Questioning Sexuality

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 Questioning Sexuality
From Psychoanalysis to
Gender Theory and Beyond

G A V I N RA E

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 Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
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 C ONTENT S

Prefacevi

Introduction: The Problem of Sex(uality) 1

Part I. Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology

1. Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine 29
2. Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality 52
3. Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body 74

Part II. Feminism and (Post)Structuralism

4. Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” 101
5. Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference 130
6. Irigaray on Sexual Difference: Jamming the Patriarchal Machine 154

Part III. Gender Theory and Queer Materialities

7. Butler and Performativity: Thinking Sex through Gender 187
8. Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory 214

Conclusion: Sexuality as Constellation 253

Bibliography282
Index302

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 PREFACE

This book engages with the questioning of sexuality that occupies much
twentieth-century Western philosophy, especially its psychoanalytic, phe-
nomenological, and feminist trajectories. The basic contention is that these
heterogeneous traditions are united by their participation in an often subter-
ranean debate regarding what I will call the essentialist-patriarchal model;
a model that has historically dominated Western thinking on sexuality and
that is defined by three premises: (1) there is a natural division between
two sexes; (2) this division is based on “essential” differences between the
masculine and the feminine; and (3) the masculine is and should be privi-
leged over the feminine. From this contention, I outline a particular historical
trajectory charting a variety of critical responses to this model within the
three traditions previously mentioned, which, in turn, develops a number of
conceptual claims: (1) the twentieth century witnessed a growing aversion to
thinking of sexuality in terms of a straightforward ahistoric, biological deter-
minism. Instead, it was increasingly recognised that sexuality was constructed,
with the question of the means and ways of this construction being one of
contestation. However, (2) in attempting to undercut both the logics of essen-
tialism and patriarchy, critics tended to undermine one but rely on the other.
This occurred in different ways depending on the critical position involved,
but it meant that the patriarchal binary sexual opposition inherent in the
essentialist-patriarchal conception of sexuality continued to be affirmed. (3)
To overcome this, there was a gradual realisation that a more radical criti-
cal approach was needed. This was based on two premises: first, focusing
on how to overcome the foreclosure inherent in the essentialist-patriarchal
model was insufficient; heteronormativity also had to be combated. To
achieve this, it was (second) held to be insufficient to simply rethink the coor-
dinates of sexuality; instead, the fundamental concept engaged with had to

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 Preface / vii

alter away from “sexuality” to “gender” understood in terms of non-binary

socio-linguistic performative becoming. Only this permitted “sexuality” to be
thought in terms of fluidity, ambiguity, and constant open-ended alteration.
However, (4) although the move to gender pointed to and depended upon
a renewed conception of embodiment, its perceived over-reliance on social-
linguistic performativity brought forth the charge that it gave too much weight
to socio-linguistic processes to the detriment of material ones. Correcting
this required, so it was affirmed, a direct engagement with the non-linguistic
processes through which matter becomes; a position that brought forth the
queer nature of materiality to deconstruct any foreclosing of “sexuality” by
showing that such foreclosure contradicts “nature”. I argue, however, that,
although queer theory, at least in its agential realist form, demonstrates that
the foreclosure of sexuality has no material basis, its lack of engagement with
other dimensions (symbolic, political, and juridical, for example) of sexuality
means that it is unable to adequately explain why “sexuality” continues to be
foreclosed within exclusionary frameworks despite there being no material
foundation for such action.
While the contestation resulting from these debates might be thought
to lead us to the antinomy of either abandoning the problem of sexuality
as a “false” one that disappears the moment we try to get a handle on it
or continuing to search for a singular and substantive meaning for “it”, I
appeal to Walter Benjamin’s notion of concepts as constellations to argue
for a refocusing of the problem away from the meaning of sexuality – which
implicitly depends upon the notion that sexuality is “something” substan-
tial or identifiable – to its re-classification as an open-ended, perpetually
problematic, empty, and indeterminate field where the term “sexuality”
describes the inflection point or nexal function through which a particular
constellation expresses itself conceptually. Understood in this way, ques-
tioning “sexuality” both depends upon and permits interrogation into the
host of questions – at the individual level, often of identity, and, at the
collective level, juridical-political issues regarding, for example, acceptable
and ideal social norms, each of which is also tied to a range of ontological,
metaphysical, and epistemological questions – and the relation between
them, that “it” is tied to and, indeed, depends upon. This accounts for the
contestation that has marred critical discussions of the topic, highlights the
complexity of the issue, and points to how the questioning of sexuality can
be reinvigorated to maintain its relevance.
This is developed throughout the text, but, at this stage, I would like
to acknowledge that this project forms part of the activities for the fol-
lowing research projects: (1) “Agency and Society: An Inquiry through
Poststructuralism” (PR108/20–26; PI: Gavin Rae), funded by the Universidad

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 viii / Questioning Sexuality

Complutense de Madrid–Banco Santander; (2) “Differential Ontology

and the Politics of Reason”, PI: Gavin Rae, funded by the Government
of the Region of Madrid, as part of line 3 of the multi-year agreement
with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid: V PRICIT Excellence Pro-
gram for University Professors (Fifth Regional Plan for Scientific Investi-
gation and Technological Innovation); (3) “The Crossroads of the Sexed
Body: Cultural Matter and Material Cultures of Sexuality”, PI: Emma
Ingala, financed by the Government of the Region of Madrid, as part of
the multi-year agreement with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid:
V PRICIT (Regional Plan for Scientific Investigation and Technological
Innovation) program for Incentivizing Young PhDs (PR27/21-020); and
(4) “The Politics of Reason” (PID2020–117386GA–I00; PI: Gavin Rae),
financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Government of Spain.
Rewritten aspects of Chapters 1 and 2 appear in “Freud and Heidegger on
the ‘Origins’ of Sexuality”, Human Studies, vol. 42, n. 4, 2019, pp. 543–563;
an earlier version of Chapter 3 was published as “Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed
Body”, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, vol. 51, n. 2, 2020, pp. 162–183;
aspects of Chapter 5 appear in “Questioning the Phallus: Jacques Lacan and
Judith Butler”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, vol. 21, n. 1, 2020, pp. 12–26;
and parts of Chapter 6 appear in “Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben
and Irigaray”, in Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism:
Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2021), pp. 223–245. I thank the publishers for permission to
include that material here.
I also once again thank Carol Macdonald and her assistant, Sarah
Foyle, for supporting this project and marshalling it through the unusually
lengthy (caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic) peer-review process.
I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their support for the project and
helpful comments to improve it. Iciar L. Yllera (https://iciaryllera.com/), an
award-winning local artist from San Lorenzo de El Escorial just outside of
Madrid (and my fantastically patient Spanish teacher), was kind enough to
provide the original artwork for the cover. Emma was once again a source
of inspiration, critique, and help during the completion of this project
(muchas gracias!), while Toran continues to make sure that no day is dull.
Finally, Aurora (Rora) entered our scene in the final stages of this project
to cause many sleepless nights and much joy; this book is dedicated to her.

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 Introduction: The Problem of Sex(uality)

In everyday thought, it is often, if not usually, taken for granted that the
meanings and significance of “sex” and “sexuality”1 are obvious, clear-cut,
and determined. Certainly, those who affirm “traditional” moral values or
rally against “gender ideology”2 maintain so. From this viewpoint, there
really is not much to think about conceptually. The topic is a simple and
resolved one: sex refers to a binary biological division between “males” and
“females”, each of which is defined by fixed a priori (biological) charac-
teristics, while sexuality develops at the (often undefined but nevertheless
definitive) moment of entry into adulthood, mirrors the biological sex of
each individual, and is defined by predetermined and non-changeable het-
erosexual and legally sanctioned forms of legitimate expression. Put simply,
according to this tradition, a man is defined by a penis and must develop
the sexuality that affirms “masculine” traits, which more often than not are
taken to entail aggression, virility, honour, protection of women, and so
on. Women in contrast are defined by a vagina and must develop the sexu-
ality affirming “feminine” traits: care, compassion, love, and, ultimately,
children. The aim politically is to reaffirm this viewpoint against those
who mistakenly criticise it and so want to overturn the natural or divinely
ordained order.
While this understanding has a long historical trajectory and, indeed,
has been the historically dominant one within Western thought and culture,
this book challenges it by showing that its philosophical presuppositions
– in particular the ontological claims that it is built on; that is, its assump-
tions regarding what fundamentally is, which delineates what a thing, in
this case “sexuality”, entails – are simply not as clear-cut or obvious as
claimed. To do so, I argue that a variety of distinct contemporary and critical
theoretical trajectories, from psychoanalysis, Husserlian-inspired phenom-
enology, and feminist theory, have engaged with and so been united in an

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often subterranean critique of the traditional conception of sexuality as part

of a rethinking of this issue more generally; one that involves an ongoing
process of ever-more radical deconstructions of the ontological premises
supporting the traditional conception of sexuality to undermine its fore-
closing within predetermined boundaries. How this plays out is developed
across the book, but, at this stage, one way to delve into the issue is to note
that a large part of the problem emanates from questions relating to and
arising from the etymology of “sex”. Emanating from “scission” and the
Latin sextus, secare, meaning “to divide or cut”,3 “sex” points to the idea
of an originary androgynous unity that is split or divided, with the parts
subsequently reunited through the sexual act. The nature of the secare has,
however, always been a difficult one for Western philosophy: Is the divi-
sion a “natural” one? Into how many segments does the division divide?
And can one cross the sex divide to become the other sex and, indeed, what
happens if one does?
Although all relevant questions, the history of Western philosophy is,
generally speaking, marred by significant aversion to the debates surround-
ing them. There are many reasons for this but two stand out. First, the Pla-
tonic rejection of the body appears to be a particularly fundamental to this
foreclosure. In the Phaedo, for example, Socrates associates the philosopher –
the lover of wisdom – with the soul divorced from the body, whose tempta-
tions, needs, and distractions are held to be an impediment to the search for
the truth.4 If the philosopher is the friend of wisdom who searches dispas-
sionately wherever reason takes him, and the body is an impediment to that
search, it is not surprising to find that that which is associated with the body
is also disparaged. Sex and related questions to do with sexuality and sexual
relations are, as a consequence, subsequently downplayed and ignored, with
long-standing prejudices, norms, and structures simply accepted.
Second, the institutionalisation of Christianity – itself dependent upon
and tied to Platonic thought5 – further impeded the open questioning of
sexuality. Based on a natural sexual division between two distinct sexes,
with the relation between them premised on increasingly restrictive pre-
scriptions, and the notion that sex is a source of wickedness and sin, albeit
one that is necessary for the propagation of the species, Christian think-
ing tended to foreclose open analyses of sexuality and, indeed, turned it
into something sinful to be avoided.6 Offering an alternative conception of
sexuality to that deemed legitimate by the established authorities required
considerable courage, especially because those authorities often vigor-
ously defended the orthodox position and suppressed alternative concep-
tions through a variety of political (exclusion), juridical (imprisonment
or worse), and normative (prescriptions as to how to act) means. Perhaps

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 Introduction / 3

not surprisingly the result was both a conceptual and cultural (fore-)closing
of thinking on the topic. From Ancient Greece, through Christianity, up
to the so-called Enlightenment and beyond, Western philosophers from
diverse geographies and “schools” of thought have expressed strikingly sim-
ilar views on the question of sexuality and, by extension, sexual relations
that, more often than not insist on a natural binary masculine/feminine
division supported by an ontology of fixed essence, all the while extolling
the masculine to denigrate, often in extremely harsh terms, the feminine.
So, while Plato’s Republic is often seen as an early – Martha Nussbaum
even suggests it offers some of the first feminist arguments7 – upholder of
sexual equality because of its insistence that what counts when choosing
rulers is the capacity to rule, rather than the particular biological sexual
traits of the individuals involved,8 once we turn from the Republic to the
later Timaeus, the story of the sexes becomes far more complicated as we
are informed that “all male-born humans who lived lives of cowardice or
injustice were reborn in the second generation as women”.9 While this obvi-
ously relies upon a theory of rebirth,10 there is a clear hierarchy established
between the sexes, so that men who do not live up to the ideals of bravery
and justice are reborn in the secondary state of “woman”.
The ambiguity that marks Plato’s comments on the nature and role of
women in society, in particular whether to affirm a fundamental potential
equality between the sexes or whether to structure them hierarchically to
the detriment of the feminine, was quickly resolved in favour of the latter.
We see this clearly once we turn to Aristotle, who, in the Politics,11 writ-
ten just one generation later, first praises the novelty of Plato’s thinking on
women and children before clarifying that it is an aberration that, far from
improving the state, would imperil it. This is premised on the claim, made
in the History of Animals, that woman is fundamentally unequal to man:

The female is softer in disposition, is more mischievous, less simple, more

impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young; the male, on the
other hand, is more spirited, more savage, more simple and less cunning.
The traces of these characteristics are more or less visible everywhere, but
they are especially visible where character is the more developed, and most
of all in man.12

Furthermore, woman is held to be “more void of shame, more false of

speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory. She is also more
wakeful, more shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and requires a
smaller quantity of nutriment.”13 In contrast, “the nature of man is the most
rounded off and complete”.14

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This natural sexual difference feeds through to and forms the basis for
Aristotle’s account of the relationship between woman and politics, one
that sharply contrasts with Plato’s and, in so doing, quickly closes any con-
sideration of sexual equality that may have been opened by the Republic.
Aristotle notes, for example, that “[j]ust as husband and wife are parts of the
family, so it is clear that a city should also be considered as divided almost
equally into the male and female populations”.15 However, although Aris-
totle recognises that women comprise around half the population, he
explains that they cannot be considered free and responsible citizens. Their
frivolity must be controlled because too much “indulgence permitted to
women is damaging both to the purpose of the constitution and to the
happiness of the city”.16 The ones to do the controlling are men, who, it just
so happens, are ontologically suited to the task by virtue of being naturally
superior to women: “the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior;
and the one rules, and the other is ruled”.17 As a consequence, “the head of
the household rules over both wife and children . . . His rule over his wife
is like that of a statesman over fellow citizens; his rule over his children is
like that of a monarch over subjects.”18 The rationale for such a division is
simply that “The male is naturally fitter to command than the female.”19
Aristotle’s views on women might surprise and, indeed, shock the
contemporary Western reader – a reaction that I would suggest is due to the
significant engagements with “sexuality” that have marked the twentieth
century – but they were the dominant form of understanding of sexuality
and sexual relations for almost two millennia. While the understanding of
sexuality and the morality surrounding it underwent substantial alterations
as the paganism of Ancient Greece was gradually replaced with a Christian
metaphysics and morality, these alterations did not change the role and
place of the sexes. Indeed, as noted, in many respects, the institutionalisa-
tion of Christianity led to far greater institutional and moral rigidity on the
question of sexual expression, which exacerbated the division between the
sexes and the Aristotelian valorisation of the masculine over the feminine.
Perhaps Tertullian, writing in the second century, exhibits this misogyny to
the greatest extent by castigating women for bringing sin to man and, in so
doing, ultimately killing God’s son:

The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must
of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of
that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she
who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You
destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert – that is,
death – even the Son of God had to die.20

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 Introduction / 5

Although it might be thought that such views were a consequence of the

follies of youth that would fall out of fashion as Christianity developed,
the opposite was the case. Not only does the logic of patriarchy continue
but comments regarding women’s defectiveness were increasingly empha-
sised. Augustine, for example, writing in On the Trinity, explains that “the
woman together with her husband is the image of God, so that that whole
substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, a function
that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God.”21 Rather, “the
man . . . is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely
as when he and the woman are joined together into one”.22 Note that it
is not just that women is subordinate to man, as Tertullian, Aristotle, and
Plato (at times) maintain; Augustine goes further by associating man with
the divine.
As Christianity cemented its dominance within Europe up through the
Middle Ages, its views on women became shriller. Writing in the Summa Theo-
logiae in the twelfth century, for example, Aquinas explains that “[w]oman
is defective and misbegotten”.23 Based on an active/passive division which
is associated with masculinity and femininity respectively, Aquinas holds that
“the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect like-
ness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect
in the active force or from some material indisposition”.24 Again, this onto-
logical defect has political consequences, in so far as we are informed that
“[g]ood order would have been wanting in the human family if some were
not governed by others wiser than themselves. So by such a kind of subjec-
tion woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of
reason predominates.”25 On Aquinas’s telling, therefore, women are not only
naturally passive; they also lack the capacity for reason that marks the active
male and which makes him alone suitable to rule.
A strong misogynistic streak runs then right through the history of early
and medieval Christian thinking. Not only are the sexes naturally divided,
but the masculine is privileged over the feminine and, indeed, is often asso-
ciated with the divine itself. Although it might be thought that such con-
clusions are simply based on the arationality of religious scripture, dogma,
and disputes that have little relevance for contemporary critical thought
standing as it does at the “end” of a long process of secularisation that has
led to the privileging of rational, critical, and often empirically orientated
thought that marks Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought,26 this
is not so. The Enlightenment’s appeal to rational, naturalist premises does
not fundamentally alter the dominant perception of the sexes, in so far as the
supposed enlightened figures of the Enlightenment continue to espouse the
same views on the sexes as their illustrious albeit supposedly unenlightened

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 6 / Questioning Sexuality

philosophical forbearers. While there was a definitive rejection of the meta-

physical premises of Christianity, Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment
thinkers continued to depend upon and affirm prejudices regarding sexual-
ity and women, including the binary opposition, essentialism, and patriar-
chal positions, found within the traditional rejected.
The rather strange disjunction between professed belief in reason to
enlighten and the continuing dependence upon the arational patriarchal
logic historically dominant comes to the fore in the infamous fifth chapter
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, where he explains that, while men and
women share certain things in common by virtue of belonging to the human
species, this does not mean that they are the same: “The only thing we know
with certainty is that everything man and woman have in common belongs
to the species, and that everything which distinguishes them belongs to
the sex.”27 The difference between them is natural – “Women possess their
empire not because men wanted it that way, but because nature wants it that
way”28 – and results in significant differences in the ethics appropriate to
each. Specifically, “woman is made specially to please man”,29 whereas “[i]f
man ought to please her in turn, it is due to a less direct necessity. His merit
is in his power; he pleases by the sole fact of his strength.”30 While accepting
that this “is not the law of love”,31 Rousseau explains that nevertheless “it is
that of nature, prior to love itself. If woman is made to please and to be subju-
gated, she ought to make herself agreeable to man instead of arousing him.”32
Furthermore, man is naturally more independent and self-sufficient, whereas
women need man to survive: “Woman and man are made for one another,
but their mutual dependence is not equal. Men depend on women because of
their desires; women depend on men because of both their desires and their
needs. We would survive more easily without them than they would without
us.”33 Lest women wish to criticise this inequality, Rousseau falls back on the
natural sexual difference, explaining that

[w]hen woman complains on this score about unjust man-made inequality,

she is wrong. This inequality is not a human institution – or, at least, it is the
work not of prejudice but of reason. It is up to the sex that nature has charged
with the bearing of children to be responsible for them to the other sex.34

As a consequence, while Rousseau agrees with Plato that women should be

educated, he disagrees that the sexes should undergo the same type of edu-
cation: “Once it is demonstrated that man and woman are not and ought
not to be constituted in the same way in either character or temperament,
it follows that they ought not to have the same education.”35 Each sex must
be educated differently, as befits their respective natures. Doing otherwise,

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 Introduction / 7

risks, on Rousseau’s telling, folly: “To cultivate man’s qualities in women

and to neglect those which are proper to them is obviously to work to their
detriment.”36 For this reason, he advises the “judicious mother”37 to “not
make a decent man of your daughter, as though you would give nature the
lie. Make a decent woman of her, and be sure that as a result she will be
worth more for herself and for us.”38
While wildly influential, Rousseau’s thinking was premised on a number
of unacknowledged and unexamined theoretical affirmations and founda-
tions. The philosophical revolution instantiated by Immanuel Kant in The
Critique of Pure Reason39 aimed to undo the logic supporting, amongst others,
Rousseau’s position by questioning the basis of knowledge. Rather than
grounding it in metaphysical speculation, Kant insists that knowledge has
to be grounded in autonomous reason, which, by insisting on a division
between the unknowable noumenal and phenomenal world of appearance,
brought him to conclude that reason had to be limited to knowledge of the
phenomenal realm. This rejected the pre-critical stance of claiming abso-
lute status for knowledge based in unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable
metaphysical speculations, to instead ground knowledge from empirical
“data”, in combination with autonomous rationality and the limitations
of human cognition. However, while based on significant methodological
alterations, Kant’s later speculations regarding the sexes in the Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View repeat the conclusions affirmed in much pre-
critical thinking:

When nature entrusted to woman’s womb its dearest pledge, namely the
species, in the fetus by which the race is to propagate and perpetuate itself,
nature was frightened so to speak about the preservation of the species and
so implanted this fear – namely fear of physical injury and timidity before
similar dangers – in woman’s nature; through which weakness this sex right-
fully demands male protection for itself.40

Woman is held therefore to be naturally timid and fearful and so needs and
seeks out masculine protection from potential harm, not only for her own
well-being but also for that of the propagation of the species.
It might be thought that it is rational, or at least understandable, that
both partners, expecting a child, would wish to protect the child by offering
a minimum degree of care and protection for the woman carrying the child,
meaning that, being charitable, Kant’s comments here could be rational-
ised and explained away as making a rather banal point. However, he then
goes on to make a number of comments that undermine such a reading
and, indeed, affirm the absolute unequal division between the two sexes

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to the detriment of the feminine. As a consequence, we are told that “[i]n

marriage the man woos only his own wife, but the woman has an inclination
for all men; out of jealousy, she dresses up only for the eyes of her own sex,
in order to outdo other women in charm or fashionableness”.41 Indeed,
whereas “man is jealous when he loves; . . . woman is jealous even when
she does not love, because every lover won by other women is one lost
from her circle of admirers”.42 To women’s innate jealousy and vanity is
added her unforgiving judgement posited against the leniency of men: “The
man judges feminine mistakes leniently, but the women judges them very
strictly (in public).”43 Such is the difference between the two and the sever-
ity of female judgement that Kant assures us that even “young women, if
they were allowed to choose whether a male or female tribunal should pass
judgement on their offences, would certainly choose the former for their
judge”.44 “As concerns scholarly women: they use their books somewhat like
their watch, that is, they carry one so that it will be seen that they have one;
though it is usually not running or not set by the sun.”45 However, while
being innately jealous, vain, stupid, and marked by vicious judgement, Kant
explains that women are just as wishful and desiring as men; the difference
is that social convention dictates that she be demure so that she limit her
actions and desire. Kant warns, however, that this goes against her nature to
the extent that, if honest, a woman would make “no secret of wishing that
she might rather be a man, so that she could give her inclinations larger and
freer latitude; no man, however, would want to be a woman”.46
Whereas Kant attempted to describe the inclinations and natural consti-
tution of women, Georg Hegel engages with the issue from a different direc-
tion by describing the role of the sexes within ethical life; that is, within
the social configuration, comprising the institutional structures and ethical
(= cultural) norms necessary to realise a fully rational and by extension
free social existence. Outlined in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel
explains that ethical life is conditioned by three inter-linked social spheres:
the family, civil society, and the constitutional state.47 The discussion of
the role of women in ethical life is found within the section on the family,
which is composed of a union of two sexes that finds its true expression
through the creation of a third – the child – who “breaks” the insular dual-
ity of the couple and, by eventually going out into the world, binds the
couple to the universality of the whole of ethical life.48 On the one hand,
Hegel accepts that women have an important role to play in the realisation
of ethical life, in so far as the family and, by extension, men and women are
needed equally for its perpetuation and realisation. But, on the other hand,
he is clear that the relationship between the two sexes is one of equality in
difference, with women finding her freedom in the private sphere of the
household and man realising his in the public sphere of civil society. Both

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 Introduction / 9

must fulfil their roles, but each has a distinctive role based solely on his/her
sex. For this reason, Hegel explains that

Man . . . has his actual substantial life in the state, in learning [Wissenschaft]
etc., and otherwise in work and struggle with his external world and with
himself, so that it is only through his division that he fights his way to
self-sufficient unity with himself . . . Woman, however, has her substantial
vocation [Bestimmung] in the family, and her ethical disposition consists in
this [family] piety.49

As a consequence, “[w]omen are not to partake in public affairs, her voca-

tion [Bestimmung] consists essentially only in the marital relationship”.50
Although Hegel accepts that women “may well be educated”,51 he insists
that “they are not made for higher sciences, for philosophy and certain
artistic productions which require a universal element”.52 This is premised
on the particularities of his philosophy: “Women may have insights
[Einfälle], taste, and delicacy, but they do not possess the ideal”,53 and so
cannot cultivate access to the truth necessary for participation in public
affairs. Indeed, Hegel warns that such is their unsuitability for public life
that “[w]hen women are in charge of government, the [S]tate is in danger,
for their actions are based not on the demands of universality but on
contingent inclination and opinion”.54
Although Kant and Hegel clearly accept a logic of patriarchy and, indeed,
a certain sexual essentialism, they do attempt to give women a role within
a wider ethical whole. In contrast, Arthur Schopenhauer, who extolled Kant
and hated Hegel, removed the ambiguity inherent in their positions by
expressing visceral hatred and misogynistic views towards women, explain-
ing on one occasion that “throughout their lives women remain children,
never see anything but what is closest to them, cleave to the present, take
the appearance of things for their reality and prefer trivialities to the most
important affairs”.55 As a consequence, “they are inferior to men in the
matter of justice, honesty, and conscientiousness”,56 with this originating
“primarily from [their] want of reasonableness and reflection and is further
supported by the fact that, as the weaker, they are by nature dependent not
on force but cunning; hence their instinctive artfulness and ineradicable
tendency to tell lies”.57 Schopenhauer concludes that women’s lack of ratio-
nality and general stupidity means that they

are qualified to being the nurses and governesses of our earliest childhood
by the very fact that they themselves are childish, trifling, and short-sighted,
in a word, are all their lives grown-up children; a kind of intermediate stage
between the child and the man, who is a human being in a real sense.58

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 10 / Questioning Sexuality

Schopenhauer’s misogyny has long been noted,59 and given his influence on
Friedrich Nietzsche it is perhaps not surprising to find that Schopenhauer’s
views on women and sexuality are mirrored in a number of statements that
Nietzsche makes. This is not however straightforward. Nietzsche’s views
on women are highly ambiguous and have given rise to a significant lit-
erature.60 After all, he explains – in a way that Schopenhauer and, indeed,
those philosophers quoted, never would – that “[t]he perfect woman is a
higher type of human being than the perfect man: also something much
rarer”.61 Far from being equal to man, the perfect woman is, for Nietzsche,
more valuable. But lest we think that Nietzsche leaves it here, we find him
explaining in Beyond Good and Evil that

[w]hat inspires respect and, often enough, fear of women is their nature
(which is ‘more natural’ than that of men), their truly predatory and cunning
agility, their tiger’s claws insider their glove, the naiveté of their egoism, their
inner wildness and inability to be trained, the incomprehensibility, expanse,
and rambling character of their desires and virtues.62

It should be noted that while the West’s Christian heritage holds characteristics
such as cunningness, wildness, and incomprehensibility to be negatives, for
Nietzsche’s particular ethics they do have positive connotations. His descrip-
tion of women is then, on his terms, not wholly negative. The problem, how-
ever, is that in offering such a (backhanded) compliment, he merely repeats
the association between woman and the irrational (opposed to the rational
male) that has long underpinned Western views on sex, sexuality, and sexual
relations. Even if we read Nietzsche charitably and on his own terms, we see
that, in his comments on femininity, he appears to be committed, however
unintentionally, to the logic of patriarchy, binary opposition, and essential-
ism inherent in the Christian tradition that he otherwise criticises.

The Argument Developed

I do not pretend that this snapshot – both of the number of philosophers
mentioned or, indeed, the content of the individual philosophers them-
selves – covers the entire history of thinking on sexuality in Western phi-
losophy.63 The perception of sexuality and, indeed, women has, of course,
been far more nuanced than this picture portrays. Not only have there been
philosophers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft64 and John Stuart Mill,65 who have
strongly supported sexual equality, but there is also much contestation in the
secondary literature regarding the views of those philosophers mentioned,
with much of it showing that their respective positions are far more nuanced

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 Introduction / 11

than presented.66 Nevertheless, my guiding contentions are that (1) the vari-
ous positions described are united by a common essentialist-patriarchal
logic based on three claims: (a) there is a natural division between two sexes;
(b) this division is based on “essential” differences between the masculine
and the feminine; and (c) the masculine is and should be privileged over
the feminine; (2) this essentialist-patriarchal model long-dominated Western
thinking on sexuality,67 and, indeed, (3) was the conception of sexuality that
formed the basis for the critiques of sexuality found throughout twentieth-
century critical theory.
From these contentions, I aim to develop a particular historical trajectory
to show that in the twentieth century the Western world experienced signifi-
cant changes in terms of social attitudes to sexuality that were accompanied
by tremendous theoretical debates regarding the nature of sexuality, which,
in turn, brought forth substantial conceptual alterations. I aim to offer a his-
tory of this period, rather than the history of it, with the consequence that
I do not aim or claim to represent all traditions or viewpoints. This is par-
ticularly apparent in relation to feminist theory, which is limited to aspects
of Francophone feminist theories (Beauvoir and Irigaray). Even within the
landscape of twentieth-century French feminism, this limited focus is admit-
tedly problematic. Nevertheless, beyond a famous and well-worn appeal to
space constraints, there are two reasons why I have undertaken this herme-
neutic approach. First, a direct historical and conceptual trajectory can be
drawn between Beauvoir, Irigaray, and Butler (and Barad) given that Iriga-
ray discusses Beauvoir, and Butler explicitly engages with and, indeed, was
influenced by Beauvoir and Irigaray. There are in other words clear links
(historical and conceptual) that justify the rationale for the movement
between these authors, which would be broken up by discussing other trends
within French feminism. Second, one of the benefits of the book is that it
does not reduce critical engagements with sexuality to feminism. Although
feminist discourse is of course important to contemporary discussions of
sexuality, one of the aims of the book is to show that a substantial question-
ing of sexuality also occurs outside of feminism. That however requires that
I devote space to alternative traditions/thinkers, which obviously reduces the
amount of space that can be devoted to feminist thinkers/the feminist tradi-
tion. As such, I limit the analysis to what I consider to be some of the more
significant theories within twentieth-century Western philosophy. By signifi-
cant, I mean either that they initiated a new way of thinking about the topic
and/or were important for the development of subsequents theories. This
allows me to offer a detailed treatment of each theory within the confines of
a single volume and demonstrate that the historically dominant model was
subject to critique from distinct angles.

