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The Phallus and Perversion
[excerpt]

 

 

Jacques-Alain Miller

translated by Barbara P. Fulks

 

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The Logic of the Cure
J
- A MILLER

The Prisons of Jouissance
J
- A MILLER

The Phallus and Perversion
J
- A MILLER

Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Wagner
A
LAIN BADIOU

Saintliness and the Sainthood
F
RANÇOIS REGNAULT

The Animals that Treat Us Badly
G
ÉRARD WAJCMAN

The Fall of Sleep
J
EAN-LUC NANCY

Josephine le Sinthome
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

The Fall of SoHo
R
ICHARD KOSTELANETZ

Ridley Howard
C
ATHY LEBOWITZ
interviews
JOSEFINA AYERZA

Rottenberg image There is a clinical pair that presides over Lacan’s first elaboration of the theory of the phallus. We devote ourselves to finding the genesis of the phallic function in his teaching, formulated in Écrits in relationship to psychosis, for the purpose of returning its true nature to the phallus, which doesn’t come from the paternal metaphor. For that reason, interest turned to the Name-of-the-Father and, correlatively, a certain shadow fell over the phallus. No doubt this shadow revived in Lacan what perhaps was a necessity to dedicate and publish a conference on the signification of the phallus. But, he invested the theory with this signification of the phallus in a recovery of the psychopathology of Freud’s love life. By formulating the theory itself as exclusively signifying—and this was a great exploit at that time—the clinical practice from which it was born remained veiled.

Here we must remember the clinical pair that was mentioned, and that dominates in the theory of the phallus: I am referring to phobia and fetishism. This pair that Lacan tackled in his Seminar IV, La relation d’objet, continues to be present in Écrits and will reappear recurrently over the years. On the last page, the warning that the phallus in play is that of the mother accompanies the mention of phobia and of fetishism. So the Lacanian phallus is born on the side of the woman, between fetishism and phobia.






Art: Mika Rottenberg
Performance stillLegs II - C-print, 2008
courtesy Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, NYC.

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