Intertexts

Lacan le con; Luce Tells Jacques Off’ CC Pavd Allen Miller U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H C A R O L I N A This paper begins with the paradox that French feminism from the 1970s to the present constitutes itself both in reaction to and in the tradition of the psychoanalytictheoryofJacquesLacan.*Exemplaryinthisregardisthecase of Luce Irigaray.Amember of Lacan’s Ecole Freudienne at Paris until her expulsion in 1974, after the publication of Speculum de Vautre femme (a movethatcannothelpbutrecallLacan’sownexclusionfromtheHopitale Ste.Anne ten years before), Irigaray’s work is both grounded in the Lacaniantheoryofthesubject ’ssexualizationinlanguageanddeeplycriticalofit. Of the many places in which this ambivalent and all but oedipal relation betweenteacherandstudentisplayedout,itisperhapsbestseeninheressay “Cosi fan tutti.” In this tour de force, she revisits Lacan’s Seminaire JOC, Encore, on female sexuality, and through astrategy of extensive quotation, commentary,andparodypresentsthediscourseofthemasterintheguiseof aMozartiancomedyofseduction,onlywiththegendersreversed(Mozart’s titlewas“Cosifantutte”).In“Cosifantutti,”weseethesubjectpresumed to know travestied by the other. Parody, of course, as Bakhtin tells us, is always double-voiced.^ In parodictexts ,bydefinitionthevoicebeingparodiedcannotbeabsolutelydistin¬ guishedfromthevoiceoftheparodist,iftheeffectisnottobelostandthe discourse degenerate into amonological attack that seeks to annihilate rather than subvert the otlier. Two systems of accentuation are present m parodic texts, each in its most extreme manifestations clearly distinguishable fromtheother,butalsoeachoverlappingwithandmutuallydetermimng theotheratpreciselythosemomentsofcontactthatmakeparodypossible. Parodic discourse is, thus, always already internally dialogized. Consequent¬ ly,itmustpresumetheauthoritativestatusofthespeechitseekstoinhabit (Bakhtin,“Prehistory”68-69,75-76;Morson63,65,73).Parody,there¬ fore,alwaysbeginswithaconcessiontothegroundoftheother,butcontin¬ ueswithasimultaneousrefusaltograntthatterritoryabsolutestatusand withanimperativethatthemonologicdreamsoftheotherberelativized andopenedtothespeechoftheinterlocutor.Suchindeedwouldseemtobe the case in “Cosi fan tutti.” For, as Elizabeth Weed has argued, “Virtually everyelementoftheessay...comesfromthetwentiethSeminaire”(90). Consequently,thepointwhereLacan’sdiscourseleavesoffandIrigaray’s begins is impossible to determine with absolute precision, yet the result is not the annulling of either Lacan’s or Irigaray’s discursive claims, but rather the opening of the former to the interrogation of the latter. “Cosi fan tutti,” Intertexts, Vol. 9, No. 2©2005 Texas Tech University Press i 1 4 0 I N T E R T E X T S then, is one of the purest manifestations of the dialogical possibilities inher¬ ent in Irigaray’s concept of afeminist mimetic discourse.^ This inherently complex situation is further complicated by several fac¬ tors. In areal sense, Lacan’s discourse is self-parodic. When Lacan says, “dies ne savent pas ce qu’elles disent, c’est toute la difference entre elks et moi,” [“they don’t know what they are saying, that’s the whole difference between them and me”] {Encore 68), it must be remembered that for Lacan knowledge, le savoir, is itself constituted within the phallic order of the sym¬ bolic, that realm of ordered rationality and noncontradiction that psycho¬ analysis, both in spite of and because of its own scientific pretensions, must always see as amystified realm of rationalization and one whose protocols Lacan’sowndiscursivepracticeviolatesateveryturn."* Lacan... sees the knowledge {savoir) involved in symbolic processes as indissociablefromtheknowledge{connaissance)producedintheearly imaginarydemarcationsof‘psyche’and‘body,’aconnaissancethatis,in turn, activated differently in the symbolic depending on whether the sub¬ ject is sexed through language as male or female. If anything, Lacan sees women as knowing they don’t know what they’re saying—by virtue of their position in the symbolic order—^while men are dupes of Truth. (Weed 1994: 89) Womendon’t“know”whattheyaresayingbecausethefeminineposition withinthephalliceconomyislocatedoutsidethesymbolic,butitisonly withinthesymbolicthat“knowledge”definedasinformationprocessedin accord with the formal dictates of reason (i.e., the laws of symbolic substiturecognizedbyagivencommunity )canoccur.Lacan,Irigaray,and indeedKnstevaandCixousagreethatwomanisnotrepresentablewithin ^ephallicorderofthesymbolic.®ItisforthisreasonthatLacanarguesthat “Lafemme”doesnotexist,sincethearticle“la”impliesauniversalandthe concept of universality is the logical category that constitutes the very heart ofthesymbolicorder.®Womanthusrepresentsaholeinthesymbolic,not because she is lacking (although that is the only way the patriarchal symbolic can represent her) but because she is exorbitant in relation to its totalizing claims.Theshudderofherjouissancetakesplacebeyondwordsandthus beyondthesymbolic’spowertocategorize,anatomize,andatomize.Itpar¬ takes of that real from which the primary repression of our entry into the symbolichasforeverseveredus.^Shegivesthelietothesymbolic’sclaimto representing universality, le tout. She says no to that. She is thus the pastoute , “Ce n’est pas parce qu’elle est pas toute dans la fonction phallique qu’elle yest pas du tout. Elk yest pas pas du tout. Elk yest aplein, Mais il y aquelque chose en plus” [“It is not because she is not whole in the phallic function...