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 12 / Questioning Sexuality

I start by suggesting that, in the twentieth century, it was Freudian psy-

choanalytical theory68 that brought the questioning of sexuality to the fore
to move the discussion of sexuality away from natural or biological causes
to the (psychic and, in its Lacanian variant, symbolic) processes that take
place to create the meaning of sexuality, as a precursor to outlining the
pathologies that revolve around sexuality. This was subsequently comple-
mented by Husserlian-inspired phenomenology – in particular, that of
Martin Heidegger,69 and especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty70 – that accen-
tuated the lived body as a means of undermining the binary mind/body
logic inherent in modernity. In turn, this led to radical questioning of the
nature and meaning of sexuality, emphasising its temporal and constructed
“nature”, and undercutting the essentialism that had long dominated West-
ern thinking on the topic. While there are significant differences between
Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s analyses, I argue that by affirming the
importance of the lived body and the notion of a presuppositionless meth-
odological stance, both undercut the notion that the body is defined by an
ahistoric sex in ways that come to be important for feminist thinking on
embodied subjectivity.
For example, Simone de Beauvoir focuses on the constructed nature of the
category “woman”,71 whereas Luce Irigaray72 takes up insights from Heidegger
to affirm a fundamental and primordial sexual difference. Although both,
in different ways, privilege a feminine perspective or emphasis to overcome
patriarchy, subsequent feminist thinkers sought to go further by focusing on
undermining the binary opposition between the masculine and feminine
that had continued to structure much (feminist) thought. Instead of merely
inverting the privileged term, they – inspired by the deconstruction of Jacques
Derrida73 – sought to undermine the logic upon which patriarchy depends
to instantiate a new conceptual apparatus to engage with the problem, one
that introduced a number of conceptual innovations, including the distinc-
tion between “sex” and “gender”.74 The importance of the latter concept to
thinking on sexuality was substantial, in so far as it permitted the removal
of all essentialist premises from thinking on sexuality, all the while ensuring
that sexuality does not have to adhere to a binary logic. Sexuality can be cut
or divided in many more ways or, indeed, just expressed differently without
being foreclosed within a prior schema; a conclusion that not only permits
those excluded from the binary heteronormative sexual division long estab-
lished and depended upon to be included, but that also paves the way for
the movement to queer theory where the multidimensional, fluid, and inher-
ently singular “nature” of sexual emergence comes to the fore.
From and through this historical trajectory, I develop a number of
conceptual claims: (1) the twentieth century witnessed a growing aversion

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 Introduction / 13

to thinking of sexuality in terms of a straightforward ahistoric, biologi-

cal determinism. Instead, it was increasingly recognised that sexuality was
constructed, with the question of the means and ways of this construction
being one of contestation. However, (2) in attempting to undercut both
the logics of essentialism and patriarchy, critics tended to undermine one
by relying on the other. While essentialism was increasingly rejected, those
who did so often continued to implicitly affirm a binary sexual division
that was usually underpinned by the implicit affirmation of the masculine
perspective. This occurred in different ways depending on the critical posi-
tion involved, but it meant that the patriarchal binary sexual opposition
inherent in the essentialist-patriarchal conception of sexuality continued
to be affirmed.
(3) To overcome this, there was a gradual realisation that a more radical
critical approach was needed. This was based on two premises. First, focusing
on how to overcome the foreclosure inherent in the essentialist-patriarchal
model was insufficient; not only had previous thinking tended to (implic-
itly) rely on one aspect (essentialism or patriarchy) to overcome the other,
but such enquiries continued to be grounded in a troubling binary hetero-
normative binary opposition that constrained sexuality within a masculine/
feminine opposition and/or took this type of relationship as the prototype
for others. Thus, it was gradually realised that it wasn’t enough to overcome
the foreclosure emanating from ontological essentialism and the logic of
patriarchy; heteronormativity also had to be combated. To achieve this, it
was (second) held to be insufficient to simply rethink the coordinates of
sexuality; instead, the fundamental concept engaged with had to alter away
from “sexuality” to “gender” – manifested most clearly in the thought of
Judith Butler75 – and understood in terms of non-binary socio-linguistic per-
formative becoming. Only this permitted sexuality to be thought in terms of
fluidity, ambiguity, and constant open-ended alteration.
(4) However, although Butler’s gender theory pointed to and depended
upon a renewed conception of embodiment, its apparent reliance on a
socio-linguistic account of performativity brought forth the charge that
it gave too much weight to socio-linguistic processes to the detriment of
material ones. Correcting this required, so it was affirmed, a direct engage-
ment with the non-linguistic processes through which matter becomes; a
position that brought forth the queer nature of materiality – outlined most
substantially through the agential realism of Karen Barad76 – to deconstruct
any foreclosing of sexuality by showing that such foreclosure contradicts
“nature”. In turn, this depends upon and feeds into a debate – one that
has a tendency to operate through a troubling and not particularly satis-
factory binary opposition – that has long adhered to critical engagements

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 14 / Questioning Sexuality

with the essentialist-patriarchal model, pitching those (Lacan, Butler) who

insisted on the symbolic “nature” of sexuality against those (to a degree
Freud and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, and Irigaray) who affirmed
its “material” base. The “gender” theory versus “queer” theory debate brings
this conceptual fault line to the fore to show that the former (is held to)
affirm(s) a predominantly symbolic account while the latter re-instantiates
a return to “nature”, albeit one that rejects the tendency to think of “nature/
materiality” in static terms (as underpinned the essentialist-patriarchal
model) to instead affirm the ongoing, intra-active becomings constitutive
of materiality (= nature), and undermine clear-cut divisions and identities.
In so doing, Barad’s queer materialism aims to show that matter is consti-
tutively queer; a position that leads to the conclusion that it is non-binary
sexual identities that are expressive of actual reality and so might be called
“natural”. In turn, it is the binary heteronormativity so often affirmed by
Chritsian thought as being “natural” that distorts reality and so must be
considered to be “un-natural”. With this, Barad provides a sophisticated
theorietical framework from which to justify the primacy of non-binary
sexual/gender identities, including intersexuality, trans*, queer, and so on.
I argue, however, that, although queer theory, at least in its agential realist
form, demonstrates that the foreclosure of sexuality has no material basis,
its lack of substantial engagement with others dimensions (the symbolic,
political, and juridical, for example) of sexuality and sexual expression
means that it is unable to adequately explain why “sexuality” continues to
be foreclosed within exclusionary frameworks despite there being no mate-
rial foundation for such action.
Although the contestation resulting from these debates might be
thought to lead us into the antinomy of either abandoning the problem of
sexuality as a “false” one that disappears the moment we try to get a handle
on it or continuing to search for a singular and substantive meaning for
“it”, albeit one that depends upon a return to the foundationalism rejected
by the psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and feminist frameworks, I
appeal to Walter Benjamin’s notion of concepts as constellations to argue
that there is another, far more satisfactory, option that respects the afoun-
dationalism, heterogeneity, and complexity that (the phenomenological,
psychoanalytic, and feminist critiques reveal) surround the problem of
sexuality, all the while continuing to treat “it” as a “real” conceptual prob-
lem. To do so, however, it is necessary to refocus the problem away from
the meaning of sexuality – which implicitly depends upon the notion that
sexuality is “something” clearly identifiable – to instead reclassify “it” as
an open-ended, perpetually problematic, empty, and indeterminate nexal
function that is structured around and permits interrogation into the host

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 Introduction / 15

of questions – at the individual level, often of identity, and, at the collec-

tive level, juridical-political issues regarding, for example, acceptable and
ideal social norms, each of which is also tied to a range of ontological,
metaphysical, and epistemological questions – and the relation between
them, that “it” is tied to and, indeed, depends upon.

Structure of the Book

To outline this, the book is split into three parts: Part I is composed of
three chapters that explore the responses to the problem of sexuality
within Freudian psychoanalysis and Husserlian-inspired phenomenology.
Chapter 1 starts with Sigmund Freud’s engagement with the question of
sexuality to argue that he posits an originary bisexuality to reject the central
premise underpinning the essentialist model of sexuality that holds that
sexuality is biological, unitary, and fixed. Freud goes on to explore the ways
in which, through the combination of biological, social, and psychic pro-
cesses, this bisexuality finds expression through individual bodies. While
this rejects sexual essentialism and, indeed, points to the complexity of the
processes through which an individual’s sexuality is created, I appeal to
Freud’s later work on femininity to show that he continues to foreclosure
sexuality within a binary heteronormative and patriarchal logic. As a con-
sequence, he undermines the essentialist premise of the essentialist-patri-
archal model, but at the expense of depending upon and re-instantiating
the logic of patriarchy.
Chapter 2 moves from Freudian psychoanalysis to Husserlian-inspired
phenomenology and the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. I first
outline the general parameters of Heidegger’s engagement with the ques-
tion of the meaning of Being in Being and Time, before responding to the
long-standing charge that his ontological difference – between Being and
its ontic expressions – is premised on an affirmation of the former to the
detriment of the latter, with the consequence that the question of sexuality
is ignored. To do so, I show that in the following year’s lecture series, trans-
lated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic,77 Heidegger explicitly engages
with the relationship between his fundamental ontology and ontic sexual-
ity to reject Freud’s affirmation of an originary bisexuality for needlessly
constraining ontic sexual expression within a binary opposition, to instead
insist on an originary indeterminacy. However, while Heidegger’s thinking
on sexuality questions its ontological importance to thereby account for its
place “within” human being specifically and Being more generally, he does
not aim to offer an ontic analysis of sexuality. The result is a radical, if trun-
cated, critique of sexual essentialism that rejects the notion that sexuality

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 16 / Questioning Sexuality

is ontologically foreclosed but does not go further to explain or engage

with ontic determinations or the question of patriarchy.
Chapter 3 shows how Husserlian-inspired phenomenology developed
once it was transposed to France by arguing that, in contrast to Heidegger,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty insists on the need to forego ontological analyses
to engage with the phenomenological becoming of sexed bodies. I first out-
line his notion of the sexual schema to show that, contrary to a number
of contemporary feminist critiques, it does not (1) posit a neutral body
over-coded by culturally-contingent sexual determinations or (2) erase the
feminine body, but is informed by Merleau-Ponty’s particular version of
the phenomenological reduction whereby factic determinations are “brack-
eted” to permit the object under study to reveal itself as it is rather than as
we wish it to be or have been conditioned to think it. From this, I defend
Merleau-Ponty against the long-standing claim that entwining sexuality
with existence prevents an analytic and by extension positive conception
of sexuality by arguing that he rejects the monadic logic that this charge is
premised on to instead challenge us to think of sexuality in terms of its inte-
gration with an individual’s entire embodied and embedded existence. The
result is an analysis that emphasises the ambiguity, afoundationalism, indi-
viduality, and open-ended immanent expressivity of embodied sexuality.
Merleau-Ponty’s position is important to the historical development
of critical thinking regarding the essentialist-patriarchal model of sexual-
ity because he explicitly brings to the fore the relationship between sexu-
ality and the body in a way that emphasises the continuous becoming of
both. This opening becomes increasingly important to subsequent femi-
nist theory. Part II takes this up by engaging with feminist, structuralist,
and poststructuralist theories regarding the question of sexuality generally
and the essentialist-patriarchal model specifically. Chapter 4 starts with
Simone de Beauvoir’s attempt to answer the question “what is woman?” By
responding that “she” is created, Beauvoir aims to undermine both essen-
tialism and patriarchy; the former by rejecting the notion that the body is,
in some way, fixed and determined, and the latter by showing that, as a
construction, a patriarchal division is not necessary. Beauvoir’s solution to
the status of woman is to argue for equality with men; a position that, for a
number of subsequent feminist thinkers, makes woman dependent upon a
privileged masculine position, ignores the specific differences between the
two sexes, and implicitly re-instantiates the logic of patriarchy to be over-
come. Although this points to the heterogeneous ways in which the logic of
patriarchy can be manifested and, by extension, the difficulty faced by those
attempts who try to overcome it, I argue that Beauvoir’s claim that sexuality
is constructed from lived experience means that “it” cannot be thought in

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 Introduction / 17

terms of clear-cut categories or divisions but must be understood in terms

of the ambiguity that marks lived experience. For this reason, she pushes us
to forego clear-cut sexual divisions to instead recognise, accept, and even
affirm the ambiguity inherent in lived embodied forms of sexuality; a con-
clusion that not only marks her connection to Merleau-Ponty, but is a pre-
cursor to and feeds into the conceptual coordinates subtending subsequent
queer theory (Chapter 8).
Chapter 5 charts how from the 1940s to 1950s, the French intellectual
scene was marked by a significant theoretical movement from phenom-
enologically inspired analyses to structuralist ones. Jacques Lacan utilises
the latter’s logic of differential relations to reinvigorate Freudian psycho-
analysis and show that sexuality is a symbolic construct. In so doing, he
rejects the notion that sexuality is defined by a fixed, unitary meaning or
essence to instead claim that the meaning of each sexual position is pre-
mised on its relation to other symbolic positions. While this appears to
also undermine any necessary privileging of one sex over the other, Lacan
nevertheless reintroduces such a logic by maintaining that each position
is orientated to and gains meaning from a “third” term: the symbolic
phallus. The masculine is constructed to “have” the phallus and so is the
central point from which signification emanates, whereas femininity is
positioned to “be” the phallus and so is removed from the “power” of
the phallus all the while perpetuating it through this removal. By virtue
of not being the phallus, woman looks outside herself – to the phallus –
to gain meaning. Her meaning is then dependent upon and defined
from the masculine phallus, a position that confirms her inferior status.
Although the reception of Lacan’s phallic account of sexuality has been
contested, I point out that Lacan could defend himself from this charge
by insisting that this conclusion results from concrete (clinical) analysis –
the discussion of the phallus mirrors the patriarchal structures found in
his society and from which is derived his theory – but because he is not
sufficiently clear regarding the continuing role of the phallus, it is not
obvious whether (1) the phallus must remain, or (2) another principle
fulfilling the same founding role can take its place. If (1), the logic of
patriarchy continues; if (2), the argument moves away from sexuality
towards a meta-principle and/or debates regarding whether language is
based in foundational points, what function the anchoring principle ful-
fils, and what options can fill it; a movement that turns us away from the
study of sexuality per se to make it derivative of the structure of language.
As a consequence, Lacan’s symbolic account undermines the essentialism
underpinning the essentialist-patriarchal model of sexuality but is ambig-
uous regarding the patriarchal aspect.

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 18 / Questioning Sexuality

Not surprisingly, this elicited a critical response. Chapter 6 shows that Luce
Irigaray’s work on (material) sexual difference aims to correct the ambiguities
thrown up by Lacan’s symbolic account of sexuality. By affirming the funda-
mental material differences between, rather than equality of, the sexes, Irigaray
departs from Beauvoir and opens up a new line of thinking on sexuality gener-
ally and within feminist theory specifically. Although her affirmation of the pri-
mordiality of sexual difference was almost immediately criticised for implicitly
attributing to each sex distinct essential features, I defend Irigaray against this
charge by arguing that she actually develops a far more sophisticated account of
how the logic of patriarchy must be combated from “within” its own parame-
ters that adopts, while subverting, the essentialist representation underpinning
that model. I then go on to show that this “negative” project is accompanied
by a positive one, wherein having undermined the dominant phallogocentric
logic from within its own premises, Irigaray constructs an alternative from a
position that respects and affirms the fundamental differences between the
sexes. Although these differences are grounded in an expressive ontology of
rhythmic becomings and styles, rather than ahistoric substantial ontological
essential features, I conclude that the fundamental problem with Irigaray’s
notion of sexual difference is that it remains structured around a binary bio-
logical division which forecloses sexual expression within heteronormative
parameters and implicitly depends upon and perpetuates the hierarchal logic
of exclusion – namely against non-heteronormative forms of sexuality – inher-
ent in the patriarchal system to be overcome.
Part III examines the radical, albeit heterogeneous, conceptual reforms
proposed by proponents of gender theory and queer theory to overcome
the problems identified within Irigaray’s affirmation of sexual difference.
Chapter 7 shows that Judith Butler claims that if sexuality is not to be fore-
closed within predetermined schemas and so is to be opened up to het-
erogeneous forms, a radical conceptual alteration is required that moves
the terms of the debate away from a primordial questioning of sexuality
towards gender. For Butler, gender is performatively constructed from power
and symbolic relations, which because these are not foreclosed means that
their forms of expression are open-ended. With this, Butler explicitly criticises
both aspects of the essentialist-patriarchal model to question and under-
mine any attempt to foreclose sexual/gender expression, while, in so doing,
also explicitly questioning heteronormativity to open up and respect non-
heteronormative forms of gender sexuality. This is important because it
brings an added problem into the discussion relating to the way in which
thinking on sexuality has tended to assume a heteronormative division
between the sexes that also takes this model as the model for all forms of
sexual relation. By showing that sex is based on the construction of gender
performativity, Butler argues that this presumption has no basis and, in so

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 Introduction / 19

doing, reveals that, if the foreclosure of sexuality that has marked both the
essentialist-patriarchal model itself and criticisms of it is to be overcome,
any critical questioning of Western thinking on the topic must also explicitly
question its long-held, if often implicit, privileging of heteronormativity.
While this appears to deconstruct all foreclosing of gender and by
extension sexuality, the problem with Butler’s thinking was its reception,
especially the claim that their78 performative account reduces gender to a
symbolic construction that is unable to account for non-discursive forms
of materiality. In response, I show that Butler argues that the problem with
this charge is that it is implicitly premised on a straightforward signification/
materiality opposition, where one is held to be foundational for the other.
Instead, Butler argues for a particularly innovative position that maintains
the fundamental importance of symbolic meaning for our understanding of
embodiment, but rejects the linguistic foundationalism often attributed to
their theory by recognising that there is always an excess to symbolic con-
struction. As such, the body and, by extension, gender-sexuality is always
marked by a fundamental open-ended mysteriousness that undermines all
attempts to capture or identify it.
Despite this, however, the radicality of Butler’s position on the body
was often ignored or reduced to a(n) (idealist) symbolic construction.
Although a caricature of Butler’s position, this not only brought to the fore
the conceptual fault line between symbolic and material analyses that runs
through contemporary critical thinking on sexuality, but also permitted
the conceptual development that brings us from gender to queer theory.
Chapter 8 takes up this issue through Karen Barad’s agential realist account
of materiality. Having criticised Butler’s gender theory, Barad develops
an ontology from contemporary scientific theory and, in particular, Niels
Bohr’s quantum physics that rejects Cartesian dualism, monadism, and
epistemic representationalism, to instead insist on the ontological entangle-
ment of matter. By appealing to the notion of intra-action, Barad explains
that, rather than existing as monadic entities that subsequently inter-act
with one another, things come to be through their ontological entangled
becoming. This undercuts ontological essentialism because it shows that
matter is purely relational and so defined by an ongoing process of mate-
rialisation. Each form of matter is also never single, but always composed
of multiple competing aspects, all of which are multiple. It also under-
mines the logic of purity underpinning patriarchy because it shows that
there never is a “pure” masculine that can be privileged over a “debased”
feminine. Sexuality is always a hybrid singularity of ever-changing material
configurations.
Importantly, Barad argues that such alterations are never the conse-
quence of human intentional agency; the human is held to be an effect

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 20 / Questioning Sexuality

of material agency, which Barad develops by appealing to the notion of

quantum leaps to argue that they reveal the ways in which materialisations
constantly undergo random, non-linear, and radical alterations. Matter is
considered to be inherently queer, a nomenclature that Barad uses to not
only insist on the absolute lack of any and all forms of identity but also
to point to radically complex and heterogeneous forms of material expres-
sion. While this undermines the premises of essentialism, patriarchy, and
heteronormativity by showing that none can be supported ontologically,
I conclude by pointing out that Barad’s account fails to explain how and
why these logics nevertheless continue to exist. Such an explanation would
require engagements with the juridical and political aspects of sexuality that
structure its normative expression, as well as an explanation as to how these
aspects can either exist apart from materiality or be expressions of material-
ity while contradicting materiality’s queerness. Those, however, are absent
from Barad’s onto-epistemological-ethical account.
The conclusion ties the various strands together to argue that the ques-
tion of sexuality has been an ongoing if, at times, subterranean one for
thinkers associated with psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and feminist the-
ory. In their different ways, each takes issue with the essentialist-patriarchal
(and heteronormative) model long dominant in the Western philosophi-
cal and political imaginary to, in combination, reveal an ongoing histor-
ical deconstruction of its parameters and forms. While sexuality is often
thought to delineate a specific, definitive, and definable aspect of human
existence, the contestation inherent in these critical debates reveals this to
be fallacious. Every time that a position claims to resolve the issue, that
“resolution” is, in turn, revealed to depend upon contestable metaphysical,
ontological, and/or epistemological assumptions. Although it is tempting
to continue to insist on a unitary response to the issue, I appeal to Walter
Benjamin’s notion of concepts as constellations to argue for a refocus-
ing of the problem away from the meaning of sexuality – which implicitly
depends upon the notion that sexuality is “something” clear, identifiable,
and/or substantial – to its reclassification as an open-ended, perpetually
problematic, empty, and indeterminate field where the term “sexuality”
describes the inflection point or nexal function through which a particular
constellation expresses itself conceptually. On the one hand, this prevents
a definitive response to the question of sexuality and, indeed, even makes
it difficult to get a handle on “it” – hence the difficulty that commentators
have had in nailing it down and the contestation that has resulted – but, on
the other hand, it reveals sexuality to be a remarkably rich concept that not
only binds a variety of questions and issues, but, as a consequence, also acts
as the lens through which to engage them.

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 Introduction / 21

Notes
1. As I show, the meaning of these terms, including whether they are in fact employed,
depends upon the framework utilising them. Therefore, at this stage, I avoid provid-
ing an ahistoric, formal definition of them. Instead, I simply use them as something
of an empty placeholder to establish the problematic motivating this enquiry.
2. “Gender ideology” is something of a catch-all phrase that has come to be used
mainly, but not exclusively, by a variety of so-called Christian groups (Catholic,
Protestant, Eastern Orthodox) and, indeed, right-wing political ideologues,
to designate those who question what these groups claim are the traditional/
natural/divinely ordained ontological structures and moral values governing
the relations between the two natural sexes. See, for example, the teaching
document released by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education in
June 2019 challenging gender theory along these lines: Giuseppe Cardinal Ver-
saldi and Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani, Male and Female He Created Them:
Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (Vatican
City: 2019): http://www.educatio.va/content/dam/cec/Documenti/19_0997_
INGLESE.pdf (accessed 10 June 2019).
3. Alejandro Cerda-Rueda, “Introduction”, in Sex and Nothing: Bridges from Psycho-
analysis to Philosophy, edited by Alejandro Cerda-Rueda (London: Karnac, 2016),
pp. xi–xx (p. xiii).
4. Plato, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, edited by John M.
Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), pp. 50–100 (65b–c).
5. For a recent multidimensional discussion of this relationship, see the essays
collected in Panagiotis G. Pavlos, Lars Fredrik Janby, Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson,
Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
6. For a discussion of this, see Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Trans-
formation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2013).
7. Martha Nussbaum, “Plato and Affirmative Action”, New York Review of Books, 12
April 1984: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/01/31/plato-affirmative-
action/ (accessed 21 November 2018).
8. Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube and Rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Complete
Works, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997),
pp. 971–1223 (456a–b).
9. Plato, Timaeus, trans. Donald J. Zeyl, in Complete Works, edited by John M.
Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), pp. 1225–1291 (90e).
10. Specifically, it depends upon what has come to be known as Plato’s “affinity
argument”, which is outlined most famously in Plato, Phaedo, 78b–84b.
11. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Ernest Baker, revised by R. F. Stanley (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 1266a36–39.
12. Aristotle, History of Animals, trans. d’A. W. Thompson, in The Complete Works of
Aristotle, edited by Jonathon Barnes (Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press,
1984), pp. 1702–2174 (608b1–5).

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 22 / Questioning Sexuality

13. Ibid., 608b5–10.

14. Ibid., 608b5.
15. Aristotle, Politics, 1269b14–16.
16. Ibid., 1269b12–14.
17. Ibid., 1254b12–14.
18. Ibid., 1259b41–47.
19. Ibid., 1259b47–48.
20. Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, 16 August, 2003, I: I. Accessed from http://
www.tertullian.org/anf/anf04/anf04-06.htm (accessed 21 November 2018).
21. Augustine, On the Trinity, Books 8–15, edited by Gareth B. Mathews, trans.
Stephen McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Book 12,
chapter 7, pp. 89–90.
22. Ibid., p. 90.
23. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican
Province (Einsiedeln: Benziger Bros, 1947), PI, Q92, A1, RO1.
24. Ibid., PI, Q92, A1, RO1.
25. Ibid., PI, Q92, A1, RO2.
26. While noting that “[t]here has been heated debate over just what the ‘Enlight-
enment’ was, when and where it occurred, and whether it was one or many”
(The Enlightenment and Why it still Matters [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013], p. vii), Anthony Pagden explains that the Enlightenment describes “that
period of European history between, roughly, the last decade of the seventeenth
century and the first of the nineteenth” (p. vii) that is typically associated “with
an exalted view of human rationality and of human benevolence, and with a
belief, measured and at times skeptical, in progress and in the general human
capacity for self-improvement” (p. vii). A large aspect of this is the belief in the
power of education to overcome superstitious belief, affirm the power of ration-
ality, and so enlighten. For a discussion of this secularisation thesis, see Gavin
Rae, Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2019).
27. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. Alan Bloom (New York:
Basic Books, 1979), p. 356.
28. Ibid., p. 360.
29. Ibid., p. 356.
30. Ibid., p. 356.
31. Ibid., p. 356
32. Ibid., p. 356.
33. Ibid., p. 364.
34. Ibid., p. 361.
35. Ibid., p. 363.
36. Ibid., p. 364.
37. Ibid., p. 364.
38. Ibid., p. 364.
39. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, edited and translated by Paul Guyer
and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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 Introduction / 23

40. Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, edited and translated
by Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 207.
41. Ibid., pp. 208–209.
42. Ibid., p. 209.
43. Ibid., p. 209.
44. Ibid., p. 209.
45. Ibid., p. 209.
46. Ibid., p. 209.
47. Georg W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, edited by Allen W. Wood,
trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §142–365.
Following convention, references to this text will be to the aphorism, followed,
where applicable, by (R) for Remarks referring to that aphorism, or (A) referring
to any addition comments to that particular aphorism.
48. Ibid., §173.
49. Ibid., §166.
50. Ibid., §164A.
51. Ibid., §166A.
52. Ibid., §166A.
53. Ibid., §166A.
54. Ibid., §166A.
55. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Women”, in Parerga and Paralipomena, volume 2,
trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 614–626 (§366).
56. Ibid., §366.
57. Ibid., §366.
58. Ibid., §364.
59. See, for example, David E. Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 403–408.
60. See, for example, Lawrence Hatab, “Nietzsche on Women”, The Southern Journal
of Philosophy, vol. 19, n. 3, 1981, pp. 333–345; Ruth Abbey, “Beyond Misogyny
and Metaphor: Women in Nietzsche’s Middle Period”, Journal of the History of
Philosophy, vol. 34, n. 2, 1996, pp. 233–256; Katrin Froese, “Bodies and Eternity:
Nietzsche’s Relation to the Feminine”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 26,
n. 1, 2000, pp. 25–49; Julian Young, “Nietzsche and Women”, in The Oxford
Handbook of Nietzsche, edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 46–62.
61. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), §377.
62. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann
and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), §239.
63. For a more extensive history, see Thomas Laqueuer, Making Sex: Body and Gender
from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Kim
M. Phillips and Barry Reay, Sex before Sexuality: A Premodern History (Cambridge:
Polity, 2011); and Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher (eds), The Routledge History of
Sex and the Body: 1500 to the Present (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); Leah DeVun,

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 24 / Questioning Sexuality

The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2021).
64. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of
the Rights of Men, edited by Janet Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
65. John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women, in The Collected Works of John
Stuart Mill, Volume XXI, edited by John Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1985), pp. 259–340.
66. For example, in relation to Plato and Aristotle, see, respectively, Stella Sandford,
Plato and Sex (Cambridge: Polity, 2010) and the essays collected in Cynthia
Freedland (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle (University Park, PA: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 1998 ); in relation to Augustine, see the essays
collected in Judith Clark (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Augustine (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007); and Aquinas, see Susanne
DeCrane, Aquinas, Feminism, and the Common Good (Washington, DC: George-
town University Press, 2004). Susan Moller Okin’s Women in Western Political
Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013) has a good discussion
of Rousseau on women; the essays in Robin Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations
of Kant (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007) offer
interesting accounts of Kant’s views on women, while a defence of Hegel’s view
of the sexes, especially as it relates to the family structure, is found in my own
Realizing Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). For discussions of Schopenhauer on women, see
Angelika Hübscher, “Schopenhauer und ‘die Weiber’”, Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch,
1977, pp. 187–203; while reconsiderations of Nietzsche’s ambiguous status
towards women are found in Frances Nesbitt Oppel, Nietzsche on Gender: Beyond
Man and Woman (Charlottesville, VA: Virginia University Press, 2005), and Kelly
Oliver and Marilyn Pearsall (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Nietzsche (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
67. For an extended discussion, see Patricia Murphy Robinson, “The Historical
Repression of Women’s Sexuality”, in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female
Sexuality, edited by Carol S. Vance (Abingdon: Routledge, 1984), pp. 251–266;
and the texts collected in Beverley Clack, Misogyny in the Western Philosophical
Tradition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). For a discussion of the
ways in which this logic is manifested, supported, and affirmed by contem-
porary scientific discourse, see Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender,
Politics, and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000); and
Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science behind Sex Differences
(London: Icon, 2010).
68. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 3, edited and translated by James
Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
69. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robin-
son (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962); Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations
of Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984).

