or not human [...]