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 Introduction / 25

70. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Abingdon:

Routledge, 1962).
71. See, for example, Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde
and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage, 2011).
72. For example, Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).
73. Jacques Derrida, “Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference”,
trans. Ruben Bevezdivin and Elizabeth Rottenberg, in Psyche: Inventions of the
Other, volume 2, edited by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 7–26.
74. Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’
of Sex”, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, edited by Linda
Nicholson (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), pp. 27–62. For an overview and
critical discussion of the turn to gender, see Tina Chanter, Gender (London:
Continuum, 2006).
75. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Second
edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999).
76. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement
of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
77. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.
78. Butler (and Barad) have expressed a preference for using the pronouns “they/
their” rather than “he/him” or “she/her”. This (1) supports the notion that lan-
guage plays a constutive role in “constructing” material reality, (2) highlights
the multidimensionality of gender, (3) undercuts the traditional heteronorma-
tive gender binary opposition, and (4) performs a remaking of the norms that
define the parameters of gender assignation and the forms of gender that are
considered socially acceptable. For these reasons, I use those pronouns when
referring to Butler and Barad.

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8808_Rae.indd 26 22/05/24 4:10 PM
 Part I

Psychoanalysis and
Phenomenology

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8808_Rae.indd 28 22/05/24 4:10 PM
 C HAPTER 1

Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine

As the twentieth century began, questions regarding the meaning and

place of sexuality quickly came to the fore. Sigmund Freud had previously
announced the importance of the unconscious and the dream-world, but
in 1905 he published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality;1 a text that
would revolutionise the study of sexuality. Whereas I noted in the Introduc-
tion that there had, of course, been previous discussions of sexuality, these
had tended to play a relatively minor role within a philosopher’s system of
thought. In contrast, Roger Horrocks points out that “Freud’s own work is
marked by a veritable ‘discursive explosion’ – perhaps no-one else has writ-
ten so much about sex”.2 Horrocks adds, however, that Freud is important
not just for the sheer quantity of writings on sexuality, but also because of
the substantial – Horrocks identifies six – innovations he brought to the
issue. First, Freud “separated [sexuality] from reproduction, and argued that
the sexual instincts are driven by the need for pleasure”.3 In so doing, he
rejected reductionist biological accounts, all the while taking aim at the
restrictive and puritanical teachings of Christianity. Second, “he described
human infants as sexual beings, who pursue pleasure not genitally, but all
over their body. Thus, the genital aim in adult sexuality is a much delayed
development, and many people retain many pre-genital desires.”4 Third,
“Freud opposes civilization to sex in a quite dramatic fashion, arguing as he
does that culture must carry out a massive repression of the sexual drives,
which cannot be allowed immediate satisfaction, if cultural and social life is
to have any stability”.5 Fourth, “sexuality is closely tied to the unconscious,
since many repressed desires are retained there, in a ‘forgotten’ state, but
still exerting a pressure on the individual”.6 Fifth,

Freud is able to connect . . . ‘frozen’ sexual wishes and fixations with the
development of character itself so that one can speak of the anal character,

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 30 / Questioning Sexuality

the phallic character, the oral character, and so on. In this way, a whole char-
acterology becomes possible, based on the various types of underlying sexual
interest shown by individuals.7

Finally, “in the Oedipus complex he postulates a family drama in which sex-
ual desires and prohibitions are played out in painful, even tragic, ways”.8
In so doing, sexuality is tied to wider social and familial relationships; it is
never simply an individual and biological phenomenon. For this reason,
Gayle Rubin concludes that

[p]sychoanalysis contains a unique set of concepts for understanding men,

women, and sexuality. It is a theory of sexuality in human society. Most
importantly, psychoanalysis provides a description of the mechanisms by
which the sexes are divided and deformed, of how bisexual, androgynous
infants are transformed into boys and girls.9

Freud’s thinking on sexuality is not, however, outlined in one place, but

occurs across his oeuvre. This poses, at least, two problems for any com-
mentator who wishes to engage with it: first, the sheer volume of writing
on the topic, and, second, the fact that Freud’s views on sexuality undergo
significant revision as his wider metapsychology develops and changes. As a
consequence, a number of commentators have noted that Freud’s thinking
on sexuality appears to be marked by two approaches or moments. Juliet
Mitchell, for example, argues that from around 1890 to 1920 the funda-
mental issue motivating the analysis is that of childhood sexuality, itself
marked by an analysis of the fundamental structures that construct sexuality
as it develops through to puberty. However, from 1920, the question of the
division between the sexes comes to the fore, with a clear distinction estab-
lished based around the object-relations constitutive of each sex.10 Bertram
Cohler and Robert Galatzer-Levy agree on the fundamental temporal divi-
sion, but disagree with Mitchell’s assessment of what the temporal altera-
tion refers to, instead claiming that it points to a division in Freud’s oeuvre
regarding the role of feminine sexuality. On this reading, Freud’s thought
up to 1920 maintains that the question of feminine sexuality merely mir-
rors that of the masculine, whereas after 1920 Freud insists on the strict
division between the two sexes, albeit one in which the female is collapsed
into the male to be seen as a defect of the latter.11
Rather than maintain a fundamental rupture within Freud’s thinking,
I will focus, somewhat controversially, on Freud’s comments on sexuality,
as opposed to those “merely” on feminine sexuality, to argue that there is

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 31

continuity across his oeuvre on this issue, in so far as he consistently rejects

the notion that sexuality is grounded in a fixed biological essentialism.
To defend this, I first provide an overview of Freud’s account of sexuality
as outlined in the early Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality to argue that,
within this text, Freud undermines the claim underpinning the essentialist-
patriarchal model that there is a natural, sexual essentialism. By positing an
originary bisexuality and distinguishing between sexuality and genitality –
where, very generally, “sexuality” refers to a wider notion of bodily pleasure
and “genitality” refers to pleasure received through the genitals – Freud not
only undermines the claim that the sexual division is natural or essential
to the human species to instead argue that this difference is the result of a
particular developmental process – with biological, psychical, and social
aspects – but also claims that sexuality is not limited to the stimulation of
a body part; it refers to the pleasure derived from the entire body that only
with puberty comes to be orientated from and around the genitals.
However, it will be remembered that the essentialist-patriarchal model is
composed of three aspects: sexual essentialism, a natural division between
two sexes, and a logic of patriarchy where the masculine is privileged over
the feminine. For Freud to undermine sexual essentialism does not then
mean that he fully departs from the essentialist-patriarchal model; he must
also reject its other two conditions. Although I will suggest that the positing
of an originary bisexuality points to the conclusion that sexuality does not
have to be divided into two sexes, thereby allowing Freud to overcome this
charge, I will also argue that Freud’s analysis of sexuality continues to be
marked by a logic of patriarchy wherein the masculine is privileged over the
feminine. To defend this, I move from his early writings on sexuality to his
post-1920 writings on femininity. While these are famously centred around
three essays – “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinc-
tion between the Sexes”12 from 1925, “Female Sexuality”13 from 1931, and
“Femininity”14 from 1933 – I will focus on the final 1933 essay, not only
because it is the most extensive analysis of the three, but also because it is
the last one written and so, I contend, can be taken to be Freud’s consid-
ered view on the topic.15 Having revealed the logic of patriarchy inherent
therein, I conclude that Freud’s rejection of sexual essentialism but con-
tinuing dependence on a logic of patriarchy not only reveals the problems
inherent in his own critique of the essentialist-patriarchal model, but also
instantiates an ambiguous critical stance that will be repeated throughout
much subsequent twentieth-century critical thinking on sexuality wherein
one aspect of the essentialist-patriarchal model is rejected while, oftentimes,
the other aspect is (implicitly) relied upon, repeated, and so perpetuated.

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 32 / Questioning Sexuality

The Origins of Sexuality

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, first published in 1905, has become
one of the fundamental texts for understanding Freudian psychoanalyti-
cal theory. Juliet Mitchell calls it “the revolutionary founding work for the
psychoanalytic concept of sexuality”,16 while Arnold Davidson points out
that its importance extends beyond the internal dynamics of psychoanalyti-
cal theory, in so far as it marks a fundamental break with the conceptual
apparatus that previously underpinned Western thinking about sexuality.17
This is not to say that it is a complete, polished text. It changed substantially
throughout its various versions written over a twenty-year period, with
Freud rewriting, removing, and/or adding material as his thinking devel-
oped. This is reflected in its fragmentary and somewhat disjointed nature.
Indeed, Freud was aware of this, noting in the Preface to the third edition
that “It is . . . out of the question that [the essays] could ever be extended
into a complete ‘theory of sexuality,’ and it is natural that there should be
a number of important problems of sexual life with which they do not
deal at all.”18 Specifically, Freud notes that he offers a primordially psycho-
analytic account of sexuality that “avoid[s] introducing any preconceptions,
whether derived from general sexual biology or from that of particular ani-
mal species, into this study”.19 The aim is to not to ground psychoanalysis
in biology, but “to discover how far psychological investigation can throw
light upon the biology of the sexual life of man”.20 From this, Freud pro-
duces a highly nuanced, if at times problematic, critique of the notion of
an innate sexuality: the idea that an individual’s sexuality is defined and/
or determined by an essential ahistoric sexed “core”. Instead, Freud insists
on an initial bisexuality, before showing that this is gradually expressed
through a developmental process as a unitary heteronormative – male or
female – sexual division at the point of puberty. Crucially, the initial bisexu-
ality remains implicit to the actual sex developed to both undermine any
straightforward binary heteronormative division and offer the possibility of
reconstructing an individual’s sexuality.
To start, Freud notes that sexuality is generally understood to (1) “be
absent in childhood”,21 (2) “[be] set in at the time of puberty in connec-
tion with the process of coming to maturity”,22 (3) “[be] revealed in the
manifestations of an irresistible attraction exercised by one sex upon the
other”,23 while (4) “its aim is presumed to be sexual union, or at all events
actions leading in that direction”.24 His hypothesis is, however, that “these
views give a very false picture of the true situation”.25 This leads Freud to dis-
tinguish between the “sexual object”,26 describing “the person from whom
sexual attraction proceeds”,27 and the “sexual aim”,28 which describes “the

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 33

act towards which the instinct tends”.29 Far from a straightforward, linear
relationship between the two or a unitary meaning to each, “numerous
deviations occur in respect of both of these”.30
This contradicts the then commonly held view, one that continues to
adhere to a certain contemporary conservative (religious) discourse, that
sexuality is divided between a male and female, who come together to pro-
duce a harmonious whole aimed at procreation. Freud notes, however, that
this is not always the case: “there are men whose sexual object is a man
and not a woman, and women whose sexual object is a woman and not
a man”.31 On the basis of the “commonly held” view, such occurrences
are an abomination and so are marked as “‘inversions’”32 of “natural”
sexual feelings. Rather than simply confirm or deny this nomenclature,
Freud engages with the heterogeneity inherent in it to distinguish between
“absolute inverts”,33 wherein an individual’s sexual object is exclusively of
their own sex, “amphigenic inverts”,34 who have both their own and the
opposite sex as their sexual object, and “contingent inverts” who, under
“certain external conditions . . . are capable of taking as their sexual object
someone of their own sex and of deriving satisfaction from sexual inter-
course with him [or her]”.35
Freud goes on to point out that the earliest assessment of these inver-
sions tended to be negative, based on (1) “the attribution of degeneracy”,36
which he rejects claiming that such a label should only be used in a num-
ber of very specific circumstances; namely, when “several serious deviations
from the normal are found together”37 and “the capacity for efficient func-
tioning and survival seem to be severely impaired”;38 and/or (2) the exis-
tence of some “innate character”,39 which he also rejects because it, at best,
only has explanatory value for absolute inverts. He then goes on to engage
with whether inversions can be adequately thought from the premises of
an epistemological constructivism. The problem, however, is that he notes
that “many people are subjected to the same sexual influences . . . with-
out becoming inverted or without remaining so permanently”.40 In other
words, appealing to a constructivist argument does not explain why some
become inverts whereas others do not when both are subjected to similar
experiences.
The fundamental issue with both innate essentialist and constructiv-
ist accounts of sexuality is that they are grounded in a singular founda-
tion and, indeed, are premised on a binary heteronormative opposition so
that individuals are innately destined or constructed to be either a male or
female. Freud undermines both by pointing to the existence of hermaph-
rodites “in which the sexual characteristics are obscured, and in which it is
consequently difficult to determine the sex [because] [t]he genitals of the

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 34 / Questioning Sexuality

individuals concerned combine male and female characteristics”.41 While

it might be objected that these are relatively rare cases, Freud responds that
their importance lies

in the unexpected fact that they facilitate our understanding of normal devel-
opment. For it appears that a certain degree of anatomical hermaphroditism
occurs normally. In every normal male or female individual, traces are found
of the apparatus of the opposite sex. These either persist without function as
rudimentary organs or become modified and take on other functions.42

From this, he explains that the separation of the sexes into a binary opposi-
tion is premised on “an originally bisexual physical disposition [that] has,
in the course of evolution, become modified into a unisexual one, leaving
behind only a few traces of the sex that has become atrophied”.43
While it is tempting to mirror this physical bisexuality with a psychical
one, Freud rejects this by holding that each inversion of the sexual object
would have to entail both a mental and physical inversion: a male desiring
a male sexual object would also have to be accompanied by an inversion in
his masculine character so that the inverted male would automatically take
on feminine characteristics; whereas, an inverted female with a female sex-
ual object would have to automatically take on masculine characteristics.
Freud dismisses this, claiming that “it is only in inverted women that char-
acter-inversion of this kind can be looked for with any regularity. In men
the most complete mental masculinity can be combined with inversion.”44
Two related aspects stand out from this. First, Freud is implicitly prefig-
uring Gayle Rubin’s45 distinction between “sex”, defining an individual’s
biological make-up, and “gender”, describing something like the (socially)
constructed norms that define sexual roles, characteristics, and mannerisms,
to explain that biological sex is not determinant for gender: a biological
woman can take on the gendered masculine role and vice versa. Evidence
for this emanates from Freud’s claim that while the sexual instinct – defined
provisionally as “the psychical representative of an endosomatic, continu-
ously flowing source of stimulation, as contrasted with a ‘stimulus,’ which
is set up by single excitations coming from without”46 – and sexual object are
normally tied tight so that, for example, the masculine sexual instinct has as
its object the feminine, such a correspondence is not only artificial, entail-
ing a needless restriction of the sexual instinct, but also reduces “the object
[to] part and parcel of the instinct”.47 Instead, Freud maintains that “[i]t
seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent
of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object’s attractions”.48 His

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conclusion is that “[w]e are thus warned to loosen the bond that exists in
our thoughts between instinct and object”49 and recognise that “[u]nder a
great number of conditions and in surprisingly numerous individuals, the
nature and importance of the sexual object recedes into the background”.50
An individual’s sexual instinct is not then necessarily tied to a single, uni-
versal object.
Second, the terms “masculine” and “feminine” do not describe physical
characteristics, but functions. Freud clarifies this latter in the third essay,
when he first notes that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” “are among
the most confused that occur in science”,51 before distinguishing between
biological, sociological, and logical senses of the terms, claiming that the
latter is structured around an active aspect representing masculinity and a
passive aspect tied to femininity, and concluding that this active/passive
division “is the essential one and the most serviceable in psycho-analysis”.52
On the one hand, by thinking of relationships in terms of an active/passive
dichotomy tied to masculinity and femininity respectively, Freud contin-
ues to affirm a division that has long re-enforced a patriarchal division.
On the other hand, however, tying masculinity and femininity to activity
and passivity respectively reveals them to be positions, rather than actors,
which, in turn, undermines any straightforward sexual essentialism or
division: as a position, a biological women can play the active masculine
role in the relation, and vice versa. Indeed, Freud goes further by claiming
that regardless of whether there is an explicit identification with the sup-
posed alternative sex/gender role, the individual is always bound up with
it. There is no such thing as a “pure” masculinity or femininity. Rather, “[e]
very individual on the contrary displays a mixture of the character-traits
belonging to his own and to the opposite sex; and he shows a combination
of activity and passivity whether or not these last character-traits tally with
his biological ones”.53
Given that the original physical inversion is not automatically accompa-
nied by a psychical one, Freud maintains that we need a far more nuanced
and sophisticated account of the process(es) through which the originary
physical bisexuality is manifested psychically. It is here that psychoanalysis
and, in particular, Freud’s theory of the libido, steps in to analyse the psy-
chical processes that emanate from and accompany the individual’s physi-
cal sexual development. Whereas this leads Freud to a detailed discussion
of a variety of sexual behaviours, the key point for the current discussion is
the claim that there is a non-causal relation between the somatic and psy-
chic aspects of the individual, meaning that any questioning of individual
sexuality must occur along these two distinct but related lines.

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The Sexuality of Children

Freud engages with the sexuality of children to show how the initial bisexu-
ality is manifested as and developed into an apparent unitary sexuality; a
questioning that also reveals how the somatic and psychical aspects relate
without determining each other. There are two principle and related ways in
which this engagement is orientated: (1) an enquiry into the role that sexual-
ity plays in the life of children, the aim of which is to show that sexuality is
a condition of human being generally and so integral to individual life; it is
not something that is initially missing before becoming manifest at a partic-
ular point in an individual’s life; and (2) a discussion of the developmental
processes through which an individual’s sexuality crystallises.
To start, Freud once more contrasts his analysis to the commonly held
view that maintains that childhood is asexual and “the sexual instinct . . . only
awakens in the period of life described as puberty”.54 Not only does this fail
to explain the onto-genesis of individual sexuality – that is, the way in which
the initial bisexuality is manifested in a physically unisexual manner – but it
is also unable to adequately explain the psychic life of children. As a conse-
quence, Freud insists that sexuality is inherent in human being from birth,
although it only becomes explicit “to observation round about the third or
fourth year of life”.55 This is not, however, to say that this development pro-
ceeds in a linear or homogeneous manner. Rather,

germs of sexual impulses are already present in the new-born child and that
these continue to develop for a time, but are then overtaken by a progressive
process of suppression; this in turn is itself interrupted by periodical advances
in sexual development or may be held up by individual peculiarties.56

It is important to note, however, that when Freud talks of sexuality in rela-

tion to children, he has a very particular understanding in mind. In the chap-
ter “The Development of the Sexual Function”, published in The Outline of
Psycho-Analysis, Freud explains that “[i]t is necessary to distinguish sharply
between the concepts of ‘sexual’ and ‘genital.’ The former is the wider con-
cept and includes many activities that have nothing to do with the geni-
tals.”57 Specifically, “[s]exual life includes the function of obtaining pleasure
from zones of the body – a function which is subsequently brought into the
service of reproduction”.58 As a consequence of the sexual/genitals distinc-
tion, sexuality is not synonymous with genitalia nor does “[s]exual life begin
only at puberty, [it] starts with plain manifestations soon after birth”.59
Freud engages with the nature of childhood sexuality from a variety of
angles. Noting that the child undergoes a profound process of discipline

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 37

and sublimation wherein his sexual instinct is either repressed or trans-

ferred to other outlets, he maintains that the child’s behaviour and sexual-
ity is not tied to procreation but to “self-preservation”,60 autonomy, and
“auto-eroticism”.61 The reason for the latter is bound to the lack of sexual
object inherent in the child’s initial sexuality; an object only becomes
apparent much later in puberty. Freud outlines the relationship between
self-preservation, autonomy, and auto-eroticism via the famous analysis of
thumb-sucking, which is taken to mimic the pleasure that the child gains
from the breast. Whereas the breast is frequently absent and so beyond
the child’s control, the child substitutes his own body part for the breast,
thereby separating his “sexual satisfaction . . . from the need for taking
nourishment”,62 while also, in so doing, allowing the child to obtain
autonomy from the external world he does not yet control. In other words,
the example of thumb-sucking is taken to reveal “the three essential char-
acteristics of an infantile sexual manifestation. At its origin it attaches itself
to one of the vital somatic functions; it has as yet no sexual object, and is
thus auto-erotic.”63
The key issue here is that childhood sexuality is not object-orientated,
but is auto-erotic, tied to “the excitations of the sensory surfaces – the skin
and the sense organs – and, most directly of all, by the operation of stimuli
on certain areas known as erotogenetic zones”.64 This excitation is not ini-
tially bound to one body part; “any part of the skin and any sense-organ –
probably, indeed, any organ – can function as an erotogenic zone, though
there are some particularly marked erotogenic zones”.65 Furthermore,
“sexual excitation is not the primary motivation for the child’s action, but
“arises as a by-product . . . of a large number of processes that occur in the
organism, as soon as they reach a certain degree of intensity”.66 The notion
of sexuality at play in Freud’s analysis of childhood sexuality is then expan-
sive, tied to any form of pleasure, with this usually initially being found
through unintended sensory stimuli.
This pre-genital stage of childhood sexual development gradually morphs
into a genital one at puberty, wherein sexuality is tied to “the primacy of a
single erotogenic zone, [and] form[s] a firm organization directed towards a
sexual aim attached to some extraneous sexual object”.67 The transition from
childhood auto-eroticism to adult genital sexuality is transitional, based on a
continuum and constituted by the child’s movement through various stages:
First, the oral stage, manifested through, for example, thumb-sucking, where
the child obtains pleasure from its own body without this being primar-
ily orientated to a single body part or the satisfaction of its sexual instinct.
Second, the later anal stage in which the child comes to associate pleasure
with its control over its bowel movements. Here, the child starts to identify

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pleasure with a particular body part, an alteration that will be taken further
in puberty when pleasure is tied explicitly to the genitals. “These phases of
sexual organization are normally passed through smoothly, without giving
more than a hint of their existence”68 and are usually “completed” “between
the ages of two and five”,69 when it is brought “to a halt or to a retreat by the
latency period”70 characterised by “the infantile nature of sexual aims”.71 It
is at this point that the child enters the phallic stage. I will return to this in
a later section.
This initial phase is supplemented by a “second wave [that] sets in with
puberty and determines the final outcome of sexual life”.72 Specifically, with
“the arrival of puberty, changes set in which are destined to give infantile
sexual life its final, normal shape”.73 Whereas the sexual instinct was up to
this moment auto-erotic, it now settles on an object, whereas the disparate
and dispersed manifestations of the sexual instinct found in the pre-puberty
stage focus on and “become subordinated to the primacy of the genital
zone”,74 which, in turn, is orientated to a singular aim: in the case, of males,
“the discharge of the sexual products”,75 whereas in women a more com-
plicated “kind of involution”76 takes place that Freud has great difficulty
identifying or describing. He is clear however that the divergence between
men and women is, at this stage, significant.
From an initial bisexuality, individuals come, through a developmen-
tal process, to distinguish themselves into one of two sexes. This is not,
however, to say that the process is linear so that the initial bisexuality
turns into a simple unisexuality. Freud makes this clear when he mentions
the possibility of, what will come to be known as, transgender/sexual reas-
signment: “It has become experimentally possible . . . to transform a male
into a female, and conversely a female into a male”.77 When he offers
some biological speculations as to why this is so, they return us to his
postulation of an original bisexuality, which appears to continue to sub-
tend individual “actual” sexual development ready to disrupt any sexual
identity and permit a reconfiguration of it (both physically and psychi-
cally). The original bisexuality is then fundamental to Freud’s insistence
that sexuality not premised on an ahistoric innate essentialism, nor is it
ever fully determined. Although it is expressed via a seeming heteronor-
mative division, this division is plastic, fluid, and marked by the initial
bisexuality; at no point does it coalesce into a simple unity with a singular
structure, aim, or object.
There is obviously far more to Freud’s discussion of sexuality, both in
the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and other works, but this brief
engagement suffices for the current purpose of showing how he appeals to
an original bisexuality to undermine any sexual innate essentialism, holds

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 39

that sexuality is a condition of human being – it does not simply develop

at a certain point – and outlines some of the developmental stages through
which children pass as they move towards a genitally-orientated (adult) sex-
ual life. Sexuality is, for Freud, a process of continuous becoming, so that at
no point in the process does it manifest itself as a straightforward unity: the
initial bisexuality does not simply become constricted to a unisexuality at
puberty; the original bisexual indeterminateness continues to subtend the
sexuality that crystallises at puberty disrupting all manifestations of sexual-
ity to, in so doing, both complicate an individual’s sexuality and offer the
possibility to change it.

Freud on Femininity
Having outlined the basic parameters of Freud’s early thinking on sexual-
ity, paying particular attention to his notion of an originary bisexuality that
morphs into a heterogeneous sexuality at puberty, I now move beyond the
Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality to Freud’s later text “Femininity” (from
1933). Here, Freud builds on his earlier analysis by focusing on the way in
which one sex – the female sex – is generated from the originary bisexual-
ity, while, at the same time, going on to engage with, what he calls, “the
riddle of the nature of femininity”.78 It has been questioned why, given the
originary bisexuality, Freud focuses on femininity to the exclusion of mas-
culinity; in other words, if the originary bisexuality is both masculine and
feminine, why only focus on the feminine.79 This has led to the charge that
the masculine, manifested through a privileging of the phallus, structures
Freudian theory. Indeed, the entire psychoanalytic edifice is, in a strong
sense, premised on the masculine perspective as Freud makes clear in his
famous comment in The Question of Lay Analysis (published in 1926) that
“[w]e know less about the sexual life of little girls than of boys. But we
need not feel ashamed of this distinction; after all, the sexual life of adult
women is a ‘dark continent’ for psychology”.80 The text on “Femininity”
is an attempt – albeit one that as Freud subsequently recognised does not
quite succeed – to illuminate that darkness.
Freud starts by explaining that the analysis “brings forth nothing but
observed facts, almost without any speculative additions”.81 It is therefore
meant as an empirical study, part of an ongoing analysis of the topic. From
this, Freud explains that the male/female division is one that we make in
every encounter and, indeed, do so “with unhesitating certainty”.82 The
question arises as to the ground for such certainty. While the perhaps
obvious response would be that the division is anatomical, Freud points
out that the issue is not as clear-cut as one would think. In particular, he

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notes that modern science affirms two points that undermine the notion
of a straightforward male/female division. First, whereas “[t]he male sexual
product, the spermatozoon, and its vehicle are male [and] the ovum and the
organism that harbors it are female”,83 there have been cases in both sexes
where opposing “organs have been found which serve exclusively for the
sexual functions; they were probably developed from the same [innate] dis-
position into two different forms”.84 That they emanate from an originary
unified source, where both are present, undermines the notion that male/
female anatomies are completely distinct. Furthermore, Freud explains that
“in both sexes the other organs, the bodily shapes and tissues, show the
influence of the individual’s sex, but this is inconstant and its amount vari-
able; these are known as the secondary sexual characteristics”.85 In other
words, an individual’s sexuality is not fixed and determined, but fluid and
changing. There is no such thing, biologically speaking, as a pure male or
pure female: “portions of the male sexual apparatus also appear in women’s
bodies, though in atrophied state, and vice versa in the alternative case”.86
The meanings of “masculine” and “feminine” are then based on a contin-
uum that is always attached to the other sex, while the individual manifes-
tation of this hybrid sexuality is fluid and specific to each individual. As a
consequence, each individual is not unisexual, but a different configura-
tion of the originary bisexuality; “not a man or a woman but always both
– merely a certain amount more the one than the other”.87 The problem,
however, is that this contradicts everyday perception wherein it appears that
“only one kind of sexual product – ova or semen – is nevertheless present in
one person”.88 For this reason, Freud concludes that “you are bound to have
doubts as to the decisive significance of those elements and must conclude
that what constitutes masculinity or femininity is an unknown characteris-
tic which anatomy cannot lay hold of”.89
If anatomy cannot settle the question of the sexes, Freud turns to psy-
chology. The basic premise is that “[w]e are accustomed to employ[ing]
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ as mental qualities [and so] have transferred the
notion of bisexuality to mental life”.90 As a consequence, “we speak of a
person, whether male or female, as behaving in a masculine way in one
connection and in a feminine way in another”.91 In other words, rather than
sexuality referring to anatomical parts, psychological conceptions under-
stand “sexuality” to refer to modes of behaviour or action. Rather than these
being unitary, each individual can act in both masculine and/or feminine
ways at different times.
Freud notes, however, that this does not resolve the issue because it sim-
ply generates the question of what constitutes masculine/feminine ways of
acting, which invariably returns us to anatomy or to convention; that is,

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 41

the roles that the masculine and feminine currently fulfil.92 For this reason,
he notes that “when you say ‘masculine,’ you usually mean ‘active’, and
when you say ‘feminine’, you usually mean passive”.93 Freud identifies two
problems with this logic. First, activity and passive are not exclusively traits
of masculinity or femininity: “Women can display great activity in various
directions, men are not able to live in company with their own kind unless
they develop a large amount of passive adaptability.”94 To simply insist on
the masculine–active/feminine–passive dichotomy is then to have decided
in advance on those associations and so imposed those categories onto the
sexes. Even if it is objected that femininity is not associated with passivity
per se, but with a preference for “passive aims”,95 Freud objects that, even if
correct, there is no guarantee that this is essential to her character. It could
simply be the case that it is a consequence of social convention, wherein
the feminine is associated with certain behaviours that were subsequently
imparted to and adopted by “her” as a child.
Having rejected purely biological and psychological accounts of femi-
ninity, Freud proposes to examine the issue from a psychoanalytic view-
point that “does not try to describe what a woman is – that would be a task
that it could scarcely perform – but sets about enquiring how she comes
into being, how a woman develops out of a child with a bisexual disposi-
tion”.96 He starts the enquiry from two premises: “The first is that here once
more the constitution will not adapt itself to its function without a struggle.
The second is that the decisive turning-points will already have been pre-
pared for or completed before puberty.”97 Freud claims that both of these
are confirmed by experience. However, he notes that the sexes experience
the change from childhood to adulthood differently with “the development
of a little girl into a normal woman [being] more difficult and more com-
plicated, since it includes two extra tasks, to which there is nothing corre-
sponding in the development of man”.98
While noting the physical differences between boys and girls – none
of which is determinate for the development of sexuality – Freud men-
tions that “[d]ifferences emerge in the instinctual disposition which give
a glimpse of the later nature of women”.99 Specifically, “[a] little girl is
as a rule less aggressive, defiant and self-sufficient; she seems to have a
greater need for being shown affection and on that account to be more
dependent and pliant”.100 Freud notes that, far from being simply negative
characteristics, this pliancy permits the female to develop her bladder and
excrement control faster than in males. Furthermore, he suggests that “little
girls are more intelligent and livelier than boys of the same age; they go
out more to meet the external world and at the same time form stronger
object-cathexes”.101 However, once the child passes into the phallic phase

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of development, “which is . . . a forerunner of the final form taken by sexual

life and already much resembles it”,102 “the differences between the sexes
are completely eclipsed by their agreements”.103 Very basically, the phallic
stage denotes the stage of a child’s development that occurs relatively early
and entails the fixation on the male phallus.104 In contrast, “[t]he female
genitals long remain unknown”.105 Controversially, that both sexes focus
on the phallus means, for Freud, that there is a convergence in the psychic
development of both sexes, albeit one that is orientated from and around
the masculine phallus. As he puts it, “the little girl is a little man”.106
Freud continues that, in the phallic stage, boys and girls learn that their
genitalia are sources of pleasure. Whereas boys learn “how to derive plea-
surable sensations from their small penis and connect its excited state with
the ideas of sexual intercourse”,107 girls “do the same thing with their still
smaller clitoris”.108 There are two issues of importance here. First, the clitoris
is understood to be a “penis-equivalent”,109 once again confirming Freud’s
privileging of the masculine over the feminine (it is not the case that the
penis is the clitoris-equivalent, for example). Second, at this stage, “the truly
feminine vagina is still undiscovered by both sexes”.110 This discovery takes
place later during puberty. A girl’s sexual development is more complicated
as she has to learn to transfer the site of sexual satisfaction from the clitoris
to the vagina; a transference not necessary in boys, whose sexuality is always
orientated around the “same” body part: the phallus.
Additionally, Freud argues that female development is further compli-
cated by a second issue not found in the development of the masculine. For
boys, the mother is the first object of love and she remains such during the
formation of his Oedipus complex and after. The Oedipus complex is, put
very schematically, the stage in the child’s psychic development wherein he or
she experiences an initial unconscious desire for his or her opposite-sex parent
and unconscious jealousy and anger towards his or her same-sex parent: a boy
desires his mother and fears his father; whereas a girl desires her father and
hates her mother. The implications of the child’s experience of the Oedipus
complex do, however, take different forms in boys and girls; in the former,
it gives rise to the castration complex, while in girls it generates penis envy.
To understand this, it is necessary to note that, while a girl depends upon
her mother for “the major and simple vital needs”,111 “the girl’s father . . .
becomes her love object”.112 In time, she will have to replace the father with
another love object, presumably another male. So, a women has to change
her love object from the mother to the father, female to male, whereas boys
always have a women as their love object; it is a women that initially provides
pleasure through providing food to the baby boy and it is a woman who
will, if he develops “normally” – that is, heterosexually – provide him with

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 43

genital pleasure. As a consequence, female sexual development is far more

complicated than men’s: she not only has to change her erotic zone – from
the clitoris to the vagina – but also her love object from one sex to the other.
The question that arises relates to “how this happens: in particular, how
does a girl pass from her mother to an attachment to her father? Or, in other
words, how does she pass from her masculine phase to the feminine one to
which she is biologically destined?”113 Besides the troubling heteronorma-
tivity inherent in Freud’s analysis and, indeed, the questionable notion of
a biologically determined notion of femininity, which contradicts his pre-
vious rejection of sexual essentialism, Freud explains that the transition is
not only fantastically complicated but also one that is fundamental to any
attempt to “understand women”.114 It is therefore necessary to engage with
“the girl’s libidinal relations to her mother”.115
Freud is quick to note that these take different forms and entail a mixture
of active and passive stances towards the mother – which, despite warning
that “we should avoid doing so as far as possible”,116 he problematically
calls masculine (active) and feminine (passive) and so repeats a long-
standing division of the sexes. Furthermore, the girl is both affectionate and
hostile to the mother, although the latter only arises as a consequence of
anxiety.117 Nevertheless, Freud explains that it is the mother who is initially
responsible for providing the baby girl with pleasure, both through the pro-
vision of food but also through simply touching the baby’s body as the
mother cleans her.118 The question arises as to how this initial pleasurable
identification with the mother is broken.
Freud notes that it “usually”119 ends up with an attachment to the father,
which, in turn, is accompanied by an alteration in the girl’s relationship
to the mother: the girl develops hostility towards the mother so that “the
attachment to the mother ends in hate”.120 Freud’s explanation for this tran-
sition is drawn from the biological differences between the genitalia of the
sexes. However, rather than simply appealing to a naturalist argument to
the effect that a girl’s specific biological form leads her to a certain mode of
behaviour, he suggests that “the anatomical distinction [between the sexes]
must express itself in psychical consequences”.121 From this premise, he
claims “that girls hold their mother responsible for their lack of a penis and
do not forgive her for their being thus put at a disadvantage”.122
So, while both sexes suffer from a castration complex, it takes different
forms for both. Boys remember the threats received when he fondled his gen-
itals – for example, “if you keep playing with that [the penis], it”ll fall off”,
or “if you keep playing with that, I”ll cut it off” – “begins to give credence to
the threat . . . and falls under the influence of fear of castration, which will be
the most powerful motive force in his subsequent development”.123 In girls,

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however, while the start of the castration complex also results from seeing
the boy’s penis, it is complicated by the recognition that she lacks one. With
this, girls “feel seriously wronged, often declar[ing] that they want to ‘have
something like it too,’ and [so] fall victim to ‘envy for the penis,’ which will
leave ineradicable traces on their development and the formation of their
character”.124
Penis envy gives rise to certain consequences: whereas boys fear castra-
tion and so actively seek to resolve the Oedipus complex to overcome that
threat, girls, already castrated, lack the motivation to surmount that com-
plex. As a consequence, “[g]irls remain in [the Oedipus complex] for an
indeterminate length of time; they demolish it late and, even so, incom-
pletely”.125 Freud concludes that their “formation of the super-ego must suf-
fer; it cannot attain the strength and independence which give it its cultural
significance”.126 Girls are unable to develop sufficiently strong means of
self-control; they continue to passively accept external authority to deter-
mine what to do. This has dramatic consequences for female behaviour;
a conclusion that has, as Freud points out, drawn the ire of “feminists”.127
That girls cannot obtain a penis is interpreted by them as being inher-
ently unjust. For this reason, Freud explains that “envy and jealousy play an
even greater part in the mental life of women than of men”.128 Again, this
has been a long-standing claim made within Western philosophy, normally
used to denigrate women. That Freud repeats it here and then towards the
end of the essay – “The fact that women must be regarded as having little
sense of justice is no doubt related to the predominance of envy in their
mental life”.129 – reaffirms and reiterates the extent to which his thinking
remains tied to the logic of patriarchy inherent in the Western philosophi-
cal tradition. It also brings him to “attribute a larger amount of narcissism
to femininity”130 and, indeed, “physical vanity”,131 both of which lead to
the conclusion that “women [are] weaker in their social instincts and [have]
less capacity for sublimating their instincts than men”.132 In short, women
are more deferential, self-centered, vain, and instinctual than men; claims
that again have a long heritage within Western philosophy.
Nevertheless, Freud explains that “[t]he discovery that she is castrated
is a turning point in a girl’s growth”.133 There are three possible lines of
response: One leads “to normal femininity”,134 which is understood to
entail the adoption of appropriately feminine characteristics and roles and
sexual desire for the male object; again revealing that there is a strong het-
eronormativity to Freud’s conception of normalcy. Alternatively, it can lead
to “the development of a powerful masculinity complex”135 wherein “the
girl refuses, as it were, to recognise the unwelcome fact [that she lacks a
penis], and defiantly rebellious, even exaggerates her previous masculinity,

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 45

clings to her clitoral activity and takes refuge in an identification with her
phallic mother or her father”.136 In short, she aims to overcompensate for
her lack of penis by identifying fully with masculinity. The third possibil-
ity “leads to sexual inhibition or to neurosis”.137 The girl, having lived up
to this point in a masculine way – which presumably equates to an active
life – and obtained sexual satisfaction through the stimulus of the clitoris
as this was related through the mother, “now, owing to the influence of
her penis-envy . . . loses her enjoyment in her phallic sexuality”.138 More
specifically, “[h]er self-love is mortified by the comparison with the boy’s
far superior equipment and in consequence she renounces her masturba-
tory satisfaction from her clitoris, repudiates her love for her mother and
at the same time not infrequently represses a good part of her sexual trends
in general”.139 Her repression of clitorial stimulation is also accompanied
by the renouncement of a certain amount of activity.140 As a consequence,
whereas each individual is a combination of activity and passivity, mascu-
linity and femininity, “[p]assivity now has the upper hand, and the girl’s
turning to her father is accomplished principally with the help of passive
instinctual impulses”.141 According to Freud, “the wish with which the girl
turns to her father is no doubt originally the wish for the penis which [she
understands that] her mother has refused her and which she now expects
from her father”.142
Importantly, and not uncontroversially, Freud insists that the girl’s iden-
tification with the phallic father can be overcome “if the wish for a penis is
replaced by one for a baby, if, that is, a baby takes the place of the penis in
accordance with an ancient symbolic equivalence”.143 While any baby can
act as the symbolic penis that provides her with fulfilment, women find it to
be especially fulfilling “if the baby is a little boy who brings the longed-for
penis with him”.144 Having answered “the enigma of women”145 by claiming
that femininity is marked by a castration complex that makes her envious of
masculinity, more deferential to (male) authority, self-centered, vain, and
unjust, Freud now posits the creation of a male baby as the solution.

Conclusion
There is obviously far more to Freud’s thinking generally and on sexuality
specifically, but this outline is sufficient to demonstrate his continuing privi-
leging of masculinity when thinking about femininity; or, put differently, his
attempt to think femininity from masculinity. By insisting that both sexes
look to the male phallus, Freud’s thinking continues to be clouded by the
patriarchal logic dominant in Western philosophy and his cultural milieu.
Freud subsequently recognised this charge, and responded, dismissively and

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condescendingly, that “the ladies, whenever some comparison seemed to

turn out unfavourable to their sex, [tended] to utter a suspicion that we, the
male analysts, had been unable to overcome certain deeply-rooted preju-
dices against what was feminine, and that this was being paid for in the par-
tiality of our researches”.146 He attempts to defend himself by explaining that
because he stands “on the ground of bisexuality . . . [he] only ha[s] to say:
‘This doesn’t apply to you. You’re the exception; on this point you’re more
masculine than feminine.’”147
Sarah Kofman delves into this defence to point out that it is premised
on “[t]he thesis of bisexuality [which] implies that Sigmund Freud himself
could not have been purely and simply a man (vir), that he could not have
had (purely) masculine prejudices”.148 That Freud, like all men, is, on his
telling, a combination of masculine and feminine aspects means that he
cannot simply privilege one over the other. This, however, fails to remem-
ber that the originary bisexuality, while continuing to adhere to individuals,
does not determine behaviour or attitudes, which are a consequence of a
long process of socio-psychic maturation. As a consequence, Kofman con-
cludes with the strong claim that

[t]he thesis of bisexuality . . . allows Freud to repeat the most tenacious,

the most traditional, the most metaphysical phallocratic discourse: if you
women are as intelligent as men, it is because you are really more masculine
than feminine. Thus it allows him to shut women up, to put an end to their
demands and accusations.149

Kofman doubts that Freud actually believes the theory of originary bisexu-
ality and, indeed, points out that he certainly does not remain consistent
with it. Her conclusion is that Freud’s positing of an originary bisexuality is
a construction to hide and provide intellectual cover for the perpetuation of
the logic of patriarchy. In short, the theory of bisexuality permits Freud to
appear to be “enlightened”, when, in actuality, it “is in the last analysis used
only as a strategic weapon in connection with women”.150
While I am sympathetic to Kofman’s basic point, which I take to be that
there is a tension between Freud’s theory of an originary bisexuality – which
holds that both sexes are ontologically “equal” – and his subsequent patri-
archal claims regarding individual (sexual) development, I disagree with her
apparent claim that this is because Freud is engaging in an intentional sleight
of hand where he aims to affirm the latter under the cover of the former.
Rather, I think there is something far less sinister occurring, which is simply
that Freud’s thinking and analysis unintentionally continues to be shaped and
informed by the logic of patriarchy that has long defined Western philosophy

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 47

and was prevalent in his cultural milieu. As his own theory postulates, the
social setting through which a child is brought up continues to shape his
or her unconscious values throughout his or her life. Applying this insight
to Freud, it is possible to conclude that the logic of patriarchy defining his
social setting continued to unconsciously affect his thinking. Although he
was aware of the important historical role that the logic of patriarchy has
played in shaping Western thought and sought to undermine it, Freud con-
tinued to be guilty of unconsciously repeating it.
Freud might, of course, defend himself by claiming that his conclusion
is not premised on an assumption regarding the nature of femininity, but is
gleaned from empirical (clinical) experience, but such an argument would,
at best, provide a description of what femininity means within Viennese
society at the beginning of the twentieth century; it would not, as Freud
insists it does, reveal the structures of femininity (or masculinity) per se. As
a consequence, it would confirm rather than reject the charge that Freud’s
analysis of femininity is based on prejudices and assumptions.
That Freud’s thinking on femininity continues to implicitly affirm the
logic of patriarchy, even as he explicitly undermines the notion of sexual
essentialism, reveals, so I want to suggest, the influence that this logic has
on the unconscious. This logic has been so ingrained in Western thinking on
the subject for so long that even when it is directly challenged, it is all too
easy to implicitly repeat it. This confirms the continuing power of the uncon-
scious to shape thought – thereby affirming one of the central insights of
Freud’s metapsychology – demonstrates how the logic of patriarchy imper-
ceptibly shapes thinking on sexuality, and shows just how difficult it is to
overcome it and, by extension, the essentialist-patriarchal model long domi-
nant. Even when sexuality is identified as a problem – as it is with Freud –
the long-standing privileging of the masculine means that it is all too easy
to unconsciously repeat and so perpetuate the logic of patriarchy inherent
in that model. So, whereas Freud undermines the essentialist premises, he
nevertheless continues to perpetuate the patriarchal aspect, meaning that he
is not capable of fully overcoming the essentialist-patriarchal model. I will
argue that this is a problem that is repeated, albeit in slightly different form,
throughout many of the critical analyses of the essentialist-patriarchal model
found in post-Freudian thinking.

Notes
1. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 3, edited and translated by James
Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

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 48 / Questioning Sexuality

2. Roger Horrocks, Freud Revisited: Psychoanalytic Themes in the Postmodern Age

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 113.
3. Ibid., p. 113.
4. Ibid., p. 113.
5. Ibid., p. 114.
6. Ibid., p. 114.
7. Ibid., p. 115.
8. Ibid., p. 115.
9. Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”,
in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, edited by Linda Nicholson
(Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), pp. 27–62 (p. 43).
10. Juliet Mitchell, “Introduction – I”, in Feminine Sexuality: Jacan Lacan and the école
freudienne, edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, trans. Jacqueline Rose
(London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 1–26 (p. 9).
11. Bertram J. Cohler and Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, “Freud, Anna, and the Problem
of Female Sexuality”, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, vol. 28, n. 1, 2008, pp. 3–26 (p. 4).
12. Sigmund Freud, “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction
between the Sexes”, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
of Sigmund Freud: Volume 19, edited and translated by James Strachey (London:
Vintage, 2001), pp. 248–258.
13. Sigmund Freud, “Female Sexuality”, in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 21, edited and translated by James
Strachey (London: Vintage, 2001), pp. 223–243.
14. Sigmund Freud, “Femininity”, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychologi-
cal Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 22, edited and translated by James Strachey
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), pp. 139–167.
15. For a critical overview of all three essays, see Teresa Brennan, The Interpretation
of the Flesh: Freud and Femininity (Abingdon: Routledge, 1992), pp. 39–65.
16. Mitchell, “Introduction – I”, p. 10.
17. Arnold I. Davidson, The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the
Formation of Concepts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 92.
18. Mitchell, “Introduction – I”, p. xxvi.
19. Sigmund, Three Essays on Sexuality, p. xxvii.
20. Ibid., p. xxvii.
21. Ibid., p. 1.
22. Ibid., p. 1.
23. Ibid., p. 1.
24. Ibid., p. 1.
25. Ibid., p. 1.
26. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
27. Ibid., p. 1.
28. Ibid., p. 2.
29. Ibid., p. 2.
30. Ibid., p. 2.

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 49

31. Ibid., p. 2.
32. Ibid., p. 2.
33. Ibid., p. 2.
34. Ibid., p. 2.
35. Ibid., p. 3.
36. Ibid., p. 4.
37. Ibid., p. 4.
38. Ibid., p. 4.
39. Ibid., p. 5.
40. Ibid., p. 5.
41. Ibid., p. 7.
42. Ibid., p. 7.
43. Ibid., p. 7.
44. Ibid., p. 8.
45. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”,
in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Feminist Sexuality, edited by Carol S. Vance
(Abingdon: Routledge, 1984), pp. 267–319 (p. 308).
46. Sigmund, Three Essays on Sexuality, p. 34.
47. Ibid., p. 14.
48. Ibid., p. 14.
49. Ibid., p. 14.
50. Ibid., p. 15.
51. Ibid., p. 85fn1.
52. Ibid., p. 85.
53. Ibid., p. 86.
54. Ibid., p. 39.
55. Ibid., p. 43.
56. Ibid., p. 42.
57. Sigmund Freud, The Outline of Psycho-Analysis: The Standard Edition of the Com-
plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 23, edited and translated by
James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 23.
58. Ibid., p. 23.
59. Ibid., p. 23.
60. Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, p. 48.
61. Ibid., p. 47.
62. Ibid., p. 48.
63. Ibid., p. 48.
64. Ibid., p. 70.
65. Ibid., p. 98.
66. Ibid., p. 99.
67. Ibid., p. 63.
68. Ibid., p. 64.
69. Ibid., p. 64.
70. Ibid., p. 66.

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 50 / Questioning Sexuality

71. Ibid., p. 66.

72. Ibid., p. 66.
73. Ibid., p. 73.
74. Ibid., p. 73.
75. Ibid., p. 73.
76. Ibid., p. 73.
77. Ibid., p. 81.
78. Freud, “Femininity”, p. 140.
79. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, “Freud and Female Sexuality: The Consideration
of Some Blind Spots in the Exploration of the ‘Dark Continent’”, International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 57, 1976, pp. 275–286, (p. 275).
80. Sigmund Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis, in The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume 20, edited and translated
by James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), pp. 177–258 (p. 211).
81. Freud, “Femininity”, p. 140.
82. Ibid., p. 141.
83. Ibid., p. 141.
84. Ibid., p. 141.
85. Ibid., p. 141.
86. Ibid., p. 141.
87. Ibid., p. 141.
88. Ibid., p. 141.
89. Ibid., p. 142.
90. Ibid., p. 142.
91. Ibid., p. 142.
92. Ibid., p. 142.
93. Ibid., p. 142.
94. Ibid., p. 143.
95. Ibid., p. 143.
96. Ibid., p. 144.
97. Ibid., p. 145.
98. Ibid., p. 145.
99. Ibid., p. 145.
100. Ibid., p. 145.
101. Ibid., p. 146.
102. Freud, The Outline of Psycho-Analysis, p. 25.
103. Freud, “Femininity”, p. 146.
104. Freud, The Outline of Psycho-Analysis, p. 25.
105. Ibid., p. 25.
106. Freud, “Femininity”, p. 146.
107. Ibid., p. 146.
108. Ibid., p. 146.
109. Ibid., p. 146.
110. Ibid., p. 146.

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 Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine / 51

111. Ibid., p. 147.

112. Ibid., p. 147.
113. Ibid., p. 147.
114. Ibid., p. 148.
115. Ibid., p. 148.
116. Ibid., p. 149.
117. Ibid., p. 149.
118. Ibid., pp. 149–150.
119. Ibid., p. 151.
120. Ibid., p. 151.
121. Ibid., p. 154.
122. Ibid., p. 154.
123. Ibid., p. 155.
124. Ibid., p. 155.
125. Ibid., p. 160.
126. Ibid., pp. 160–161.
127. Ibid., p. 161.
128. Ibid., p. 156.
129. Ibid., p. 166.
130. Ibid., p. 164.
131. Ibid., p. 164.
132. Ibid., p. 166.
133. Ibid., p. 156.
134. Ibid., p. 156.
135. Ibid., p. 161.
136. Ibid., p. 161.
137. Ibid., p. 156.
138. Ibid., p. 157.
139. Ibid., p. 157.
140. Ibid., p. 158.
141. Ibid., p. 159.
142. Ibid., p. 159.
143. Ibid., p. 159.
144. Ibid., p. 159.
145. Ibid., p. 162.
146. Ibid., p. 145.
147. Ibid., p. 145.
148. Sarah Kofman, Women in Freud’s Writings, trans. Katherine Porter (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 15.
149. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
150. Ibid., p. 15.

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 C HAPTER 2

Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology,

and Sexuality

Writing at around the same time as Freud, Edmund Husserl developed an

alternative philosophical methodology that forewent the creation of specu-
lative (meta)-physical schemas as a means to explain what something is,
to instead emphasise a detailed and patient analysis of particular concrete
things. While Husserl’s thinking underwent various changes and revisions,
very generally, the basic premise is that, rather than start from a precon-
ceived idea of what something is or what thought entails, philosophical
enquiry has to focus on an immediate concrete phenomenon and let it
appear as it is.1 This is not an easy endeavour and, indeed, as Husserl was at
pains to stress, is an activity that requires a certain preparation and orienta-
tion, which he termed the “phenomenological reduction”.2
While this concept is a complex one and, indeed, changes throughout
Husserl’s writings, the basic premise is that in normal, everyday life, we
exist a “natural attitude”3 that delineates consciousness of a spatio-temporal
given imbued with value-characteristics. Because this attitude imposes
meaning onto objects, it reveals objects as we want them to appear or are
accustomed to seeing them, rather than as they actually are. To correct this,
Husserl “propose[s] to alter [our cognitive standpoint] radically”4 by bracketing
factical determinations to “put out of action the general positing which belongs
to the essence of the natural attitude”.5 Through this, Husserl insists that he
will be “completely [shut] off from any judgement about spatiotemporal factual
being”.6 This will remove (= bracket) the everyday presuppositions of the
natural attitude to permit an enquiry into the object’s transcendental con-
ditions purified of the determinations of factical being; a methodological
manoeuvre that will permit an enquiry into “things themselves”.7
The impact of Husserl’s thinking was substantial in the early decades
of the twentieth century, spawning a number of debates and conceptual

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 53

innovations. Some of the most important of these were tied to and arose
from the thinking of Husserl’s one-time assistant: Martin Heidegger. In
1927, Heidegger published Being and Time8 in which he dismisses what he
takes to be the implicit dependence on and affirmation of an other-worldly
metaphysics inherent in Husserl’s affirmation of the primary importance of
a pure transcendental realm, to instead affirm the fundamental importance
of ontology. From this, Heidegger introduces the ontological difference
between ontology, constituted by a questioning of the meaning of Being,
and its ontic expression in spatio-temporal entities. To fully understand
the latter requires that the Being of each entity be investigated.9
The issue that Heidegger immediately encounters is how to prevent such
a study from falling into empty universal abstractions. In Being and Time,
he aims to overcome this by insisting on the need to engage with one type
of entity – the human one, termed Dasein for reasons that will be subse-
quently explained – and use the revelation of the Being of Dasein to reveal
characteristics of Being per se. However, in so doing, Dasein must be ini-
tially posited as ontically/ontologically neutral; only this permits it to reveal
itself as it is rather than as how we, the phenomenologists, desire it to be or
have been conditioned to think it is.
While Heidegger’s emptying out of all factical determinations accords
with Husserl’s affirmation of the importance of the phenomenological reduc-
tion, it does lead to the question of the ontological importance of factical
determinations, such as sexuality. Whereas Heidegger’s insistence that Being
is “nothing” other than pure open-ended becoming undermines the notion
that sexuality is fixed or ahistoric, it seems to simply remove sexuality from
the equation. The question of Heidegger’s relationship to the question of sex-
uality has, therefore, been a contentious one within the secondary literature.
While, in the 1983 essay “Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Differ-
ence”,10 Jacques Derrida belatedly recognised that Heidegger’s fundamental
ontology is intimately tied to the question(ing) of sexual difference, there is
a long history, mainly within feminist and sexuality studies, that agrees with
Jean-Paul Sartre’s earlier assessment (from 1943) that “Heidegger . . . doesn’t
make the slightest allusion to [sexuality] in his existential analysis with the
result that his ‘Dasein’ strikes us as sexless”.11
Patricia Huntington12 provides a detailed overview of these positions,
but, put schematically, they centre around two lines of attack. The weaker
line13 argues that whereas, on its own, Heidegger’s thinking on sexuality
is unhelpful, when it is combined with the insights of other feminist writ-
ers, it can be reconstructed to offer helpful insights into sexuality. How-
ever, while this position takes seriously Heidegger’s fundamental ontology
and, indeed, the analysis of sexuality permitted by it, it suffers from two

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 54 / Questioning Sexuality

problems. First, it aims to “rescue” Heidegger’s thinking on sexuality by

combining aspects of his analyses with psychoanalytic theory, especially
its post-Lacanian (feminist) variant; a manoeuvre that ends up bypassing
Heidegger’s critique of psychoanalysis to significantly distort his thought.
Second, it uses Heidegger’s thought for another predetermined end and so
examines how Heidegger can be reconfigured (or combined with another
perspective) to contribute to our understanding of (a prior notion of) sexu-
ality. This not only instrumentalises Heidegger’s thinking, thereby ignoring
his critique of instrumental rationality,14 but also fails to concentrate on
what Heidegger actually says about sexuality.
The stronger line of critique maintains that once we do in fact pay atten-
tion to what Heidegger says on the topic, we find that he has, in fact, nothing
appropriate nor useful to say either because his analysis is held to depend
upon a number of implicit, unexplained patriarchal privilegings that bring
him to implicitly analyse issues from a supposedly masculine perspective15
or because his fundamental ontology cannot say anything about actual
physical bodies.16 The fundamental point behind this strong line of critique
is a methodological one: instead of depending upon the neutering principle
inherent in Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, “sexuality” must simply
be understood through the study of concrete actual beings and, crucially,
that these are always sexed. Whereas Heidegger dismisses this for producing
merely ontic studies based on everyday prejudices, his critics argue that it
is his affirmation of an ontological analysis that permits the prejudices suf-
fered everyday by women to be covered over or ignored. In other words,
this critique maintains that the affirmation of an originary neutrality does
not reveal a dispassionate prejudice-free notion of what sexuality really is,
but actually perpetuates prejudices by imposing a veneer of neutrality that
masks the ways in which the logic of patriarchy is subtly reintroduced into
the analysis; an introduction that turns socially contingent determinations
into fundamental ontological ones.
The question driving this dispute relates to the “correct” way to study
sexuality and indeed combat, what I have called, the essentialist-patriarchal
model; a dispute that will become increasingly apparent as we move through
feminist theory in later chapters. Whereas his critics insist on the importance
of immediate concrete analyses of already sexed beings, Heidegger main-
tains that the primordial question is an ontological one that necessitates the
adoption of a neutral mentality towards the object of study specifically and
ontic determinations more generally; only this will prevent us from impos-
ing ideas onto the object and, instead, let the object appear to us as it is.
As a consequence, from a Heideggerian perspective, his critics make two
conceptual errors. First, the claim that the affirmation of neutrality masks the
implicit affirmation of the logic of patriarchy seems to confuse the affirmation

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 55

of the principle of neutrality with its implementation. In other words, Hei-

degger’s critics identify moments of what they take to be a dependence on the
logic of patriarchy within his thought and, based on his affirmation of the origi-
nary neutrality inherent in the phenomenological reduction, conclude that all
affirmations of neutrality regardless of their content actually depend upon, are
committed to, and are infected by that logic. However, even if it is accepted
that Heidegger’s thought contains traces of patriarchy – an argument which
itself seems to be based on certain prejudices regarding what is patriarchal –
it is not clear that this undermines the affirmation of neuturality inherent in
the phenomenological reduction. It could simply be that Heidegger failed to
implement it properly. As befits the becoming of Being, new configurations of
Being will require ongoing original phenomenological analyses to undercover
and combat existing prejudices.
Second, the claim that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology fails to pro-
duce sufficiently empirical or ontically focused studies radically distorts his
thinking and/or judges it against a purpose that it was never intended to
fulfil. As Jesus Escudero explains:

One must not forget that the original purpose of Heidegger’s analytic is
none other than to articulate the foreunderstanding that Dasein has of
Being and not to develop a philosophical or ethical anthropology. For this
reason, Heidegger does not use the word ‘man’ or ‘person’ but the neutral
German term ‘Dasein.’17

Rather than aim to offer an ontic analysis, Heidegger’s fundamental ontol-

ogy is orientated to the conditions, manifested from a questioning of the
meaning of Being, that generate ontic understandings. Instead of aiming to
use Heidegger’s thinking to develop a predetermined conception of sexual-
ity and, indeed, judging it in accordance with that end, his thinking must
be examined on its own ontologically orientated terms. When read in this
manner, Heidegger’s thinking on sexuality questions its ontological impor-
tance and aims to account for its place “within” human being specifically
and Being more generally; it does not aim to offer an ontic analysis of sexu-
ality, but undercuts that issue by engaging with the more primordial ques-
tion of the role and place of “sexuality” in relation to Being. This results in
a radical, if truncated, critique of sexual essentialism that challenges us to
question our prejudices about sexual determinations.

Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and the Sexuality of Dasein

Heidegger’s early, incomplete work Being and Time, published in 1927, aims
to “raise anew the question of the meaning of being”18; a question that concerns

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 56 / Questioning Sexuality

“[e]verything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards

which we comport ourselves in any way, is Being; what we are is Being, and
so is how we are”.19 This questioning occupied the Ancient Greeks, but has
been largely ignored or forgotten as a particular understanding – based on
the notion of a fixed substance, or presence – has been settled on and come
to dominate Western thought. In contrast, Heidegger tentatively affirms
“time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being”,20
with the consequence that Being and its manifestations are to be thought,
not in terms of a fixed substance or presenting ground, but as pure, open-
ended becoming.
From here, Heidegger enquires into the “nature” of Being to, in so doing,
dismiss long-held prejudices that insist that the question of Being is the most
universal question – after all, everything is a manifestation of Being – and
therefore the most vacuous. Because it relates to everything that exists, Hei-
degger holds that it is the most important concept, although he accepts that
“this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no fur-
ther discussion. It is rather the darkest of all.”21 Indeed, Heidegger notes that,
although it is universal and transcends entities, Being does not exist in a sepa-
rate, transcendent realm. Rejecting a two-world metaphysical understanding
that posits a true, essential, but hidden, world against an inessential world
of appearance, he explains that “Being . . . is no class or genus of entities; yet
it pertains to every entity. Its ‘universality’ is to be sought higher up. Being
and the structure of Being lie beyond every entity and every possible charac-
ter which an entity may possess. Being is transcendens pure and simple.”22 That
Being is different to entities and always transcends them but is never transcen-
dent to them, leads to the famous notion of the ontological difference.
The first thing to note is that, while different, “Being is always the Being
of an entity”23 but yet “cannot . . . be conceived as an entity”.24 As a con-
sequence, Being is non-conceptual, although “it” is that from which and
upon which entities depend for their existence. For this reason, “we cannot
apply to Being the concept of ‘definition’ as presented in traditional logic,
which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology and which, within cer-
tain limits, provides a quite justifiable way of defining ‘entities.’”25 Such a
definition depends upon a particular conception of Being, wherein “it” is
understood to present itself as what it is, take on objective conceptual form
to do so, and, crucially, not change: the entity is what is presented and noth-
ing else. The question that Heidegger’s re-raising addresses is whether such
an assumed conception of Being is accurate or whether, as he postulates,
Being (and its manifestations) must be understood in terms of time. It is
for this reason that “[o]ntological inquiry is . . . more primordial, as over
against the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains naïve and

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 57

opaque if in its researches into the Being of entities it fails to discuss the
meaning of Being in general.”26 There is therefore a distinction between an
ontological level of analysis concerned with Being and an ontic one that lim-
its the discussion to entities. Because, for Heidegger, Being expresses itself in
entity form, the ontological level is far more important than the ontic one.
An ontological analysis can however take two forms: a “naïve”27 approach
that focuses on an entity to reveals its particular Being; and “fundamental
ontology”28 which draws general conclusions regarding Being from the onto-
logical analysis of an entity.
However, if Being is different to entities and so non-conceptual, how
are we to understand (= conceptualise) it? Heidegger’s response is two-
fold. First, he asks for nothing other than a fundamental alteration in how
we think, away from a conceptual focus to a more ineffable, flowing, and
changing mode of thought.29 As a consequence, Being must “be asked
about, exhibited in a way of its own essentially different from the way in
which entities are discovered”.30 While this changes after his Kehre in 1933
when an unmediated study of Being is affirmed, Heidegger, in Being and
Time, returns to the ontological difference to suggest that if Being is always
the Being of an entity, perhaps enquiring into an entity can reveal Being. In
particular, he insists that one entity, Dasein, can fulfil this role because “it
is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an
issue for it”.31 In other words, Dasein is the only entity for whom “asking
this question is [the] entity’s mode of Being”.32 Importantly, the analysis of
Dasein is used, not as an end in itself, but as a means to raise the question
of the meaning of Being.
“Dasein” is a neologism of “Da”, meaning “there”, and “sein”, meaning
“is”, and so literally gives us “there-is”. There are at least two issues that
need to be unpacked for this nomenclature to make sense. First, “Dasein”
is employed because it reveals the particular understanding of the onto-
logical difference that Heidegger has in mind. Dasein, as an entity, has a
Being of its own but, crucially, it also signifies the way in which entities
relate to Being: against the temporal flux of Being, Dasein stands out so that
“there-is” something with spatio-temporal form. Because it exists from a
temporal flow, Dasein is never defined by a substance; “it” is defined by the
possibility that is always created from the changing configurations made
possible by the temporality of Being. In Being and Time, Heidegger terms
this “existence” and claims that “Dasein always understands itself in terms
of its existence – in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself.
Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself, or got itself into them,
or grown up in them already.”33 How it understands this ontological pos-
sibility shapes its ontic possibilities and, indeed, comportment. In short,

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if Dasein denies the subtending ontological possibility, it will tend to take

itself to be a fixed thing and so, on Heidegger’s terms, will be inauthen-
tic. Authenticity requires that it recognise, accept, and affirm its ontological
possibility throughout its ontic existence.34
Second, when engaging with the preliminary ontic analysis of Dasein,
Heidegger returns to the basic premise of Husserl’s phenomenological
reduction where the phenomenologist “let[s] that which shows itself be
seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself”.35 As
a consequence, Heidegger explains that, in contrast to other branches of
knowledge that already know the object to the studied, “‘[p]henomenology’
neither designates the object of its researches, nor characterizes the sub-
ject-matter thus comprised. The word merely informs us of the ‘how’ with
which what is to be treated in this science gets exhibited and handled.”36
From these premises, the preliminary ontic analysis of Dasein cannot be
undertaken from preconceptions regarding Dasein. Instead of starting from
a predetermined understanding that is imposed onto it, Dasein – and by
extension Being – must be allowed to reveal “itself” as “it” actually is, and
not as how we want it to be. This requires that the analysis initially bracket
all factical determinations, adopt a neutral stance, and, from this, permit
Dasein and by extension Being to reveal itself.
It should, however, be noted that Heidegger’s affirmation of the impor-
tance of an originary neutral “Dasein” is not a synonym for the disembodied,
abstract, unencumbered self that has marked Western modern philosophy.
This line of critique will feed through into a number of later feminist criti-
cisms, which suggest that Heidegger’s analysis both ignores and is unable to
conceptualise concrete, embodied, and differentiated entities. In contrast,
Heidegger maintains that Dasein is inherently embodied and embedded
within a world. Dasein is not defined by an “inner” innate core, but by its
“‘existence’”37 which, very generally, describes both the world it inhabits and
how it comports itself. These are not two distinct aspects but intertwine to
create Dasein: as a manifestation of Being, Dasein is not and cannot be a
fixed substance, thing, or object;38 it is inherently historical and changing.
Furthermore, as a situated, worldly entity, there is entwinement between
the Being of Dasein, Dasein’s understanding and comportment, and the
concrete world: “In Dasein itself, and therefore in its own understanding of
Being, the way the world is understood is . . . reflected back ontologically
upon the way in which Dasein itself gets interpreted.”39 Contrary then to the
mind/body dualism that has long conditioned Western philosophy, Dasein
is not separated from its world or body; it is factical being, with its facticity
(including its actions and understanding) entailing and defined by an inti-
mate and co-constitutive understanding of the world. As Heidegger warns,

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“Being-in is not a ‘property’ which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes

does not have, and without which it could be just as well as it could with it.
It is not the case that man ‘is’ and then has, by way of an extra, a relation-
ship-of-Being towards the ‘world.’”40 Dasein is not a disembodied entity
that may choose how to interact with its world; “it” is a worldly embodied
entity that cannot be separated or distinguished from its facticity from and
through which it acts.
It must be remembered, however, that the preliminary enquiry into
Dasein aims not to elicit the meaning of Dasein per se, but to determine
the meaning of Being. For the pre-Kehre Heidegger, all enquiries must con-
cern themselves with a questioning of the meaning of Being – not entities
– through a prior analysis of one entity: Dasein. This analytic of Dasein is
not however the end of the process, but the first stage to understanding the
meaning of Being. For this reason, he criticises disciplines such as anthro-
pology, biology, and psychology for not only undertaking purely ontic
analyses, but also conceptualising human being as an enclosed monadic
entity to be studied in isolation from its worldliness.41 Based on this, we
can surmise that, from a Heideggerian perspective, Freud’s approach is too
limited and ontic, in so far as it focuses on providing an ontic analysis of
human consciousness that not only locks the enquiry within a predeter-
mined ontological schema, but is unable to appreciate that it has done so.
To truly understand human being, Freud’s ontic analysis must be turned
into an ontological one regarding the meaning of Being. It is this insight
that underpins the critique of psychoanalysis and the development of
Daseinanalysis in the Zollikon Seminars.42 In turn, Heidegger’s fundamental
ontology has radical implications for the questioning of sexuality.

Dasein, Sexuality, and Fundamental Ontology

The use of the term neutral term “Dasein” as a means of signifying the
human entity prior to its ontic determinations leaves the question of sexu-
ality open. For this reason, Sartre’s claim that “Heidegger . . . doesn’t make
the slightest allusion to [sexuality] in his existential analysis with the result
that his ‘Dasein’ strikes us as sexless”43 is, strictly speaking, accurate in so
far as the analysis of Dasein goes, but it fails to recognise that (1) this
must be so to permit Dasein to reveal itself without being constrained by
prior imposed ontic determinations, (2) the analysis of Dasein is part of
a wider strategy that uses this analysis to question the meaning of Being,
and (3) Heidegger does, in fact, discuss the relationship between Dasein
and sexuality one year later in his lecture course from 1928, translated as
The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.

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Heidegger starts by clarifying that the analysis is bound to the premises

of fundamental ontology, outlined the previous year in Being and Time. For
this reason, “[t]he issue is . . . neither one of anthropology nor of ethics but
of . . . being as such, and thus one of a preparatory analysis concerning it”.44
Importantly, to ensure that Being reveals itself through the entity under anal-
ysis, “[t]he term ‘man’ was not used . . . Instead the neutral term Dasein was
chosen.”45 The problem with using the determination “man” or “human” is
that it comes loaded with conceptual baggage from the history of Western
thinking. Rather than simply assuming an understanding of Dasein or take
over the historically dominant conception, Heidegger maintains that it is nec-
essary to re-engage with Dasein on its own terms. It might turn out that the
way in which “human” has been thought historically is accurate, but unless
an investigation takes place that critically challenges long-held nomenclature
and, by extension, thinking on the topic, it will not be possible to confirm
this. For this reason, Heidegger explains that, rather than simply assume an
understanding of Dasein, “the interpretation of this being must be carried
out prior to every factual concretion”.46 As a consequence, it must be accepted
and affirmed that initially “Dasein is neither of the two sexes”.47
Whereas this appears to remove sexual considerations from the analy-
sis, Heidegger goes on to make the crucial claim that “here sexlessness is
not the indifference of an empty void, the weak negativity of an indifferent
ontic nothing. In its neutrality Dasein is not the indifferent nobody and
everybody, but the primordial positivity and potency of the essence.”48 The
neutrality of Dasein does not, somewhat paradoxically, neuter it, rendering
it an abstract, empty void, but points to and describes “the potency of the
origin”;49 the ever-changing, non-determinate “power” that “bears in itself
the intrinsic possibility of every concrete factual humanity”.50
Crucially, Heidegger holds that, technically, “[n]eutral Dasein is never
what exists; Dasein exists in each case only in its factical concretion”.51 Neu-
tral Dasein must nevertheless be posited to explain the transition from the
temporal becoming of Being to its manifestation in ontic form. Only by
positing an originary neutrality is it possible to ensure that Being’s open-
ended becoming and the possibility that defines it is not foreclosed within
factic determinations. For this reason, Heidegger explains that neutral Das-
ein is “the primal source of intrinsic possibility that springs up in every
existence and makes it intrinsically possible”.52
The positing of an originary neutral Dasein does not however imply that
ontic Dasein is split between an ontologically essentially “free” neutrality and
a factical world of appearance. Neutral Dasein – tied to Being’s becoming –
is immanently expressed factically and always subtends its factic expression.
Heidegger links this to the question of sexuality, noting that it ensures that

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 61

“Dasein harbors the intrinsic possibility for being factically dispersed into
bodiliness and thus into sexuality”.53 Factical being is not annihilated by neu-
turality, but is, in fact, only possible because it is “grounded” in neutrality.
Reiterating that this neutrality is not an empty void, but a potency, Heidegger
explains that “[t]he metaphysical neutrality of the human being, inmost iso-
lated as Dasein, is not an empty abstraction from the ontic, a neither-nor; it
is rather the authentic concreteness of the origin, the not-yet of factical dis-
persion [Zerstreutheit]”.54 As such, and starting from a non-determined meta-
physical neutrality, “Dasein is, among other things, in each case dispersed
in a body and concomitantly, among other things, in each case disunited
[Zwiespältig] in a particular sexuality”.55 From an initial, non-determined
“ground”, Dasein is disseminated into factical being; a process that requires
that its initial indeterminateness be broken up and multiplied to take on
ontic form. For this reason, this breaking-up is not negative, but the “posi-
tive” process whereby an initial indeterminate neutrality is distinguished into
different parts to permit ontic individuated existence. It is, in other words, the
moment when Dasein is thrown into a factical body.
This does not simply entail a “split[ting] into many individuals”;56 each
individuated entity is itself defined by “the intrinsic possibility of multi-
plication which . . . is present in every Dasein and for which embodiment
presents an organizing factor”.57 It is not the case then that having been
divided into different ontic beings, each entity created is singular and deter-
mined. Neutrality continues to subtend it, providing the possibility that the
ontic determination will take on different forms. As such, ontic sexuality is
created from a well-spring of indeterminate (ontological) neutrality and is
expressed through processes of differentiation that, rather than coalescing
into a determinate being, create a multiplicity that is not and cannot be
defined in terms of a defined totality, fixed unity, or a whole with multiple
parts. Instead, it is demarcated by the openness that expresses the possibil-
ity inherent in its neutral “ground”. The original neutrality does not disap-
pear in the process of ontic expression but continues to subtend it, thereby
ensuring that ontic sexuality is never determined or fixed and is and can be
reactivated in a different manner.
For this reason, Heidegger rejects the notion that factical being is deter-
minate for either Dasein or sexuality:

[F]actical bodiliness and sexuality are in each case explanatory only – and
even then only within the bounds of the essential arbitrariness of all expla-
nation – to the extent that a factical Dasein’s being-with is pushed precisely
into this particular factical direction, where other possibilities are founded
out or remain closed.58

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Sexuality and factic being more generally are not determinate for Dasein,
but an additional layer of complexity to its becoming. They limit the expres-
sion of Dasein’s becoming, but do not annihilate Dasein’s becoming or,
indeed, predetermine its meaning.
Heidegger outlines this through a discussion of the essential structure
of being-with. This is a key feature of Being and Time that rejects the Car-
tesian notion of an isolated self by insisting that Dasein always exists in
relation to others, but is never determined by them: “Even in our Being
‘among them’ they are there with us; their Dasein-with is encountered in a
mode in which they are indifferent and alien.”59 Dasein does not form a
seamless, harmonious relationship with others; “it” must live with others,
but always encounters them as, in some way, an imposition or awkward
occurrence. That it exists with others but is never determined by them
ensures that Dasein must choose the type of relationship it will have with
others. In this it can either follow the dictates of the “they” and be deter-
mined by what others define it as and by or it can strive to develop an
authentic relationship with others wherein it affirms itself in spite of the
dictates of others.
There is far more to Heidegger’s analysis of the notion of being-with,60
but it is important in relation to the question of sexuality because it brings
forth the issue of how Dasein’s being-with others shapes and structures
Dasein’s factical sexuality. More specifically, it highlights the question of
the relationship between “nature”, or ontic determinations, and “freedom”.
After all, if neutral Dasein is thrown into a factical body and a world popu-
lated with others who act on it and its freedom, but yet must choose its
relationship to its possibility and indeed others, the issue arises as to “how
Dasein can exist as essentially free in the freedom of the factical ties with
being-with-one-another”.61 In other words, how can the open-ended pos-
sibility that defines metaphysical, neutral Dasein remain and be compatible
with factical Dasein?
Heidegger does not so much respond to this issue, as simply affirm the
primordial importance of metaphysical, neutral Dasein: “Insofar as being-
with is a basic metaphysical feature of dissemination, we can see that the
latter ultimately has its ground in the freedom of Dasein as such.”62 It is
from freedom that factical Dasein arises and, indeed, always depends. For
this reason, factical being is never determined; Dasein must always choose
how it will live its facticity. Although Heidegger never says this explicitly,
this gives rise to the conclusion that while individual factical sexuality
emanates from the thrownness of neutral metaphysical Dasein, what sexu-
ality means and how it is lived is an open question, based on how the
individual comports itself towards its factical being generally and sexuality
more specifically.

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 63

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology therefore rejects the notion that sex-

ual determinations are essential to Dasein. Sexual determinations emanate
from a prior ontological neutrality that is thrown into a particular body.
Dasein’s factical being is however always subtended by the open-ended
possibility inherent in its metaphysical neutrality, with the consequence
that “Dasein always exists as itself, and being-a-self is in every case only in
its process of realization, as is also existence”.63 Dasein must choose how
to live its existence, which means how to live its facticity, with this choice
defining its existence and, indeed, what it will be. For this reason, factical
being – sexuality – is not fixed or a limitation of Dasein’s possibilities; it is
the arena on, through, and from which Dasein chooses itself.
With this, Heidegger undermines the notion of sexual essentialism
by arguing that sexuality is a secondary phenomenon dependent upon
the continuous becoming that defines Being. Furthermore, once created,
Dasein’s metaphysical neutrality is thrown into physical ontic form, the
factical determinations created are not fixed and ahistoric. Not only do
these factical determinations continue to change, but the meaning of them
is dependent upon the choices that Dasein makes regarding them; choices
that are dependent upon and permitted because its neutrality continues to
subtend its facticity. By insisting that sexuality is an expression of Being’s
becoming, Heidegger rejects the notion of an ahistoric substantial essence
that underpins the essentialist-patriarchal model of sexuality. An individ-
ual’s existence is not defined by a fixed essence that truly defines him or
her; it is defined by the way in which each Dasein lives its temporal exis-
tence, meaning, generally speaking, how it chooses to comport itself to and
through its facticity and relationship with others. This opens sexuality to
different manifestations, expressions, and ways of living, thereby indicat-
ing that, for Heidegger: (1) an individual is never determined by its sexual
facticity, and (2) sexuality is one aspect of human being but is never the
fundamental one. Dasein must be thought from the freedom that defines
and is made possible by its metaphysical neutrality.

Neutrality and Patriarchy

A number of subsequent feminist thinkers have however questioned
Heidegger’s affirmation of an originary neutrality when thinking about
sexuality, arguing that rather than being neutral it actually masks and so
re-enforces a particular cultural or patriarchal value system. In other words,
while the affirmation of an originary ontological neutrality undermines
sexual essentialism, it does so at the expense of concrete analyses of sexual-
ity and the perpetuation of Western sexual binary oppositions through an
implicit dependence on the logic of patriarchy.

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Tina Chanter, for example, “aims to ‘expose’ a normative bias that is

built into Heidegger’s ontological method in such a way as to cover over
its prejudice”.64 Only once these prejudices are brought to light will it be
possible “to see not only that Heidegger neglects feminist concerns when
treating certain topics, but also how his philosophy is formulated in such a
way as to render such concerns irrelevant”.65 Chanter’s fundamental claim is
that the basic problem resides with Heidegger’s dependence on neutrality,
which far from being neutral actually depends upon and perpetuates a par-
ticular Western masculine stance that “exhibits a systematic blindness not
only to its own gender bias, but also to a range of other normative assump-
tions it makes”.66 In particular, she identifies at least three moments where
this occurs: first, in the privileging of ontological analysis over ontic ones; a
methodological move that “rules out in advance any serious consideration
of significant differences between individuals (whether those differences are
specified in terms of gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, or some other
culturally loaded difference)”.67 By abandoning the study of ontic determi-
nations for the generality of ontology, Chanter charges that Heidegger is
led “to posit, almost by default, a culturally specific version of Dasein that
he takes to be exemplary, but whose exemplarity is never made available
for critical interrogation”.68 Interestingly, Trish Glazebrook supplements
Chanter’s point by arguing that while Heidegger affirms Dasein’s concrete-
ness, his insistence on the fundamental importance of Dasein’s originary
neutrality reveals that he “think[s] transcendentally . . . in a gender-neutral
way”,69 which is “precisely to transcend the world [and so] be worldless”.70
With this, Glazebrook argues that Heidegger’s affirmation of the neutrality
of Dasein not only contradicts his own insistence regarding the embodiment
and embeddedness of Dasein, but also threatens to re-inscribe the Western
autonomous, unencumbered subject; a conclusion that ties her position,
and so returns us, to that of Chanter.
A Heideggerian response to this line of critique would be to insist that it
fails to properly note that the appeal to “neutrality” is based on a particular
methodological manoeuvre that aims to allow Dasein to reveal itself; neu-
trality is not privileged in itself. Furthermore, Glazebrook’s criticism appears
to confuse “transcendent”, meaning to escape the world, with “transcenden-
tal”, describing the conditions that make possible an entity. Whereas Glaze-
brook correctly holds that to posit Dasein as neutral is to posit an existence
that transcends its ontically gendered expression, she reads this moment of
“transcendence” as entailing a “transcendent world” and so reintroduces a
two-world metaphysics into Heidegger’s schema that his notion of worldli-
ness explicitly rejects. This conflation of “transcends” with “transcendent”
is however not part of Heidegger’s positing of a metaphysical neutrality.

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 65

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology engages with the meaning of Being that

makes possible (knowledge of) the Being of entities. Being transcends enti-
ties but is never transcendent to them; it is the transcendental condition
for entities. As he explains, “[e]very disclosure of Being as the transcendens
is transcendental knowledge”.71 Neutral Dasein is not transcendent to ontic
being, in the same way that Being is not transcendent to ontic entities; it is
bound to, but differentiated from, ontic being as the fundamental prem-
ise that permits an ontic analysis to take place. Because “the ‘there’ exists
before we interpret ourselves in terms of gender, practices, biological char-
acteristics, religious preferences, and ethnic features”,72 re-raising the ques-
tion of the meaning of Being requires that ontic determinations are initially
removed to permit the entity to reveal itself – and by extension Being – as it
is rather than how we wish to see it.73
Chanter’s second line of critique insists that besides the fact that “it
always seems [that Heidegger has] decided in advance in favor of ontology
and against the ontic level of experience, another problem is that it is geared
almost exclusively to the world of work”.74 More specifically, she claims
that his descriptions of Dasein’s being-in-the-world are orientated towards
“Dasein’s involvement with objects and with others are oriented around
the equipmental world, with the result that both the picture of Dasein that
emerges and the existentialia that it yields are largely task oriented”.75 This,
however, produces a very one-sided picture that

either ignores what most would regard as important aspects of experience,

for example, sexuality, eroticism, enjoyment, and pleasure, or, at best, treats
them as only important as subordinate to Dasein’s successful negotiation of
its equipmental relations and its ultimate ontological task of clarifying the
significance of such dealings.76

Chanter’s conclusion is not only that Heidegger’s account of Dasein is

incomplete, but that in affirming the instrumental orientation of Dasein’s
existence or at least framing Dasein’s activity from an instrumental logic he
continues to affirm a fundamentally “masculine” perspective; one that fails
to adequately conceive and take into account “feminine” characteristics of
human existence such as sexuality, eroticism, and the body in its lived being.
The fundamental problem with this line of critique from a Heidegge-
rian perspective is that it is premised on preconceptions regarding the char-
acteristics of the sexes, as evidenced by Chanter’s claims that “[t]ypically,
women have been more associated with spatiality than temporality”77 or
“[i]n short, women are other-directed, and men are self-directed; women
are context-bound, while men strive for objectivity and distance; women,

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in part because of their privileged relationship to child rearing, are caring

and nurturing, while men are rational and abstract”.78 Nowhere is it shown
why the sexes are associated with these terms; it is simply assumed and
imposed onto Heidegger’s analysis, which is then rejected because it does
not conform to these preconceptions. For Heidegger, this is precisely the
danger to be avoided; one that the positing of an originary neutrality fore-
stalls because it means that we cannot simply presuppose a meaning for the
sexes but must let them reveal themselves as they are.
Even if it is objected that Chanter is describing how the sexes have typically
been thought in the history of Western philosophy and using that to show
how Heidegger repeats those patriarchal conclusions, Heidegger would be
able to respond that this misunderstands his intention in describing Dasein.
Rather than focus on his ontic analysis of Dasein and show how these repeat
well-worn patriarchal tropes, the whole point of his ontic descriptions is to
show that they depend upon the way in which Being is understood. The deter-
minations attributed to Dasein are not then taken to be fixed and ahistoric,
but simply illustrative for the purposes of exposing the primary importance of
the question of the meaning of Being, which, in any case, is a constant becom-
ing and so cannot be described in one singular ahistoric manner.
Alternatively, Heidegger might respond that repeating conclusions
derived from or found through the history of Western philosophy does not
mean that he accepts all conclusions found therein. As he notes in his dis-
cussion of the notion of “destruction”,79 the history of Western philosophy
cannot simply be abandoned but must be contended with to determine
what is accurate in it and what is inaccurate. If, having posited the originary
neutrality to allow Dasein to reveal itself as it is, Dasein reveals itself in
ways found in the history of Western thought, we must accept them as true.
From a Heideggerian perspective, however, Chanter is unable to do this
because she starts her analysis from preconceptions about the sexes. While
criticising Heidegger for implicitly perpetuating long-standing stereotypes,
Heidegger would be able to respond that not only is she unable to account
for her assumptions – he, of course, supposedly can; the phenomenologi-
cal method reveals them as such – but it is actually Chanter who depends
upon the logic of patriarchy to simply invert the privileged moment so that
the “feminine” not the “masculine” is privileged. However, as he will later
explain in the Letter on Humanism, “the reversal of a metaphysical statement
remains a metaphysical statement”.80 In other words, Chanter’s critique is
premised on unaccounted, assumed designations of each sex and the mere
inversion of a patriarchal logic that, as an inversion, leaves intact the logic
of patriarchy that divides Being into two opposed sexes and privileges one
over the other. In contrast, his affirmation of an originary neutrality not only
provides a space to question long-standing assumptions about the sexes to

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 67

determine whether they stand up to scrutiny, but, by insisting that any ontic
determination is always subtended by the possibility inherent in the origi-
nary neutrality (itself derived from Being’s becoming), he rejects the notion
that the sexes can be described universally and criticises the binary logic that
pits one against the other that underpins Chanter’s critique.
Now, of course, Chanter might object that this is all well and good,
but Heidegger does not do this, instead simply repeating the logic of
patriarchy. In turn, Heidegger would likely point out that, even if true,
faulty implication of the principle of neutrality does not negate the prin-
ciple itself. Insisting that Dasein’s ontic sexuality is not predetermined or
foreclosed within oppositions or characteristics allows the affirmation of
an originary neutrality to remain true to the fundamental methodological
principle of Husserlian-inspired phenomenology, all the while offering the
possibility that sexuality can take on a multiplicity of forms; it does not have
to be divided between two sexes or even between masculine and feminine.
Chanter’s third general criticism, however, holds that this only results
because Heidegger continues to depend upon and affirm a conception of
Dasein that is socially unencumbered. While she notes that he insists that
Dasein is always “with” others to the extent that “Others thus have an exis-
tential privilege akin to Dasein that sets them apart from all other entities”,81
she nevertheless argues, as evidenced by his “concept of world; the distinction
between authentic and inauthentic; the ‘who’ of Dasein; and the role that
death plays in Heidegger’s analysis”,82 that Heidegger continues to privilege
Dasein’s individuality over its sociality. Although Dasein lives with and in
proximity to others, it is always in some way detached from them; a detach-
ment that permits Dasein to choose itself. As a consequence, Chanter affirms
“that Heidegger’s account of Dasein remains more consonant with the dis-
embodied transcendental subject that Heidegger claims Kant inherited from
Descartes than Heidegger admits”.83 Heidegger therefore once more affirms a
“masculine” stance wherein Dasein is always fundamentally detached from
and so “against” the world, even as “it” is attached to that world. This confron-
tational relationship is contrary to the “feminine” one based on care, embed-
dedness, and “genuine” other-directedness.84 Chanter’s conclusion is that

[w]hile maintaining that his analysis of Dasein is neutral with respect to

sex, gender, race, and class, Heidegger in fact presents us with a picture of
a very specific Dasein. Heidegger’s Dasein is one who is largely untroubled
by its bodily existence (except insofar as bodily needs are subordinated to
goal-oriented ends, as in the for-the-sake-of-which), one who assumes the
priority of self over other, and one for whom spatiality is subordinated to
temporal ordering. Is it accidental that all these facets of Dasein’s existence
articulate traditionally masculine characteristics?85

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On Chanter’s reading, therefore, the logic of Heidegger’s argument regard-

ing the importance of Dasein’s originary neutrality does not open up think-
ing on sexuality; it subtly but definitively closes and restricts it to a particular
conception of sexuality that affirms and re-enforces long-standing Western
sexual stereotypes. That this privileging is implicit in his position makes it
all the more dangerous; it is far more difficult to identify and so combat.
The problem, however, is, as Chanter recognises, that Heidegger explic-
itly addresses this interpretation, and while he agrees that the notion of
a neutral Dasein implies a “peculiar isolation”,86 he rejects the suggestion
that this implies “the egocentric individual, the ontic isolated individual”.87
Rather than describing an ontic form of neutral isolation or egocentric
foundation akin to that offered and defended by modern Cartesian phi-
losophy, it must be thought of as the initial “metaphysical isolation of the
human being”.88 Heidegger will come to criticise the notion of “metaphys-
ics”,89 but here it is used to indicate a “place” between an ontological and
ontic analysis, in so far as it is posited to explain the Being of Dasein “prior”
to its manifestation in ontic facticity. In other words, when Heidegger talks
of “neutrality”, he means it in a very specific, technical sense that is used
to explain the process of ontic determination; it is not valued in itself.
More specifically, the positing of an originary neutrality has methodological
importance, in so far as it permits an enquiry into Dasein and by extension
Being distinct from preconceptions regarding Dasein; it also has philosophi-
cal importance for Heidegger, in so far as it ties into his affirmation that
“[h]igher than actuality stands possibility”.90 As pure flux, Being (and all its
manifestations, Dasein included) is/are nothing other than pure becoming.
If its ontological flux were shaped from ontic considerations, such as sexual-
ity, the becoming of Dasein would be constrained within the parameters of
that ontic description, thereby undermining the pure open-ended possibil-
ity that defines Being. Dasein’s ontological neutrality is therefore necessary
to secure the ontological difference and the possibility that lies at the heart
of Heidegger’s conflation of Being and time. It is from this ontological neu-
trality that ontic sexuality springs and must be thought, albeit in ways that
are not predetermined or constrained.

Conclusion
We see then that Heidegger’s account both undermines any notion of an
innate ontological sexuality and reveals that ontic sexuality is never con-
strained or (pre)determined. Furthermore, the affirmation of an originary
neutrality maintains that sexuality is not ontologically fundamental to Dasein;
it is only ever of the ontic order, with this arising from an autopoietic process

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 69

that is never structured around a definitive division, but is fluid, historical,

multifaceted, and defined by open-ended possibilities. With this, Heidegger,
in agreement with Freud, rejects the notion of a fixed determination to sexu-
ality, but claims, contra Freud, that this is not due to the continuing influence
of an originary bisexuality but to an originary ontological indeterminateness
that results from Being’s temporality.
From the perspective of those looking for an immediate empirical
enquiry of sexual inequality or patriarchy, his ontological analysis will, no
doubt, appear “far too vacuous and abstract to serve the needs of any radical
world-renewing project”.91 But, as I have argued, Heidegger’s questioning
of sexuality is not premised on an immediate political engagement; prior
to that, he insists that we have to step back and ensure that we understand
what it is that we are discussing. He thinks that this “pausing” will allow
the entity to reveal itself as it is, meaning that we will be less likely to mis-
interpret it and so act towards it in ways that are contrary to what it “is”.
Rather than leading to empty abstractions, the benefit of this approach
is that instead of simply affirming a particular conception of sexuality,
it actually asks us to think about what sexuality means. This is only pos-
sible however because Heidegger insists on the fundamental importance
of the ontological difference. By bracketing everyday and/or long-standing
presuppositions to ask about the Being of the entity, he provides a space
and means from and through which to rethink long-held positions, includ-
ing those that have historically conditioned thinking on sexuality, all the
while insisting that any ontic (sexual) determinations identified must be
constantly re-engaged to take into consideration the ontological change
subtending it.
The disadvantage of his approach, one that very quickly became appar-
ent in subsequent evaluations of his thinking on the topic, is that it requires
that we enter into and accept Heidegger’s framework and way of thinking
and indeed think with him to “fill in the blanks”. In short, Heidegger’s
discussion of sexuality is premised on and from his privileging of the ques-
tion of the meaning of Being. As a consequence, it is primarily interested
in clarifying the relationship between sexual ontic determinations and the
temporal flux of Being, showing that the former does not undermine and
indeed must be thought from the latter. While this ties into and affirms
Heidegger’s insistence that entities are never fixed and determined but
must be thought from Being’s becoming and so constantly engaged with
to “capture” their changing configurations, subsequent phenomenological
thought insisted that it was not necessary or, indeed, desirable to down-
grade ontic descriptions for ontological analyses. Rather than turn
away from ontic being to focus on the “abstraction” of the question of the

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meaning of Being – a topic that Heidegger never managed to satisfactorily

resolve – and think sexuality from and in relation to that question, sub-
sequent phenomenologists claimed that revealing the “truth” of facticity
required and was simply a matter of refocusing the enquiry on factical being
“itself”. Only this would fulfil the phenomenological mantra of returning to
“things themselves” to let them reveal themselves as they are. For this reason,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty focuses on the ways in which sexuality is tied to and
expressed through the lived concrete body.

Notes
1. Good overviews of this issue are found in Dagfinn Føllesdal, “Husserl’s Reduc-
tions and the Role they Play in his Phenomenology”, in A Companion to Phe-
nomenology and Existentialism, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 105–113; Sebastian Luft, “Husserl’s
Theory of the Phenomenological Reduction: Between LifeWorld and Cartesian-
ism”, Research in Phenomenology, vol. 34, n. 1, 2004, pp. 198–234; Dan Zahavi,
Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp.
43–78.
2. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomeno-
logical Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983), pp.
56–62.
3. Ibid., p. 51.
4. Ibid., p. 57.
5. Ibid., p. 61.
6. Ibid., p. 61.
7. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations: Volume One, trans. J. N. Findlay (Abing-
don: Routledge, 2001), p. 168.
8. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robin-
son (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962).
9. Matheson Russell, “Phenomenological Reduction in Heidegger’s Sein Und Zeit:
A New Proposal”, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 39, n. 3,
2008, pp. 229–248.
10. Jacques Derrida, “Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference”, trans.
Ruben Bevezdivin and Elizabeth Rottenberg, in Psyche: Inventions of the Other,
volume 2, edited by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2008), pp. 7–26.
11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology,
trans. Sarah Richmond (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), p. 506.
12. Patricia Huntingdon, “Introduction I – General Background History of the Feminist
Reception of Heidegger and a Guide to Heidegger’s Thought”, in Feminist Interpre-
tations of Martin Heidegger, edited by Nancy J. Holland and Patricia Huntington
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), pp. 1–42.

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 71

13. Trish Glazebrook, “Heidegger and Ecofeminism”, in Feminist Interpretations of

Martin Heidegger, edited by Nancy J. Holland and Patricia Huntington (Uni-
versity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), pp. 221–251; Jean
McConnell Graybeal, Language and ‘the Feminine’ in Nietzsche and Heidegger
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990); Patricia Huntington, Ecstatic
Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1998).
14. For a discussion of Heidegger’s critique of instrumental rationality, see Gavin
Rae, “Being and Technology: Heidegger on the Overcoming of Metaphysics”,
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 43, n. 3, 2012, pp. 305–325.
15. Tina Chanter, “The Problematic Normative Assumptions of Heidegger’s Ontol-
ogy”, in Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, edited by Nancy J. Holland
and Patricia Huntington (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2001), pp. 73–108.
16. S. L. Bartky, “Originative Thinking in the Later Philosophy of Heidegger”, Phi-
losophy and Phenomenological Review, vol. 30, n. 3, 1970, pp. 368–381; Glaze-
brook, “Heidegger and Ecofeminism”, p. 233.
17. Jesus Adrian Escudero, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutics of the Body”, Interna-
tional Journal of Gender and Women’s Studies, vol. 3, n. 1, 2015, pp. 16–25 (p. 20).
18. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 1.
19. Ibid., p. 26.
20. Ibid., p. 1.
21. Ibid., p. 23.
22. Ibid., p. 62.
23. Ibid., p. 29.
24. Ibid., p. 23.
25. Ibid., p. 23.
26. Ibid., p. 31.
27. Ibid., p. 31.
28. Ibid., p. 34.
29. For a discussion of this, see Gavin Rae, “Overcoming Philosophy: Heidegger on
the Destruction of Metaphysics and the Transformation to Thinking”, Human
Studies, vol. 36, n. 2, 2013, pp. 235–257.
30. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 26.
31. Ibid., p. 32.
32. Ibid., p. 27.
33. Ibid., p. 33. In the later Letter on Humanism (trans. Frank A. Capuzzi in collabora-
tion with J. Glenn Gray, in Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell-Krell [London:
Harper Perennial, 1977], pp. 217–266), Heidegger undertakes a self-critique
that brings him to abandon the notion of “existence”, for two principle reasons:
(1) To distinguish his thinking from Sartrean existentialism, which, according
to Heidegger, is founded on the human subject and so simply continues the
anthropocentric logic of Western metaphysics (p. 232); and (2) The term “exist-
ence” has historically been opposed to “essence”, with the consequence that his

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 72 / Questioning Sexuality

earlier discussion of “Dasein’s existence” ties his thinking to the logic of binary
oppositions, inherent in Western metaphysics. To overcome this, Heidegger
talks of “ek-sistence” (p. 230), which for etymological reasons he takes to better
signify the way in which Dasein stands out from Being.
34. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 312–315.
35. Ibid., p. 58.
36. Ibid., p. 59.
37. Ibid., p. 32.
38. Ibid., p. 73.
39. Ibid., pp. 36–37.
40. Ibid., p. 84.
41. Ibid., pp. 71–75.
42. Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: Protocols–Conversations–Letters, edited by
Medard Boss, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 2001).
43. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 506.
44. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 136.
45. Ibid., p. 136.
46. Ibid., p. 136.
47. Ibid., p. 136.
48. Ibid., pp. 136–137.
49. Ibid., p. 137.
50. Ibid., p. 137.
51. Ibid., p. 137.
52. Ibid., p. 137.
53. Ibid., p. 137.
54. Ibid., p. 137.
55. Ibid., p. 137.
56. Ibid., p. 138.
57. Ibid., p. 138.
58. Ibid., p. 139.
59. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 157.
60. Good recent discussions are found in Irene McMullin, Time and the Shared
World: Heidegger on Social Relations (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 2013), and Antonio Gómez Ramos, “Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s
They: How Political is the Self?”, in Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary
Perspectives, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (Abingdon: Routledge,
2018), pp. 197–219.
61. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 139.
62. Ibid., p. 139.
63. Ibid., p. 139.
64. Chanter, “The Problematic Normative Assumptions of Heidegger’s Ontology”,
pp. 73–74.
65. Ibid., p. 74.

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 Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality / 73

66. Ibid., p. 74.

67. Ibid., p. 74.
68. Ibid., p. 74.
69. Glazebrook, “Heidegger and Ecofeminism”, p. 233.
70. Ibid., p. 233.
71. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 62.
72. Escudero, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutics of the Body”, p. 21.
73. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 58.
74. Chanter, “The Problematic Normative Assumptions of Heidegger’s Ontology”,
p. 82.
75. Ibid., p. 82.
76. Ibid., p. 82.
77. Ibid., p. 98.
78. Ibid., p. 88.
79. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 44.
80. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, p. 232.
81. Chanter, “The Problematic Normative Assumptions of Heidegger’s Ontology”,
p. 89.
82. Ibid., p. 90.
83. Ibid., p. 80.
84. Ibid., p. 89.
85. Ibid., p. 98.
86. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 137.
87. Ibid., p. 137.
88. Ibid., p. 137.
89. For example, in the Letter on Humanism, from 1947, Heidegger criticises
“metaphysics” because it denotes a mode of thinking that (1) is based on
and enclosed within a prior assumed conception of Being (p. 226), (2) takes
certain truths to be self-evident (p. 225), and (3) is trapped within a logic
of binary oppositions (p. 232). For an extended discussion of this text and
issue, see Gavin Rae, Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014).
90. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 63.
91. Bartky, “Originative Thinking in the Later Philosophy of Heidegger”, p. 369.

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 C HAPTER 3

Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body

In the hands of its most famous German proponents, Husserlian-inspired

phenomenology had an ambiguous relationship to sexuality, in so far as it
was either promised as the topic of a future, never completed, study (Hus-
serl),1 or dealt with in a rather perfunctory way in an obscure lecture course
not published until fifty years later (Heidegger). However, once phenome-
nology was transposed to France in the 1930s and early 1940s, there was an
almost immediately explosion in phenomenological interest in sexuality.
For example, in Being and Nothingness, published in 1943, Jean-Paul Sartre
laments the lack of focus on sexuality in Heidegger’s Being and Time before
producing an analysis of love and sexual desire that points to the conflict
inherent in those relationships.2 On the other hand, in the 1946 essay Time
and the Other, Emmanuel Levinas focuses not on conflict but “th[e] mystery
of the feminine”3 that “bears alterity as an essence”4 and that forever escapes
cognition; a notion that he ties to a wider ethical point regarding the abso-
lute alterity of the other more generally. It is, however, Maurice Merleau-
Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, published in 1945, that produces the
most extended and sophisticated analysis of the “body in its sexual being”.5
Importantly, this analysis had a marked impact on Sartre’s partner
Simone de Beauvoir who recognised that it “presented a viable alternative
to Sartre’s ‘phenomenological ontology’ troubled by the problems of solip-
sism and dualism”6 and, in so doing, brought Merleau-Ponty’s thought into
later feminist debates on sexuality. This is not to say that his influence has
been welcomed or universally approved. As Elizabeth Grosz points out, “[i]t
takes only the slightest shift in perspective to see Merleau-Ponty writings as
either profoundly, if unconsciously, misogynist through neutralization . . .
or as profoundly and unusually useful for feminist purposes”.7 So, whereas
de Beauvoir affirms aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis, in particular the

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 75

idea that “man is not a natural species: he is a historical idea”,8 to explain

that “[w]oman is not a fixed reality, but rather a becoming; she has to be
compared to with man in her becoming, that is her possibilities have to be
defined”9 – an intellectual debt supported by a number of recent feminist
writers10 – other feminists have rejected this, claiming that his affirmation
of an original sexual neutrality (1) masks a particular masculine normative
perspective that downplays or rejects femininity,11 and/or (2) is “surpris-
ingly rudimentary in that [it] hardly mention[s] the question of sexual dif-
ference or consider[s] the gendered body as a significant phenomenological
example in itself”.12
Taking these criticisms in turn, I will argue that, with regards to (1),
while Merleau-Ponty does indeed write in the masculine tense and affirms
an originary neutrality to the schemas that structure the body, this does not
necessarily introduce a masculine perspective that downgrades femininity.
Rather, it reveals Merleau-Ponty’s commitment to Husserlian phenomenol-
ogy and, in particular, Husserl’s notion of the “phenomenological reduc-
tion”,13 which, as noted in the previous chapter, insists on the need to adopt
a particular cognitive standpoint that brackets everyday assumptions prior
to undertaking an enquiry. This movement is necessary to overcome the
presuppositions of the natural attitude to permit the transcendental essence
of the object to be revealed. Whereas Husserl offers this as a methodologi-
cal principle of his transcendental phenomenology, following Joel Smith,14
I argue that Merleua-Ponty takes off from Heidegger’s insistence that the
reduction must focus on “being-in-the-world” and maintains that, rather
than simply starting with pre-established notions of factic sexual determi-
nations/differences, we have to suspend judgements about the categories
or “nature” of concrete beings.15 Only this will allow those beings to reveal
themselves as they are, rather than as we wish them to be or have been con-
ditioned to think of them.
As a consequence, while (2) rejects Merleau-Ponty’s position because it
does not engage with the sexual difference, I argue that this fails to appreciate
that he is making the far more radical claim that, rather than start the enquiry
with the binary opposition constitutive of the sexual difference (masculinity
versus femininity), we have to distinguish between the bodily schemas that
condition factic determinations and those determinations themselves to first
enquire into the former (by which Merleau-Ponty means the style of the pre-
reflective lived fluid body) before moving to the latter. For Merleau-Ponty,
if we are to understand the relationship between embodiment and sexu-
ality “free” of reflective impositions regarding what sexuality is or should
be, we cannot simply start from presupposed factic (sexual) determinations
– doing so risks essentialising those ontic determinations – but must start

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from the anonymous bodily schemas that are the condition of and mani-
fested through specific factic sexual determinations.
Having clarified the purpose and role of neutrality in Merleau-Ponty’s
account, I critically engage with the claim that the resultant analysis is prob-
lematic because by tying the sexual schema to existence, Merleau-Ponty is
unable to provide an individual analytic of “sexuality” per se.16 Correcting
this requires, so it is argued, that we move from a logic of entwinement,
where sexuality and existence are mutually constituting, to a foundational
logic (expressed through a binary opposition) where sexuality and exis-
tence are opposed to one another with one grounding the other. However,
whereas this critique maintains that we must look for a single ground and
conceive of “objects” as monads capable of individual analysis, I argue that
Merleau-Ponty aims to undermine those assumptions by challenging us to
rethink the role that sexuality plays in existence from a logic of entwine-
ment whereby sexuality is understood to be a particular ineffable style
manifested throughout each individual’s embodied, embedded existence; a
rethinking that, instead of sterilising sexuality in the name of definite clear-
cut analytical certainties, recognises, accepts, and engages with the ambigui-
ties and paradoxes of actual concrete (sexual) existence. Indeed, in so doing,
Merleau-Ponty lays the theoretical foundations for subsequent queer and
trans* theories.
To outline this, the first section provides a brief overview of Merleau-
Ponty’s project by situating its emphasis on embodiment in contrast to
the dominance of Descartes’s cogito argument, before going on to outline
Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the relationship between embodiment
and sexuality. Section two defends Merleau-Ponty against the claim that his
analysis of sexuality masks a number of patriarchal and normative assump-
tions, while section three discusses the relationship between sexuality and
existence to engage with the argument that affirming the entwinement of
both prevents an analysis of the former. The conclusion brings together the
various strands of the argument to demonstrate the continuing relevance of
Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of sexuality.

Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception is orientated, generally speak-
ing, against a certain idealism derived from the privileging of the cogito
argument in Descartes’s second meditation, which Merleau-Ponty holds
to have had a malignant influence on subsequent Western thought. While
Descartes’s outlines his methodological scepticism in the first meditation
including the problematic implications it has for knowledge derived from

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 77

the senses in so far as he recognises that because the senses have previously
deceived him they cannot be the ground for epistemic certainty,17 the sec-
ond meditation goes on to question whether there is, as a consequence,
anything that can be known with certainty. The breakthrough comes when
he recognises that the method of doubt provides this, in so far as to doubt
requires a being that thinks, which requires a being that exists. From the
activity of doubting (= thinking), the enquirer can therefore be sure that
he exists.18 This will subsequently be complicated in the fifth meditation,
where it is recognised that the cogito’s foundational status depends upon
the existence of God,19 but the lesson of the second meditation establishes a
binary opposition between a privileged mind and downgraded body which
conditions much subsequent philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception challenges the fundamen-
tal tenets of Descartes’s argument, both in relation to the privileging of
the mind over the body and, indeed, the binary mind/body opposition it
depends upon.20 In Signs, Merleau-Ponty places this task within a larger
trend within contemporary (for him) philosophy:

Our century has wiped out the dividing line between ‘body’ and ‘mind,’
and sees human life as through and through mental and corporeal, always
based upon the body and always (even in its most carnal modes) interested
in relationships between persons. For many thinkers at the close of nine-
teenth century, the body was a bit of matter, a network of mechanisms. The
twentieth century has restored and deepened the notion of flesh, that is, of
animate body.21

Contributing substantially to this trend, Merleau-Ponty insists that we must

move away from tying knowledge to a non-corporeal mind to recognise
that knowledge is resultant of a socially embedded living body. There is a
substantial secondary literature on Merleau-Ponty’s account of the body,22
but the key aspect of it for current purposes is the discussion of the relation-
ship between sexuality and the body in the chapter “The Body in its Sexual
Being”.23 Due to space constraints, I will focus on his analysis of (1) the
case of Schneider, and (2) the relationship between sexuality and existence.
Merleau-Ponty starts the chapter on the sexed body by restating that the
general aim of his enquiry is “to elucidate the primary function whereby we
bring into existence, for ourselves, or take a hold upon, space, the object or
the instrument, and to describe the body as the place where this appropria-
tion takes place”.24 He notes that there are two problems or approaches that
must be avoided, a division which mirrors the discussion in the opening
chapters of Phenomenology of Perception, where Merleau-Ponty warns about

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 78 / Questioning Sexuality

the dangers of “empiricism”, namely that there is a privileging of an objec-

tive world of non-qualitative sensation, and “intellectualism” wherein the
mind intentionally projects meaning onto an object. The basic problem
with each is that, while they privilege a distinct aspect, they both depend
upon a foundational atomism that is unable to appreciate or account for the
“organic” whole. In short, they are guilty of reading the results of perception
(the individual objects of the world) back into perpetual experience per se to
hold that perceptual experience is composed of and conditioned by atomis-
tic objects that perfectly present themselves. This, however, falsifies percep-
tion’s actual structure, which is defined by “a phenomenal field”25 that entails
a constantly altering non-totalised “organic” whole full of ambiguities and
indeterminacies that make possible the objective divisions of perception.
Rather than that which appears to perception, Taylor Carmen notes that
“the phenomenal field is for Merleau-Ponty a transcendental condition of
the possibility of our being perceptually open to the world at all”.26 There-
fore, if the failures of empiricism and intellectualism are to be avoided, the
body must be thought, not as a discrete entity, but as and through its phe-
nomenal field. However, if the phenomenal field is both the genesis of per-
ception and that which eludes objective perception, we have to find another
“lens” through which to engage it. For this reason, Merleau-Ponty explains
that “[i]f we want then to bring to light the birth of being for us, we must
finally look at that area of our experience which clearly has significance and
reality only for us, and that is our affective life”;27 through this move, the
question of sexuality enters the scene.
Merleau-Ponty notes that “[o]rdinarily affectivity is conceived as a
mosaic of affective states, of pleasures and pains each sealed within itself,
mutually incomprehensible, and explicable only in terms of the bodily sys-
tem”.28 This ordinary explanation means, however, that if we are to under-
stand affective bodily sensations, we are implicitly committed to the notion
that “emotional life is ‘shot through with intelligence’”.29 Specifically, there
must be a simple correspondence between (mental) representation and nat-
ural stimuli (that gives rise to pleasure or pain). While such a connection
permits affectivity to be represented, it means that affectivity is reduced to
(mental) representation and so “is not recognized as a distinctive form of
consciousness”.30 Merleua-Ponty notes that “[i]f this conception were cor-
rect, any sexual incapacity ought to amount either to the loss of certain
representations or else to a weakening of the capacity for satisfaction”.31
However, as he dryly notes, “this is not the case”.32
To show why, Merleau-Ponty turns to the case of Schneider who was
injured during the First World War by a shell splinter to the back of his head.
From the middle of the war onwards, he was treated by the neurologist Kurt

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 79

Goldstein and the gestalt psychologist Adhémar Gelb at the Hospital for
Brain Injury in Frankfurt, which was created by the former to rehabilitate
soldiers who had received brain injuries. Schneider was important because,
as Merleau-Ponty explains, he

no longer [sought] sexual intercourse of his own accord. Obscene pictures,

conversations on sexual topics, the sight of a body do not arouse desire in
him. The patient hardly ever kisses, and the kiss for him has no value as sex-
ual stimulation. Reactions are strictly local and do not begin to occur with-
out contact. If the prelude is interrupted at this stage, there is no attempt to
pursue the sexual cycle. In the sexual act intromission is never spontaneous.
If orgasm occurs first in the partner and she moves away, the half-fulfilled
desire vanishes. At every stage it is as if the subject did not know what is to be
done. There are no active movements, save a few seconds before the orgasm
which is extremely brief. Noctural emissions are rare and never accompanied
by dreams.33

Merleau-Ponty considers “why in Schneider’s case touch stimulation, and

not only visual perception, has lost much of its sexual significance”.34 His
point is that, simply holding that sexuality is tied to representation, which,
when lacking, leads to sexual incapacity, is too general to reveal which
representations have been lost and why. “[T]he problem still remains of
describing the concrete aspect assumed by this wholly formal deficiency in
the realm of sexuality”.35 In response, Merleau-Ponty thinks that Schnei-
der’s lack of sexual stimulation is not the consequence of inadequate repre-
sentation of a stimulus. It is not the case that Schneider fails to get sexually
excited because he does not represent something sufficiently well, but that
he is not aroused and so does not represent the sexual object. The question
is not then why he lacks adequate mental representation, but why he is not
capable of arousal; an issue that Merleau-Ponty claims points to a far more
radical “change in the character of sexual life itself”.36
He goes on to question whether this change is simply a consequence of
physical impairment; “after all Schneider’s troubles spring from a wound of
limited extent in the occipital region”.37 The problem with this understanding
is, so Merleau-Ponty contends, that such an injury would not necessarily lead
to the deterioration of the sexual function. Quite the contrary, “[i]f sexuality
in man were an autonomous reflex apparatus, if the object of sexual desire
affected some organ of pleasurable sensation anatomically defined, then the
effect of the cerebral injury would be to free these automatic responses and
take the form of accentuated sexual behavior”.38 In other words, if sexuality
were located in single autonomous reflex, damage to that reflex would not
necessarily obliterate it; it might merely alter its functioning.

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Having rejected representational and physical accounts of sexuality,

Merleau-Ponty suggests that “[p]athology brings to light, somewhere
between automatic response and representation, a vital zone in which the
sexual possibilities of the patient are elaborated”.39 As such, he contends that

[t]here must be, immanent in sexual life, some function which ensures its
emergence, and the normal extension of sexuality must rest on internal pow-
ers of the organic subject. There must be an Eros or a Libido which breathes
life into an original world, gives sexual value or meaning to external stimuli
and outlines for each subject the use he shall make of his objective body.40

Shannon Sullivan41 criticises this by claiming that it subtly reintroduces an

essence/culture division, wherein an essential “neutral” body is overlaid
with a culturally determined sexuality, but it seems that Merleau-Ponty is
actually proposing something more akin to a vitalist immanently genetic
account of sexuality. Rather than being grounded in an ahistoric “blank”
essence that is over-coded with cultural meaning, Merleau-Ponty holds
that sexuality arises immanently to and from the becoming inherent in the
individual’s living body. Instead of being grounded in a natural stimuli or
mental representation, Merleau-Ponty challenges the logical foundational-
ism upon which such explanations depend to, instead, affirm a logic of
(immanent) expressionism: the lived body expresses itself spontaneously
and simultaneously in different ways. These manifestations are, however,
dependent upon different, but intertwined, bodily schemas, which are the
non-objective conditions of factic existence. From this premise, Merleau-
Ponty posits that it is the schema through which sexuality is expressed that
“has undergone change in Schneider”.42
Merleau-Ponty explains that “[i]n the case of a normal subject . . . the
visible body is subtended by a sexual schema, which is strictly individual,
emphasizing the erogeneous areas, outlining a sexual physiognomy, and
eliciting the gestures of the masculine body which is itself integrated into
this emotional totality”.43 The sexual schema describes the sexual aspect
of the body. It is not transcendent to the body, but that which conditions
the sexual expression of each individual. Rather than objective, the sexual
schema is always particular and delineates something akin to the ineffable
style of the body as this is manifested sexually.
Normally, the sexual schema is defined by a particular emotional totality
manifested in physical stimulus orientated towards another body. Merleau-
Ponty points out however that the problem with Schneider is that, for him,
“a woman’s body has no particular essence: it is, he says, pre-eminently

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 81

character which makes a woman attractive, for physically they are all the
same”.44 He is not then attracted to the object, with the consequence that
“close contact causes only a ‘vague feeling,’ the knowledge of ‘an indetermi-
nate something’ which is never enough to ‘spark off’ sexual behavior and
create a situation which require a definite mode of resolution”.45 “What
has disappeared from the patient is his power of projecting before himself
a sexual world, of putting himself in an erotic situation, or, once such a
situation is stumbled upon, of maintaining it or following it through to
complete satisfaction.”46
Crucially, however, Schneider’s lack of sexual projection is not a men-
tal activity; “absent mindedness and inappropriate representations are not
causes but effects, and in so far as the subject coolly perceives the situation,
it is in the first place because he does not live it and is not caught up in
it”.47 This calls forth a distinction between two modes of perception: “objec-
tive perception”,48 which describes the intentional perception of distinct
objects, and “erotic perception”,49 which “is not a cogitatio which aims at
a cogitatum; through one body it aims at another body, and takes place in
the world, not in a consciousness”.50 Erotic perception is “not of the order
of the understanding, since understanding subsumes an experience, once
perceived, under some idea, while desire comprehends blindly by linking
body to body”.51 As such,

[a] sight has significance for me, not when I consider, even confusedly, its
possible relationship to the sexual organs or to pleasurable states, but when it
exists for my body, for that power always available for bringing together into
an erotic situation the stimuli applied, and adapting sexual conduct to it.52

Sexuality is not then an objective intentionality orientated around and

intended towards a static object, but it is a spontaneous (erotic) upsurge of
the body towards another body, itself “experienced” as living rather than
inert. The problem is that “Schneider can no longer put himself into a sex-
ual situation any more than generally he occupies an affective or an ideo-
logical one”.53 He has lost erotic perception, instead being confined to the
emotional neutrality of objective perception, with the consequence that his
sexuality is not based on an organic, spontaneous bond with another body
but “from a decision made in the abstract”.54 Again, this reliance on abstract
decision-making is not because of an objective decision, but because his
sexual schema – the way his body spontaneously expresses itself sexually –
has been so damaged as to make “organic” erotic perception and, by exten-
sion, bodily comportment impossible.

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From this, Merleau-Ponty draws a number of conclusions regarding

sexuality. First, it is defined by a sexual schema that spontaneously shapes,
defines, and conditions the expression of an individual’s sexual existence.
Second, the sexual schema “is a dimension [of the body] that involves the
personal being as a whole, rather than being limited to genitality”.55 It is
akin to the style through which the individual expresses himself, with this
style being expressed in minute ways of bodily comportment. “Thus sexual-
ity is not an autonomous cycle. It has internal links with the whole active
and cognitive being, these three sectors of behavior displaying but a single
typical structure, and standing in a relationship to each other of recipro-
cal expression.”56 Importantly, third, these behaviours are not under voli-
tional control; they occur “prior” to volition as its condition. Because the
sexual schema is the fundamental, organic aspect of an individual’s being
that occurs prior to all forms of volition and objective perception, it is, as
Helena de Preester points out, “co-extensive with life”.57

Patriarchy, Heteronormativity, and the Sexual Schema

I will return to the connection between sexuality and life, but, before doing
so, it will be helpful to pause to engage with certain recurrent criticisms of
Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the Schneider case to not only clarify his theory
but also situate it within contemporary debates. Specifically, two different
but ultimately related criticisms have been aimed at Merleau-Ponty’s analy-
sis and, by extension, the notion of sexual schema that it points to; namely
that it (1) masks a particular masculine normative perspective that down-
plays or rejects femininity58 and/or (2) is unable to take into consideration
the sexual difference.59
Judith Butler, for example, claims that, by assuming that Schneider must
desire a women, manifested through terminology regarding what is “normal”,
Merleau-Ponty depends upon and imposes a particular heteronormative
masculine sexuality that “is characterized by a disembodied gaze that sub-
sequently defines its object as mere body”.60 This fragments the female
body, turns the masculine subject into “a strangely disembodied voyeur
whose sexuality is strangely non-corporeal”,61 and “manages to reify cul-
tural relations between the sexes”.62 In relation to Merleau-Ponty’s claim
that Schneider is abnormal because he is unable to get aroused by pictures
of women, Butler not only notes that this depends upon “the presumption
that the decontextualized female body, the body alluded to in conversa-
tion, the anonymous body which passes by on the street, exudes a natural
attraction”,63 but also wonders “what kind of cultural presumptions would
make arousal in such contexts seem utterly normal”.64 Far from describing

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 83

sexuality per se, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is conditioned by a range of “tacit

normative assumptions about the heterosexual character of sexuality”.65
Butler’s reading has, however, been challenged. Anna Foultier, for exam-
ple, objects that “the assumption of Schneider’s heterosexuality is not the
consequence of a general norm about sexuality, as Butler believes, but of
certain known facts about the patient”.66 As a consequence, “the standard of
normality that is presupposed in the account of Schneider’s sexuality is not
‘normal male sexuality’ and even less ‘normal human sexuality,’ but rather
a healthy Schneider, as he was before his injury, and as he still sometimes
would like to be”.67 Rather than impose a heteronormative schema onto
Schneider’s case, Merleau-Ponty simply uses Schneider’s heterosexual desire
prior to his injury as the standard against which his post-injury sexual desire
is judged. From the normalcy of his prior sexual desire, his altered sexual
behaviour is abnormal. Instead of imposing a heteronormative schema
onto Schneider that is then reified to define a “normal” cultural norm,
Merleau-Ponty describes the alterations that have taken place to Schneider’s
particular sexual schema.
However, that Foultier defends Merleau-Ponty against Butler’s heteronor-
mative charge does not mean that she accepts his theory in its entirety. Based
on the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s affirmation of a sexual schema points to
a dimension of the body that is abstract prior to being individuated into a
particular sexuality, Foultier maintains that his analysis points to a neutral or
anonymous aspect of the body that is subsequently over-coded with sexual
meaning. For this reason, Foultier concludes that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis
is “surprisingly rudimentary in that [it] hardly mention[s] the question of
sexual difference or consider[s] the gendered body as a significant phenom-
enological example in itself”;68 a point echoed by Iris Young’s insistence that
Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is too general to consider the “particular style of
bodily comportment which is typical of feminine existence”.69
This criticism is a long-standing one within a certain feminist reception of
Merleau-Ponty’s thinking and is based on, at least, two premises: by appeal-
ing to an anonymous bodily schema to question sexuality, Merleau-Ponty
(1) removes the sexual differences that truly define concrete embodied beings;
and (2) depends upon and re-enforces a particular masculine analysis that is
unable to think the specificity of the female body. The problem, however, is
that it is unclear that either premise applies to Merleau-Ponty.
Sonia Kruks, for example, argues that these premises and the argument
that they support are based on a particularly reductionist reading of the
Phenomenology of Perception that focuses on the early chapters alone. This her-
meneutical strategy therefore fails to appreciate that the text actually develops
a particular narrative wherein “an account of discrete bodies and individual

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perceptions of things”70 is gradually supplemented by “an account of social

relations as ones of complex interdependence that may involve both con-
nectedness and conflict”.71 Rather than a linear movement, the latter must
be read back into the former. As such, “culture, language, politics, and his-
tory are shown always and already to imbue the body-subject, and even the
simplest and apparently most isolated acts of perception are, Merleau-Ponty
demonstrates, inherently social”.72 It is not then the case that Merleau-Ponty
affirms a neutral body that is over-coded with meaning; the feminist critique
is based on a reductionist reading that fails to recognise and do justice to the
complexity of his analysis.
As a consequence, Johanna Oksala explains that whereas his critics
maintain that Merleau-Ponty establishes and depends upon a founda-
tional “neutral” body that is subsequently situated and given meaning
historically, “his understanding of the body-subject is open to a second
reading that is more in line with Butler’s insights about the historical
constitution of the body”.73 On this alternative reading, “transcendental
subjectivity – language, tradition, and community – is understood as the
reality-constituting principle providing the conditions of possibility for all
forms of subjectivity as well as objective reality”.74 Rather than being added
to a foundational layer, Oksala explains that Merleau-Ponty’s appeal to
“anonymous” bodily schemas aims to identify, not “a foundation, but a
constitutive condition: a dimension of sense constitution”.75 Importantly,
this must not be understood to entail “ahistorical or universal forms, but
as dynamic and developing structures derived from our cultural environ-
ment, constantly in a state of changing”.76 According to Oksala, instead of
developing an account of a monadic subject who comes to interact and
develop socially, Merleau-Ponty points to an analysis of subjectivity that
is inherently intersubjective.77 As a consequence, the body, for Merleau-
Ponty, is not structured around a founding–founded structure; it is orien-
tated around an immanent process of social constitution. For this reason,
it is not possible to start with sexual differences as if they existed “prior” to
the body’s social constitution, but neither is it possible to simply deny the
differences that are part and parcel of the society through which the body
becomes. The body and its sexual expression must be understood as an
immanent and ongoing manifestation of the differences inherent in and
learned through its process of social constitution.
From this, Sylvia Stoller explains that those who insist on “placing ‘differ-
ences’ at the beginning . . . take for granted without philosophically reflect-
ing upon the conditions of their existence. In taking them for granted [they]
see no necessity to call them into question.”78 In contrast, Merleau-Ponty
“questions the conditions for the possibility of difference [and so] does

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 85

not simply presuppose (the existence of) differences”.79 As such, his critics
charge Merleau-Ponty with not adequately accounting for the foundational
status of factical sexual determinations, whereas Merleau-Ponty argues that
that issue depends upon the more fundamental question regarding the con-
ditions that make possible such sexual difference(s).
Furthermore, Stoller maintains that Merleau-Ponty follows Husserl in
distinguishing between an “intentionality of act which is that of our judge-
ments and of those occasions when we voluntarily take up a position”80 and
“operative intentionality (fungierende Intentionalität), or that which produces
the natural and antepredicative unity of the world and of our life”.81 Put sim-
ply, there is a fundamental phenomenological distinction between reflec-
tive, willed judgement and the intentional unity upon which the former act
depends. As Stoller notes, this “is in keeping with Merleau-Ponty’s interest
in revealing the difference between the pre-predicative and predicative level,
between lived experience and reflected attitude”.82 Whereas reflective judge-
ments conceptualise and so objectify the lived pre-reflective experience, the
latter is non-conceptual and defined by pure becoming. It is this level of
experience that Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the primordial importance of
pre-reflective bodily (sexual) schemas is orientated. It is why he maintains
that sexuality is not defined by “objective perception” of the body but pre-
reflective “erotic perception” wherein the body undergoes a sudden, pre-
reflective surge towards the other. Erotic perception subsequently undergoes
a modification into objective perception and, as a consequence, the objecti-
fication and hence creation of the sexual object. Crucially, because sexuality
is premised on erotic perception, it is fundamentally non-conceptual and
so cannot be said to be constituted by conceptual categories such as “male”
or female”; such determinations are second order reflective phenomena of
objective perception.
So, whereas his critics affirm the importance of starting with the sexual
difference, doing so, on Merleau-Ponty’s telling, undermines the distinction
between objective perception and erotic perception to take the secondary sta-
tus of the former as primary. Not only does this create a methodological and
conceptual error, but it risks carrying the presuppositions of reflective judge-
ment into the analysis of pre-reflective erotic perception to turn contempo-
rary understandings of sexuality into the “essential” structures of the human
body. Combating this requires that the sexual schema be “understood” as
“initially” anonymous or undifferentiated so as to suspend “presuppositions
about the nature of subjectivity or objectivity”.83
Merleau-Ponty outlines what he has in mind most clearly and succinctly
in his inaugural address at the Collège de France in 1953 where he first
distinguishes between the philosopher and man-of-action, as a precursor

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 86 / Questioning Sexuality

to making a distinction between thinking and acting. Rather than simply

wading into events with an opinion, the philosopher must keep a certain
distance from them to be able to bear witness to them: “One must be able
to withdraw and gain distance in order to become truly engaged, which
is, also, always an engagement.”84 This is not to affirm a complete detach-
ment of thought from the world, but entails a “pulling-back” that permits
a clearer perspective on the issue. Rather than simply adopt a particular
stance towards an object, there must be a withdrawal from projecting such
assumptions onto the object so that it can reveal itself as it is.
For this reason, (1) the pre-reflective lived body that Merleau-Ponty
affirms is neither masculine nor feminine; these are second order reflec-
tive judgements about the fundamental pre-reflective lived body. Because
reflective judgement introduces determinations into the pre-reflective lived
body, the pre-reflective lived body and, by extension, sexual schema must
be taken to be originarily determinate-free (= anonymous); and (2) those
who insist on starting with sexual differences fail to make the distinction
that Merleau-Ponty does between the reflective and pre-reflective levels of
perception to instead simply start with the conceptual distinctions found at
the reflective level to subsequently attribute that conceptual schema to the
pre-reflective, non-conceptual, lived body. Their analyses do not describe the
(pre-reflective) lived body per se but a reflective judgement about the lived
body. They do not then undertake the concrete analysis that they think they
do; instead they hypostatize a particular reflective conceptual schema which
is taken to describe the lived body when, in fact, it simply presupposes and
forecloses the analysis within predetermined conceptual parameters. In con-
trast, Merleau-Ponty affirms the anonymity of the sexual schema to suspend
the conceptual schemas of reflectivity to avoid prejudging the pre-reflective
lived body and let the latter reveal itself as it is, not as how we may wish it
to be. This, however, brings forth the question of the relationship between
sexuality and existence, for, as a “thing” immanently expressed, the sexual
schema is only revealed through each (individual) existence.

Sexuality and Existence

The sexual schema is not then a strictly separate “part” of the body, but
an immanent non-objective pre-reflective aspect of the living body that is
expressed immanently through the existence of the entire body. For this
reason, “sexuality is not an autonomous cycle. It has internal links with the
whole active and cognitive being, these three sectors of behavior displaying
but a single typical structure, and standing in a relationship to each other of
reciprocal expression.”85 From this, Merleau-Ponty ties the analysis to what

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 87

he takes to be the fundamental discovery of psychoanalysis; namely that it

affirms “a dialectical process in functions thought of as ‘purely bodily’ . . .
to reintegrate sexuality into the human being”.86
Merleau-Ponty agrees with Freud that sexuality cannot be reduced to
a genital part or an instinct that has a definitive teleology; rather, “[i]t is
what causes man to have a history”.87 The reason for this is as simple as it
is dramatic: “In so far as a man’s sexual history provides a key to his life,
it is because in his sexuality is projected his manner of being towards the
world, that is, towards time and other men.”88 Sexuality is one of the funda-
mental ways in which each individual becomes what he/she is. Rather than
determining existence, sexuality is coterminous to it, shaping, expressing,
and revealing the way an individual exists. Instead of being merely a part
of a larger bodily existence, sexuality “symbolize[s] a whole attitude”89 to
existence. There is no separation from one’s sexuality; one’s sexual being
reveals, without determining, what one is.
As a consequence of the intimate bond between sexuality and (individ-
ual) existence, Merleau-Ponty maintains that “the question is not so much
whether human life does or does not rest on sexuality, [but] what is to
be understood by sexuality”.90 In response, he identifies a tension within
psychoanalytic thought wherein “on the one hand it stresses the sexual sub-
structure of life [while] on the other it ‘expands’ the notion of sexuality to
the extent of absorbing into it the whole of existence”.91 The problem is
that this is inherently ambiguous: “do we mean, in the last analysis, that all
phenomenon has a sexual significance or that every sexual phenomenon
has existential significance?”92 In other words, do we ground sexuality in
existence or existence in sexuality?
In response, Merleau-Ponty questions the logic of foundations implicit
in both formulations, noting that because sexuality cannot be thought of
as a “separate function definable in terms of the causality proper to a set
or organs, there is now no sense in saying that all existence is understood
through the sexual life”.93 But neither does this mean that sexuality is
simply a reflection of existence. Sexuality must be thought as a particular
“current of life . . . bearing a special relation to the existence of sex. There
can be no question of allowing sexuality to become lost in existence, as if it
were no more than an epiphenomenon.”94 Rather than a logic of founda-
tions, Merleau-Ponty suggests that we rethink the sexuality–existence rela-
tion as one of entwinement.
It is however precisely this claim that Martin Dillon criticises, claiming
that if “sexuality and existence so interpenetrate that they cannot be distin-
guished . . . we could not talk about the one without tacitly referring as well to
the other”.95 Whenever we wish to talk of “sexuality”, we must immediately

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talk of “existence” – the body, perception, values, and so on – that is indis-

tinguishable from sexuality. As a consequence, we are unable to actually say
anything analytical about sexuality per se; it all just melds together into an
indeterminate soup. For this reason, Dillon concludes that Merleau-Ponty’s
approach is unable to provide “a positive account of sexuality”.96
Putting to one side the question of whether such an endeavour is actu-
ally the issue to which Merleau-Ponty’s analysis responds, Dillon goes on
to propose two remedies for this perceived failing. First, he reaffirms the
fundamental analytic and existential distinction between “sexuality” and
“existence” to permit the former to be analysed in distinction to the later.
Second, he criticises the logic of entwinement inherent in Merleau-Ponty’s
argument and affirms Husserl’s Fundierung model, conforming to a found-
ing–founded structure, to reaffirm a logic of foundations where either sexu-
ality grounds existence or vice versa. As he explains:

The difference between the Fundierung model and that of reciprocal expres-
sion is crucial in theorizing about the relation of sexuality and existence
because on it rests the possibility of defining sexuality in such a way that its
meaning does not immediately threaten to be reabsorbed within existence.97

Specifically, Dillon asks that we identify a foundational aspect of the body

from which to think sexuality. By grounding sexuality in “certain aspects of
the phenomenal body”,98 we will be able “to identify or define the ground
or origin of existential sexuality and distinguish it from the existential signifi-
cance of such other global phenomena as history, economics and so forth”.99
To do so, Dillon rejects what he takes to be Merleau-Ponty’s synchronic
analysis that, on Dillon’s understanding, simply proposes the logical entwine-
ment of sexuality and existence to, instead, recommend the adoption of a
diachronic analysis that takes into consideration the way in which layers are
gradually added to the body as a consequence of the individual’s history.100
The basic point is that by taking into consideration this diachronic process of
body-construction, we will be able to work backwards to strip away the “cul-
tural” additions that have brought the body to its factic determinations. As a
consequence of his adoption of the “foundational principle”, Dillon claims
that such a process will ultimately reveal the “foundational” structures upon
which an individual’s sexuality actually depends.
There are, however, at least three problems with this. First, Dillon’s
position appears to affirm and depend upon a logic of binary oppositions,
wherein a foundational sexual base is pitted against a historico-cultural
inessential appearance. It is this that allows him to claim that a diachronic

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 89

analysis will strip away the latter to reveal the former. However, as Elizabeth
Grosz points out, rather than affirm or depend upon a logic of binary oppo-
sitions, Merleau-Ponty’s work is premised on a “resumption or reclamation
of the space in between binary pairs, that apparently impossible no-man’s
land of the excluded middle, the gulf separating the one term from its oppo-
site or other”.101
Second, Dillon’s argument depends upon and reaffirms the notion of a
singular origin or foundation to an individual’s sexuality that, somewhat
paradoxically and despite Dillon’s affirmation of diachronicity, simply does
not accord with the diachronicity inherent in Merleau-Ponty’s account of
the pre-reflective lived body. Whereas Dillon appears to ground the dia-
chronicity through which the sexual schema is “over-coded” with cultural
meaning upon a non-diachronic foundational point that will reveal what
“sexuality” truly is divorced from an individual’s existence, Merleau-Ponty’s
notion of the sexual schema points to an “initial” pre-reflective lived unity
that is subsequently expressed immanently (and so distorted) into reflec-
tive conceptual determinations. Reflective conceptual determinations are
not then divorced from the diachronicity of the pre-reflective lived body but
entail a particular modification of “it”. As a consequence, there is no foun-
dational point; the lived body is inherently and constitutively diachronic. By
searching for a foundational body, Dillon ignores what is arguably the fun-
damental point of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis of being-in-
the-world: there is no fixed foundational point grounding embodied being;
“only” a body that continuously transcends itself by projecting itself from,
through, and against a conditioned existence. We are not defined by a hid-
den essential core; we are a continuous historical (= living) projection of
an embedded body: “All that we are, we are on the basis of a de facto situa-
tion which we appropriate to ourselves and which we ceaselessly transform
by a sort of escape which is never an unconditioned freedom.”102 It is only
from the perspective of objective perception that this durational flux is split
into the clear-cut conceptual predicates that permit thought to think from a
logic of foundations. However, as noted in the discussion of the phenom-
enal field, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological method points to a different
primordial “form” of perception that is imprecise, non-objective, fluid, and
that reveals an object’s “living function”.103 By insisting on a fixed founda-
tion to sexuality, Dillon reads the structures of objective perception into this
more primordial form of existence to reify them into a fixed foundation. In
contrast, Merleau-Ponty claims that the pre-reflective lived body is a con-
stant living flow and so cannot have a singular base; rather, it is bound up
with and expressed through the living totality that is each individual.

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Third, Dillon’s affirmation of a logic of binary opposition and founda-

tionalism reveals his dependence on, what I will call, analytic monadism,
which holds that each “thing” – sexuality or existence, for example – is
fundamentally and existentially separate and distinct from others, with
this permitting each to be analysed in distinction on its own terms. Dillon
makes this move because he affirms the need for conceptual clarity, but
the problem with this demand from Merleau-Ponty’s perspective is that it
(1) obtains such clarity only by distorting the “prior” lived field of existence
to foreclose it within the objective categories of reflective judgement and,
in so doing, is unable to appreciate the fluidity and dynamism of the pre-
reflective lived field; and (2) means that Dillon ignores what Merleau-Ponty
insists is a fundamental aspect of existence: paradox and ambiguity. After
all, existence is never static and clearly defined, but always points towards
“another existence which denies it, and yet without which it is not sus-
tained”.104 The individual, for example, becomes what he is by projecting
himself into the future. He only is by virtue of this projection that cancels
out what he previously was. It also means that his existence is never clear-
cut but always an uneasy persistence in constant transition and movement.
Because sexuality is intimately entwined with existence, it too shares the
indeterminateness of the latter; an idea that Merleau-Ponty tries to capture
by explaining that, rather than being distinct or distinguishable from exis-
tence, sexuality is “at all times present there like an atmosphere”.105 Just as
an atmosphere cannot be objectively defined, nor can sexuality. This does
not mean that it does not exist or that we cannot explain it, but that we can-
not think about it in objective, clear-cut, and monadic terms. Sexuality must
be understood to spread “forth like an odour or like a sound”.106 It therefore
requires a different, non-objective form of cognition to capture and analyse
it, one that ties sexuality to and reads it through the continuous becoming
that marks the pre-reflective lived field and, by extension, the “totality” of
individual existence.
Dillon is correct that this makes an analysis of sexuality per se difficult,
but, rather than a failing, this is the challenge that Merleau-Ponty sets us:
we have to learn and accept that “ambiguity is of the essence of human
existence and everything we live or think has always several meanings”.107
Instead of being a contingent or compartmentalised aspect of our existence,
it is through sexuality that “we commit our whole personal life”,108 with the
consequence that sexuality conditions and is caught up in all the ambigui-
ties of our life. With this, Merleau-Ponty not only challenges us to think
and constantly engage with this ambiguity, but also undermines the notion
that sexuality is defined by clear-cut oppositions and essential structures.
Focusing on the pre-reflective lived phenomenal field reveals sexuality to be

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 91

multidimensional, defined by constant becoming, and, crucially, specific to

each existence. With this, Merleau-Ponty establishes the theoretical param-
eters that will form the basis for much subsequent gender theory, especially
its queer and trans* versions.

Conclusion
Merleau-Ponty’s account of the sexed body is then far more complicated
and nuanced than his critics often recognise. It not only develops Husser-
lian-inspired phenomenological thinking on this topic, but also introduces
an important conceptual innovation, in the form of the notion of a sexual
schema, that reveals the key, but not determining, importance that sexual-
ity has for the individual’s body and existence. Rather than something fixed
and determinate, the sexual schema points to a conception of sexuality as
ineffable and fluid. Instead of being reduced to or defined by a fixed essence
or body part, sexuality pertains to a style of being, unique to but expressed
through each individual’s body and, for this reason, is coextensive with
each individual’s whole existence.
On the one hand, this exacerbates the importance of sexuality, in so far
as it makes it a fundamental aspect of individual existence. But, on the other
hand, by claiming that it is not possible to distinguish between “sexuality”
and “existence”, Merleau-Ponty, somewhat paradoxically, undermines its
importance by pointing out that it is not the fundamental issue through
which an individual can be understood. Of course, this does not mean that
we must ignore the question of an individual’s sexuality; it is fundamental
to an individual’s bodily existence and so must be taken into account. But
Merleau-Ponty resists the notion that a study of an individual’s sexuality
somehow explains his “whole” existence. Indeed, this ties into his claim
that the sexual schema cannot simply be thought from or through the sex-
ual (male/female) difference. Rather than merely assume and so analyse
sexuality from a presupposed sexual (binary) difference, Merleau-Ponty
employs a modified version of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction to
claim that for “sexuality” to be understood requires that we “bracket” every-
day assumptions to “return” to the pre-reflective phenomenal field from
where such reflective judgements and distinctions arise. Only this will allow
an individual’s sexual existence to reveal itself as it is and not as we have
been conditioned to think about it or might wish it to be.
While this methodological manoeuvre has caused consternation amongst
a certain strand of femininst theory, I have argued that it not only points
to a particular phenomenological approach to sexuality – thereby revealing
Merleau-Ponty’s importance to phenomenological theory generally – but,

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by holding that sexuality is individual and openly expressive, also ensures

that Merleau-Ponty undercuts the long-held affirmation of sexual essential-
ism or determinism in a way that avoids foreclosing sexuality within a pre-
determined schema, including the logic of patriarchy. By opening sexuality
in this manner, Merleau-Ponty shows that “it” does not have to be expressed
through a straightforward sexual difference/opposition, but is actually indi-
vidual, malleable, fluid, and altering/able. Indeed, by insisting that sexuality
is expressive and intimately bound to the ambiguities of each individual’s
existence, he also points to the contradictions and opaqueness of sexuality.
Instead of ignoring or seeking to clarify such chaos by imposing unambigu-
ous analytic definitions and categories, Merleau-Ponty pushes us to accept
this obscurity and rethink sexuality as embodied and fluidly expressive. Only
this will allow sexual existence to reveal itself in all its non-determined glory.
Whether we are willing to accept such ambiguity and indeed how we do so is
the task that he sets for us, but this challenge is why his thinking on sexual-
ity remains relevant (especially but not only for queer and trans* theories).
However, for all its innovation and originality, Merleau-Ponty’s think-
ing on sexuality has a fittingly ambiguous status within subsequent thought
on the topic. Whereas his attempt to undercut the notion of sexual essen-
tialism was widely praised, especially within feminist theory, his method-
ological neutrality met strong resistance precisely because it rejects, what
some held to be, the fundamental importance of the sexual difference; a
move that appeared to affirm an abstract universalism that is unable to
properly account for the concrete realities of the sexual difference. While
I have argued that Merleau-Ponty’s position is far subtler than these critics
tend to appreciate – indeed, the emphasis of neutrality points to a particu-
lar phenomenological approach to the issue – Simone de Beauvoir, writing
just after the end of the Second World War, aimed to correct it by focusing
on the role of women in Western society to offer an alternative analysis of
sexuality that, on the one hand, mirrors the psychoanalytic and phenom-
enological rejection of sexual essentialism and by extension the notion that
there is an essential distinction between the sexes, while, on the other hand,
explicitly turning to the ways in which Western forms of representation
nevertheless relegate “woman” to secondary status.

Notes
1. Husserl never undertook a detailed study of sex or sexuality although he did
accept in the late (1936) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phe-
nomenology (trans. David Carr [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1970]) that “the problem of the sexes” (p. 188) was one for future study. His
death in 1938 meant that he never completed that study.

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 93

2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology,

trans. Sarah Richmond (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), p. 506. For a discussion
of Sartre’s analysis of love, see Gavin Rae, “Sartre on Authentic and Inauthentic
Love”, Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, vol. 23,
n. 1, 2012, pp. 75–88.
3. Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh,
PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 87.
4. Ibid., p. 88.
5. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Abing-
don: Routledge, 1962), pp. 178–201.
6. Sara Heinämaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-
Ponty, Beauvoir (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. xii.
7. Elizabeth Grosz, “Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the Flesh”, Thesis Eleven, n. 36,
1993, pp. 37–59 (p. 37).
8. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chaveallier (London: Vintage, 2011), p. 46.
9. Ibid., p. 46.
10. Lisa Guenther, “Merleau-Ponty and the Sense of Sexual Difference”, Angelaki,
vol. 16, n. 2, 2011, pp. 19–33 (pp. 29); Martha J. Reineke, “Lacan, Merleau-
Ponty, and Irigaray: Reflections on a Specular Drama”, Auslegung, vol. 14, n. 1,
1987, pp. 67–85 (pp. 67, 84); Silvia Stoller, “Reflections on Feminist Merleau-
Ponty Skepticism”, Hypatia, vol. 15, n. 1, 2000, pp. 175–182 (p. 181).
11. Judith Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist
Critique of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception”, in The Thinking
Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, edited by Jeffner Allen and Iris
Marion Young (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 85–100
(p. 86).
12. Anna Petronella Foultier, “Language and the Gendered Body: Butler’s Early Read-
ing of Merleau-Ponty”, Hypatia, vol. 28, n. 4, 2013, pp. 767–783 (p. 779); Iris
Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body
Comportment Motility and Spatiality”, Human Studies, vol. 3, n. 2, 1980, pp. 137–156
(p. 140). Luce Irigaray (An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke
and Gillian C. Gill [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993], pp. 151–184)
suggests that this masculine bias is nuanced in Merleau-Ponty’s later work,
namely the chapter “The Intertwining – The Chiasm” found in the unfinished,
posthumously, published The Visible and the Invisible (edited by Claude Lefort,
trans. Alphonso Lingis [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968],
pp. 130–155). While still maintaining that he depends upon a privileging of a
masculinist privileging, Irigaray holds that this text exhibits a concern with the
“feminine” tactile not found in his earlier work. Space constraints mean that I
will not discuss this issue here – although I will return to Irigaray’s thought in
Chapter 6 – but I mention in passing that (1) various commentators (Guenther,
“Merleau-Ponty and the Sense of Sexual Difference”, pp. 19–33; Reineke, “Lacan,
Merleau-Ponty, and Irigaray”, pp. 175–182; Mark Sanders, “Merleau-Ponty and
the Ethics of Engagement”, in Ethics and Phenomenology, edited by Mark Sanders

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 94 / Questioning Sexuality

and J. Jeremy Wisnewski [Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013], pp. 103–116) have
suggested that the notion of flesh found in the later work expands and comple-
ments, rather than replaces, the earlier analysis found in The Phenomenology of
Perception, and (2) Irigaray’s claim depends upon a strict division between (a)
masculine and feminine, and (b) Merleau-Ponty’s earlier and later works that
falls foul of Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of binary logic. Nevertheless, for a discus-
sion of Irigaray’s reading of Merleau-Ponty, see Alison Ainley, “The Invisible of
the Flesh: Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray”, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenol-
ogy, vol. 28, n. 1, 1997, pp. 20–29.
13. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983), pp. 56–62.
14. Joel Smith, “Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenological Reduction”, Inquiry,
vol. 48, n. 6, 2005, pp. 553–571.
15. A number of commentators have recently argued that there are significant
overlaps between Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s conceptions of the body,
although there is disagreement over whether to affirm Heidegger’s account
(Kevin A. Aho, “The Missing Dialogue between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty:
On the Importance of the Zollikon Seminars”, Body and Society, vol. 11, n. 2,
2005, pp. 1–23) or Merleau-Ponty’s account (Douglas Low, “Merleau-Ponty’s
Criticism of Heidegger”, Philosophy Today, vol. 53, n. 3, 2009, pp. 273–293).
Regardless, this trajectory demonstrates the validity of the historical narrative
outlined here, in so far as it confirms my claim that their conceptions of the
body and, by extension, sexuality have points of intertwinement.
16. Martin C. Dillon, “Merleau-Ponty on Existential Sexuality: A Critique”, Journal
of Phenomenological Psychology, vol. 11, n. 1, 1980, pp. 67–81.
17. René Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, in Discourse on Method and
Meditations on First Philosophy, Fourth edition, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indian-
apolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), pp. 59–103 (p. 60).
18. Ibid., p. 64.
19. Ibid., pp. 87–92.
20. The secondary literature on Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the mind–body
problem is extensive. For an overview, see Shaun Gallagher, “Merleau-Ponty”,
in Consciousness and the Great Philosophers: What Would They have Said About our
Mind–Body Problem?, edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2016), pp. 235–243.
21. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1964), pp. 226–227.
22. Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, trans.
Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawler (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2004); Taylor Carmen, Merleau-Ponty (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008); Martin C.
Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Second edition (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1998); Lawrence Hass, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008); Scott Marrato, The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-
Ponty on Subjectivity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013).
23. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 178–201.

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 95

24. Ibid., p. 178.

25. Ibid., p. 62.
26. Taylor Carmen, “Between Empiricism and Intellectualism”, in Merleau-Ponty: Key
Concepts, edited by Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds (Abingdon: Routledge,
2014), pp. 44–56 (p. 54).
27. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 178.
28. Ibid., p. 178.
29. Ibid., pp. 178–179.
30. Ibid., p. 179.
31. Ibid., p. 179.
32. Ibid., p. 179.
33. Ibid., p. 179.
34. Ibid., pp. 179–180.
35. Ibid., p. 180.
36. Ibid., p. 180.
37. Ibid., p. 180.
38. Ibid., p. 180.
39. Ibid., p. 180.
40. Ibid., p. 180.
41. Shannon Sullivan, “Domination and Dialogue in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenom-
enology of Perception”, Hypatia, vol. 12, n. 1, 1997, pp. 1–19 (p. 8).
42. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 180.
43. Ibid., p. 180.
44. Ibid., p. 180.
45. Ibid., pp. 180–181.
46. Ibid., p. 181.
47. Ibid., p. 181.
48. Ibid., p. 181.
49. Ibid., p. 181.
50. Ibid., p. 181.
51. Ibid., p. 181.
52. Ibid., p. 181.
53. Ibid., p. 182.
54. Ibid., p. 182.
55. Patricia Moya and Maria Elena Larrain, “Sexuality and Meaning in Freud and
Merleau-Ponty”, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 97, n. 3, 2016,
pp. 737–757 (p. 754).
56. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 182.
57. Helena de Preester, “Merleau-Ponty’s Sexual Schema and the Sexual Component
of Body Integrity Identity Disorder”, Medical Healthcare and Philosophy, vol. 16,
n. 2, 2013, pp. 171–184 (p. 181).
58. Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description”, p. 86.
59. Foultier, “Language and the Gendered Body”, p. 779; Young, “Throwing Like a
Girl”, p. 141.
60. Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description”, p. 86.

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 96 / Questioning Sexuality

61. Ibid., p. 93.

62. Ibid., p. 86.
63. Ibid., p. 92.
64. Ibid., p. 92.
65. Ibid., p. 86.
66. Foultier, “Language and the Gendered Body”, p. 774.
67. Ibid., p. 774.
68. Ibid., p. 779.
69. Young, “Throwing Like a Girl”, p. 141.
70. Sonia Kruks, “Merleau-Ponty and the Problem of Difference in Feminism”, in
Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edited by Dorothy Olkowski
and Gail Weiss (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006),
pp. 25–48 (p. 29).
71. Ibid., p. 29.
72. Ibid., p. 30.
73. Johanna Oksala, “Female Freedom: Can the Lived Body be Emancipated?”, in
Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edited by Dorothy Olkowski
and Gail Weiss (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006),
pp. 209–228 (p. 218).
74. Ibid., p. 218.
75. Ibid., p. 218.
76. Ibid., p. 221.
77. Ibid., p. 221. In a similar vein, Kruks concludes that Merleau-Ponty’s account of
the sexed body does not “obscure or deny differences” (Kruks, “Merleau-Ponty
and the Problem of Difference in Feminism”, p. 42), but aims to point to “the
tensions of difference and commonality . . . to suggest that embodiment offers a
site of potential communication and affirmative intersubjectivity” (ibid., p. 42).
78. Stoller, “Reflections on Feminist Merleau-Ponty Skepticism”, p. 178.
79. Ibid., p. 178.
80. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xx.
81. Ibid., p. xx.
82. Stoller, “Reflections on Feminist Merleau-Ponty Skepticism”, p. 178.
83. Diana Coole, Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-Humanism (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), p. 139.
84. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “In Praise of Philosophy”, in In Praise of Philosophy and
Other Essays, trans. John Wild and James M. Edie (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1963), pp. 3–70 (p. 60).
85. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 182.
86. Ibid., p. 182.
87. Ibid., p. 183.
88. Ibid., p. 183.
89. Ibid., p. 183.
90. Ibid., p. 183.
91. Ibid., pp. 183–184.

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 Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body / 97

92. Ibid., p. 184.

93. Ibid., p. 184.
94. Ibid., p. 184.
95. Dillon, “Merleau-Ponty on Existential Sexuality”, p. 71.
96. Ibid., p. 67.
97. Ibid., p. 74.
98. Ibid., p. 74.
99. Ibid., p. 74.
100. Ibid., p. 80.
101. Grosz, “Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the Flesh”, p. 38. Interestingly, one of
the fundamental arguments of Dillon’s later Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology is that
Merleau-Ponty’s ontology critiques and rejects binary oppositions. However,
Dillon never relates this to, or indeed renounces, his earlier critique of Merleau-
Ponty’s analysis of the sexed body.
102. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 198.
103. Ibid., p. 197.
104. Ibid., p. 194.
105. Ibid., p. 195.
106. Ibid., p. 195.
107. Ibid., p. 193.
108. Ibid., p. 198.

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8808_Rae.indd 98 22/05/24 4:10 PM
 Part II

Feminism and (Post)Structuralism

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8808_Rae.indd 100 22/05/24 4:10 PM
 C HAPTER 4

Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman”

In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex,1 a text that would
reorientate the study of sexuality within the phenomenological movement
specifically and twentieth-century philosophy more generally. Reportedly
selling over 22,000 copies in its first week of release,2 The Second Sex quickly
“caused a major outrage because it dealt with a taboo subject – women’s
sexuality – and contained a harsh critique of patriarchal power structures”.3
Specifically, Beauvoir analyses the ways in which “social institutions, such
as marriage, motherhood, and the family, predefine women’s and men’s
roles in a male-dominated society and subsequently denigrate women to
the status of secondary citizens”,4 an argument “buttressed . . . by showing
how changing ideals of ‘femininity’ are not essential aspects of women’s
identity based on biological sex”.5
Beauvoir’s text marks a radical departure from previous psychoanalytical
and phenomenological accounts of sexuality. Whereas she praises the for-
mer for recognising “that no factor intervenes in psychic life without hav-
ing taken on human meaning”,6 with the consequence that psychoanalysis
permits a huge expansion of our understanding of what constitutes human
experience, she goes on to criticise Freud for “not [being] very concerned
with woman’s destiny; it is clear that he modelled his description of it on
that of masculine destiny, merely modifying some of the traits”.7 Interest-
ingly, however, she praises Lacan’s account of the mirror stage,8 thereby
revealing not only that she was up-to-date with contemporary (for her)
psychoanalytic theory but also that her relationship to psychoanalysis was
nuanced.
Her ties to the phenomenological tradition are far stronger, both as a
consequence of her own philosophical education and, indeed, her relation-
ship with Jean-Paul Sartre. The specifics of their physical relationship – that

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they never married, kept other lovers, and so on – have been told multiple
times and are of little interest here,9 but their intellectual bond and influ-
ence over one another brings to the fore Beauvoir’s intimate relationship
to the phenomenological tradition. While Beauvoir always emphasised her
philosophical dependence on Sartre, recent scholarship has reopened that
issue to show that she was far more fundamental to his thinking that she
recognised or is often given credit for.10 Indeed, it has been suggested that,
rather than Sartre, Beauvoir depended upon, engaged with, and was more
fundamentally influenced by other figures within the phenomenological
tradition, including Hegel,11 Heidegger,12 Husserl,13 and Merleau-Ponty.14
Whatever the truth(s) of these connections – and it is, of course, pos-
sible that Beauvoir was influenced by all these figures – they reveal that the
phenomenological tradition was a key one for Beauvoir. This is not to say,
however, that the relationship was uni-directional. Stella Sandford notes
that Beauvoir introduced important conceptual innovations into phenom-
enological thinking:

First, there is the attempt to make the Other or others necessary to the mean-
ingfulness of my freedom, which thus leads to the centrality of ethical and
political questions within existentialism [and phenomenology] and to the
privileging of the other’s freedom. Second, there is the growing insistence on
the claims of facticity or the claims of the situation on the subject.15

This later focus brought the question of the relationship between sexuality
and the body to the fore. As noted, this had been raised by Heidegger and,
more specifically, Merleau-Ponty, but, as Anna Alexander notes, both “(on
the face of it) theorized a ‘body’ belonging to no one”,16 in so far as they
both affirmed the fundamental importance of the phenomenological reduc-
tion to think sexuality in relation to a prior (ontological) neutrality. Beau-
voir takes over and focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the lived body,
but “reconceptualis[es] . . . the subject through the idea of the situation . . .
[to] problematize the intelligibility of a metaphysical or ontological con-
cept of freedom divorced from political and social contexts”.17 Rather than
strip bodies of their factical determinations, Beauvoir maintains that it is
necessary to study the concrete factical determinations of bodies in their
socio-political situatedness. From this methodological starting point, she
turns to focus on the situation of women, as a precursor to responding to
the question “what is a woman?”18
Instead of appealing to a definite, ahistoric (biological) essence, Beauvoir
posits that “woman”, and by extension, sexuality is not a thing or substance,
but a process of becoming; a conclusion captured by her famous statement

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 103

that “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman”.19 To support this, she
not only discusses myths about women, but also biological, psychoana-
lytic, historical materialist, historical, and sociological accounts of female
sexual development. By focusing on her critique of biological essentialism,
notion of woman as Other, and The Second Sex’s closing section on libera-
tion, I will first outline her critique of the logic of patriarchy that has domi-
nated Western thinking, before (second section) engaging with her critique
of the long-held notion that sexuality generally and “woman” specifically
are defined by a determining, fixed biological essence. I then (third sec-
tion) tie her materialist, non-essentialist account of “woman” to her earlier
The Ethics of Ambiguity20 – thereby following Toril Moi’s claim that this text
“remains crucial to an understanding of The Second Sex”21 – to suggest that
Beauvoir’s point is that sexuality, as a social construct, cannot be thought of
in terms of clear-cut categories or divisions, but must be thought of in terms
of the ambiguity that marks lived experience. For this reason, she pushes us
to recognise, accept, and even affirm the ambiguity of lived sexuality.
Section four engages with the long-standing issue of whether Beauvoir
implicitly depends upon a masculine position, so that her supposed affirma-
tion of women continues to depend upon and, indeed, perpetuate the privi-
leging of masculinity that has long marked Western thinking. While noting
the ambiguity that has marked contemporary responses to this issue,22 I
argue that the fact that it has been raised at all points to the subtle ways in
which a privileging of the logic of patriarchy can continue to adhere to think-
ing that explicitly seeks to undermine it – a charge that was also levelled,
albeit in different ways, against Freud, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty – and,
in so doing, points to the complexity of the problem faced by those seeking
to undermine patriarchy.
Section five complements this by tying Beauvoir’s thinking to the con-
temporary debate regarding whether Beauvoir’s account of woman affirms
(1) a sex/gender division wherein a biologically passive sexed body is given
meaning through fluid, heterogeneous socially-constructed gender norms,
and so is understood to prefigure Judith Butler’s gender theory (chapter 7);23
or (2) a new conception of “sex” that cuts across the sex/gender divide by
rethinking “sex” from a socially situated body that continuously becomes
without becoming anything; a conception that sees Beauvoir as affirming a
radical materialist rethinking of the sexed body that figures into what has
become known as the new materialisms (Chapter 8).24 Rather than seek to
resolve these interpretative disputes, my aim is to show that Beauvoir fulfils
this dual role because her account of sexuality maintains that sexuality must
be thought in terms of ambiguity, a position that permits her analysis to be
appropriated by distinct positions within subsequent (feminist) thinking.

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 104 / Questioning Sexuality

The Second Sex

Beauvoir’s writing career stretches from the 1940s through to her death in
1986, but her reputation as the “mother”25 of feminism lies on the foun-
dation of her 1949 book The Second Sex; a text that has been called “the
‘bible’ of modern Western feminism”.26 Beauvoir starts by explaining that
she “hesitated a long time before writing a book on women”.27 Indeed,
she admits that she found the topic “irritating”,28 if only because of the
inadequate ways it has been historically treated wherein the question of
“woman” has tended to be answered by appeal to an ahistoric essence or
an unrealisable (Platonic) ideal, or simply rejected as being irrelevant to the
more universal question of “human being”. However, while “woman like
man is a human being . . . such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every
concrete human being is always uniquely situated”.29 Despite her rejection
of universal categories, Beauvoir subsequently asks: “If the female function
is not enough to define woman, and if we also reject the explanation of the
‘eternal function’, but . . . we accept, even temporarily, that there are women
on the earth, we then have to ask: what is a woman?”30
Beauvoir notes that the power of the question rests on its peculiarity, in so
far as the same question has never been asked of man. She takes this to show
that Western thinking has been dominated by a logic of patriarchy, wherein
“man” is taken to be synonymous with “human being”, with “woman” rel-
egated “to the negative, to such a point that any determination is imputed
to her as a limitation”.31 Because “woman” is defined and, indeed, defines
herself negatively in relation to the “positive” masculine position,

she is nothing other than what man decides; she is thus called ‘the sex,’
meaning that the male sees her essentially as a sexed being; for him she is
sex, so she is it in the absolute. She determines and differentiates herself in
relation to man, and he does not in relation to her; she is the inessential in
front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other.32

This feeds into a distinction that Beauvoir makes between two types of
relation: one based on alterity and the other based on opposition. Regard-
ing the former, she suggests that the logic of alterity is fundamental to the
human condition and, indeed “is the fundamental category of human
thought”.33 This onto-epistemic claim undermines the primordial claim of
monadic ontologies, wherein categories are defined prior to any relational-
ity they might have. For Beauvoir, relationality is ontologically primarily,
so that “things” only are by virtue of being distinguished from what they
are not. In relation to the sexes, this should lead to both terms – masculine
and feminine – being held to be of symmetrical worth: the masculine can

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 105

only be what it is by virtue of its negative relation to the feminine and vice
versa. However, this has not been the case historically; the relation between
the sexes has been oppositional, so that one aspect of the relation “asserts
itself as the essential and sets up the other as inessential, the object”.34 Not
only does this turn a relation between two “subjects” into one between a
“subject” and an “object”, but it leads to an asymmetric relation wherein
the “positive” subject is affirmed over the “negative” object; the masculine
is privileged over the feminine. Beauvoir wonders how it is “that between
the sexes this reciprocity has not been put forward, that one of the terms has
been asserted as the only essential one, denying any relationality in regard
to its correlative, defining the latter as pure alterity? Why do women not
contest male sovereignty?”35
Her point is that “[n]o subject posits itself spontaneously and at once
as the inessential form from the outset; it is not the Other who, defining
itself as Other, defines the One; the Other is posited as Other by the One
positing itself as One”.36 Due to the relational symmetry inherent in the
process of meaning-generation, each aspect is actually as valuable as the
other. If, however, one aspect comes to be more valued within that cultural
system than the other, it is not due to a “natural” ontological superiority,
but because the originary alterity has been forcibly turned into an opposi-
tion. However, force alone is not sufficient to maintain such an asymmetri-
cal relation. Rather, “in order for the Other not to turn into the One, the
Other has to submit to this foreign point of view”.37 Where then “does this
submission in woman come from?”38
While accepting that “[t]he division of the sexes is a biological given,
not a moment in human history”,39 Beauvoir notes that the meaning of that
division is not predetermined but must be constructed. Because women
comprise around half the population, a construction that leaves woman
in a secondary position can only occur and be sustained with her consent;
in other words, women must acquiesce and, indeed, affirm their second-
ary status. Crucially, Beauvoir rejects the notion that this inequality is a
contemporary occurrence; “woman has always been, if not man’s slave, at
least his vassal; the two sexes have never divided the world up equally; and
still today, even though her condition is changing, woman is heavily handi-
capped”.40
Writing in France in the late 1940s, Beauvoir notes that there is no coun-
try where woman have equal legal rights as men, although she then claims
that, even if that formal equality did exist, it would merely mask “long-
standing habit[s] [that] keep them from being concretely manifested in cus-
toms”.41 After all, men occupy positions of historical prestige, which are
re-enforced by an educational system that teaches children, often implicitly,

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to accept and affirm the subordination of women. This feeds through into
later life, so that

[e]conomically, men and women almost form two castes; all things being
equal, the former have better jobs, higher wages and greater chances to succeed
than their new female competitors; they occupy many more places in industry,
in politics, and so on, and they hold the most important positions.42

The chips are, then, stacked against women, which is compounded further
by their complicity in perpetuating that system. Again, Beauvoir recognises
that there is significant social pressure that supports and perpetuates mech-
anisms of conformity, but she also highlights that women are not simply
helpless victims in the process. This however is tempered by the recogni-
tion that “women makes no claim for herself as subject because she lacks
the concrete means, because she senses the necessary link connecting her
to man within positing its reciprocity, and because she often derives satis-
faction from her role as Other”.43 Because this inequality is not pre-given,
“[i]t remains to be explained how it was that man won at the outset. It
seems possible that women might have carried off the victory, or that the
battle might never be resolved.”44
Beauvoir notes that this question has a long history and, indeed, has
been met with multiple responses. The fundamental problem with them is
that, while they appeal to different sources to justify patriarchy – Beauvoir
mentions that “antifeminists . . . draw not only . . . on religion, philosophy
and theology, but also on science: biology, experimental psychology, and
so on”45 – all conclusions are underpinned by a common ontological prin-
ciple: human being is defined in terms of an ahistoric essence, so that, in
the case of “woman”, she is attributed a definite unchanging essence that
“naturally” leads to her subordination.
Beauvoir’s rejects this essentialist ontology and, instead, follows Hegel –
who at the beginning of the Science of Logic argues that the dialectical relation-
ship between “being” and “nothing” gives way to the truth of becoming46 – in
claiming that “to be is to have become, to have been made as one manifests
oneself”.47 Woman is a construction that is continually constructed; there is
nothing “natural” or determined about her. If she is socially inferior to man,
it is because the sexes have been conceived and structured in that manner;
but, crucially, there is nothing necessary about that construction.
To develop this, Beauvoir adopts the “perspective . . . of existentialist
morality”,48 by which she means, generally speaking, the insistence that,
rather than being an inert thing, “[e]very subject posits itself as a tran-
scendence concretely, through projects; it accomplishes its freedom only
by perpetual surpassing towards other freedom”.49 Importantly, “there is

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 107

no other justification for present existence than its expansion towards an

indefinitely open future”.50 For Beauvoir, each subject only is what it is as
a consequence of an onto-genetic process of projection into the future.
There is then a constant surmounting of what one “is” in each moment,
with this depending upon and permitting the individual the freedom to
become “something” else in the future. This moment of transcendence is
not to another world, but is always within a social situation. Emphasising
its transcendence-in-situation safeguards and, indeed, depends upon the
freedom of the subject. As a consequence, Beauvoir stresses that the subject
is always situated, but is never determined by that situation.
Problems arise, however, “every time transcendence lapses into imma-
nence”,51 by which Beauvoir means a lack of becoming. When this occurs,
“there is a degradation of existence into ‘in itself,’ of freedom into facticity”.52
Rather than project oneself into the future to realise the open-ended possi-
bilities open to the subject based on its lack of ontological essence, the turn
to immanence implies an acceptance and, indeed, affirmation of the current
state of things. It is, to put it simply, to turn oneself into an unchanging
“thing”.
Beauvoir ties this to the situation of women by claiming that, while every
individual “experiences his [sic] existence as an indefinite need to transcend
himself”,53 for women, this possibility is stunted. Rather than being able
to transcend herself, “she discovers and chooses herself in a world where
men force her to assume herself as an Other: an attempt is made to freeze
her as an object and doom her to immanence, since her transcendence
will be forever transcended by another essential and sovereign conscious-
ness”.54 Woman therefore finds herself in a “drama”,55 wherein she is caught
between her own self-affirmation as essential (= transcendence) “and the
demands of the situation that constitutes her as inessential”.56
Again, there is no doubt that, for Beauvoir, women participate in this
process. As she puts it, “[i]f woman discovers herself as the inessential, and
never turns into the essential, it is because she does not bring about this
transformation herself”.57 However, Beauvoir also recognises that such a
transformation is never purely voluntarist. The situation that woman finds
herself in imposes this normative framework onto her, with the consequence
that her decision is made within a social field that restricts her options. Her
transcendence is always constrained by her situation, which constantly pres-
surises her to deny the transcendence that she is ontologically. As a conse-
quence, “frustration and oppression”58 are her lot. It must be remembered,
however, that, for Beauvoir, this frustration is not an ontological given, but
the result of a particular constructed normative value system. The question
arises as to whether the normative framework supporting such judgement is
sustainable and/or to be sustained.

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The Question of Biology

The Second Sex examines how the inferior position of women has been con-
structed and maintained from a variety of positions – including biology,
psychoanalysis, economics, historical narrative, myth, education, and so on –
to show that there is not one singular source of her oppression; rather,
Western society is structured from and around an imperceptible web of nor-
mative structures and meanings that gently but constantly impose them-
selves onto the sexes to define their possibilities. In the case of women, this
leads her to the status of Other and the denial of her transcendence. Beau-
voir’s identification of this normative construction is also accompanied by
its critical interrogation. Given the dominant role it has played in vindicat-
ing women’s secondary status within Western history, I will briefly focus on
her critique of the biological justifications for women’s inferior status. This
will highlight Beauvoir’s materialist, anti-essentialist account of the lived
body and, by extension, sexuality, emphasise the crucial role that ambigu-
ity plays therein, and show how her analysis has fed into and stimulated a
number of debates within contemporary feminist theory.
Beauvoir notes that responses to the question of “woman” typically aim
to reduce her to her biology or biological function: childbirth. In so doing,
woman is defined by a lack of transcendence. To explain this, Beauvoir intro-
duces and depends upon a distinction between “woman” and “female”.
The latter is associated with biology and is “pejorative not because it roots
woman in nature, but because it confines her in her sex”.59 “Woman”, on the
other hand, refers to the meaning that “female” has within a particular social
setting. Beauvoir’s point regarding her discussion of biology is to reject the
reduction of “woman” to “female”, all the while accepting and recognis-
ing that the biological conditions of “female” must be accepted, albeit in
a non-determining way, when discussing the construction of “woman”. As
a consequence, whereas “[m]ales and females are two types of individuals
who are differentiated within one species for the purposes of reproduction;
they can be defined only correlatively [and] it must be pointed out first that
the very meaning of division of the species into two sexes is not clear”.60
In other words, although Beauvoir accepts a heteronormative division as
in some sense biologically given, she recognises that the meaning of that
division is open and contested.
Despite this, however, she notes that the history of Western philosophy
has tended to treat it homogeneously as a consequence of taking its mean-
ing “for granted without attempting to explain it”.61 Beauvoir backs this
up with a quick overview of the topic in Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel,
Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger, which are shown to presuppose the

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 109

division, reject it out of hand, or produce analyses that Beauvoir finds to be

unacceptable. Specifically, she argues that, while all these thinkers affirm
the absolute objective status of woman, their “[o]pinions about the respec-
tive roles of the two sexes . . . only reflected social myths”.62 This created and
depended upon a vicious circularity where the supposed biological inferi-
ority of woman depended upon and repeated a number of norms about
women, which, in turn, created and depended upon the supporting “myth”
of the absolute biological inferiority of woman. To correct this, Beauvoir
clarifies that she is not interested in proposing a “philosophy of life”,63
nor “tak[ing] sides too hastily in the quarrel between finalism and mecha-
nism”.64 Her analysis will instead be guided by the vitalist premise “that any
living fact indicates transcendence, and that a project is in the making in
every function”.65 In other words, biology is not static and determined, but
fluid, plastic, and continuously becoming.
To outline and defend this, Beauvoir demonstrates an admirable knowl-
edge of contemporary (for her) biological theory to discuss sexual differen-
tiation in mammals and non-mammals. I will however limit the discussion
to the former and, in particular, her analysis of the sexual differentiation of
humans. She notes that for those species that permit “individual flourish-
ing”,66 it is usually the case that the male is “bigger than the female, stron-
ger, quicker, more adventurous; he leads a more independent life whose
activities are more gratuitous; he is more conquering, more imperious: in
animal societies, it is he who commands”.67 While this would seem to war-
rant the conclusion that the male is physically superior, Beauvoir quickly
nuances her understanding, explaining that “[i]n nature nothing is ever
completely clear: the two types, male and female, are not always sharply
distinguished”.68 Nevertheless, she does accept that “as a whole and espe-
cially at the top of the animal scale, the two sexes represent two diverse
aspects of the species’ life”.69 Although rejecting the notion that this relates
to the active–male/passive–female dichotomy that has long structured
Western thinking, she does accept that the two sexes relate to procreation
differently: the male “can affirm himself in his autonomy; he integrates the
specific energy into his own life”,70 whereas, for the female, “individuality
is fought by the interests of the species; she seems possessed by outside
forces: alienated”.71 From this, Beauvoir concludes that, when measured in
terms of the capacity for autonomy, “[w]oman, the most individualized
of females, is also the most fragile, the one who experiences her destiny
the most dramatically and who distinguishes herself the most significantly
from the male”.72
Building on this, Beauvoir claims that male biological development is
also relatively simple, in so far as “[f]rom birth to puberty, he grows more

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or less regularly”73 until with puberty hormonal and physical changes acti-
vate his sexual life. Rather than being something external to him, Beauvoir
claims that there is an organic movement that entwines the male’s body to
his sexual life. As a consequence, the male “is his body”.74 On the contrary,
“[w]oman’s history is much more complex”.75 Not only does she undergo
significantly more physical changes as she enters puberty, but these changes
are also experienced as an imposition: “[f]rom puberty to menopause
[woman] is the principal site of a story that takes place in her and does
not concern her personally”.76 For Beauvoir, menstruation is not something
that woman is part of or that which she “owns”, but is an activity that passes
through her. For this reason, it is at this moment that “she feels most acutely
that her body is an alienated opaque thing; it is the prey of a stubborn and
foreign life that makes and unmakes a crib in her every month”.77 Indeed,
Beauvoir claims that woman’s sense of alienation from her body is mag-
nified once she becomes pregnant, an activity that she calls “tiring work
that offers woman no benefit as an individual but that demands serious
sacrifices”,78 “exhausting servitude”,79 whereas the child is termed “a hostile
element”.80 For this reason, “woman is her body as man is his, but her body
is something other than her”.81
The question of Beauvoir’s views on motherhood have, however, always
been a contested issue whose resolution depends upon how her larger proj-
ect is understood; that is, whether she is taken to be offering a phenom-
enological critique of how “woman” is treated in patriarchal societies or
whether she is undertaking an ahistoric ontological analysis of woman.82
A “phenomenological” reading would claim that we must read Beauvoir’s
descriptions in line with her insistence that “woman” is a social construct.
On this understanding, Beauvoir is simply explaining how women tend
to experience their pregnancy in patriarchal societies, where the demands
placed upon them are substantial with little care for her freedom. The
problem is that her descriptions of the physiological changes that occur
to women in pregnancy appear to be asocial,83 with the consequence that
she seems to be making a point about pregnancy that holds for all women
regardless of their place or society. Support for this ontological reading is
found, for example, from her claim that “[a]ll that a healthy and well-nour-
ished woman can hope for after childbirth is to recoup her losses with-
out too much trouble”.84 From this, it appears that pregnancy is always an
imposition suffered by woman; an experience that negates her autonomy
and is to be endured and overcome as quickly and, hopefully, as pain-
lessly as possible. Indeed, Beauvoir claims that woman escapes this ordeal
only with the onset of menopause, whereupon she obtains “physiological
autonomy [that] is matched by a health, balance and vigour [that she] did

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 111

not previously have”.85 Again, however, if we read this comment in terms

of a phenomenological reading, the menopause simply frees her from the
demand placed upon her by a patriarchal society to define herself in terms
of child-rearing.
Regardless of which approach is adopted, it appears that Beauvoir is
making, at least, two claims. First, motherhood is not, as the most biolog-
ically reductionist conception of “woman” would maintain, something
“natural” to woman, nor is it something to which she is naturally attuned.
It is a scary and difficult process that brings about substantial changes
that are not within a woman’s control. This is part of Beauvoir’s critique
of the logic of patriarchy and reduction of woman to a biological func-
tion: childbirth. However, second, this is not to say that pregnancy must
simply be abandoned or rejected. Rather, it is to accept that pregnancy is a
biological possibility for woman, with the consequence that any response
to the question “what is a woman?” must engage with this issue to take
into consideration the biological, physiological, psychological, and social
aspects of motherhood and pregnancy. So, rather than affirm the binary
opposition that posits pregnancy as natural to and the essential end of
woman or that which is to be avoided to safeguard her autonomy, Beau-
voir offers a compatibilist position that recognises that pregnancy/child-
birth is a possibility for woman based on her biological composition, but
rejects the notion that it is what essentially defines her. Its meaning is
socially constructed and so can take on different forms, giving rise to dif-
ferent experiences.
This, however, feeds into a second issue that arises from Beauvoir’s
description of the alienation experienced by woman from her body relating
to how we are to understand the notion of “body” within Beauvoir’s think-
ing. Adrian Mirvish, for example, argues that Beauvoir’s account is premised
on a division between two bodies, one passive, the other active.86 Mirvish’s
point is that the human body is not defined by a division between a bio-
logical substratum which gains means socially; it is better understood
through the active/passive opposition wherein the body is sometimes active
and sometimes passive. Mirvish concludes that while Beauvoir appears to
affirm the active body over the passive one, in actuality she is pointing to
the ambiguous status of the body as both active and passive. It is, however,
highly questionable whether, for Beauvoir, the body is ever passive, in the
sense of not moving. After all, the body is an organic, vitalistic becoming,
and so is always active. At most, it could be true that the body is not always
intentionally active, but that is a very different argument. Nevertheless, by
noting that Beauvoir’s notion of the body is a combination of two “differ-
ent” states, Mirvish highlights the extent to which Beauvoir’s account of the

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lived body as a continuous becoming is not constrained by nor can it be

captured by clear-cut dualisms. It is, rather, ambiguity that defines it, with
the consequence that a far more fluid conception of the body-as-becoming
is required.
To develop this, a number of commentators have argued that Beauvoir’s
account of the body-as-becoming must be tied to and read through its situ-
atedness. By claiming that Beauvoir always thinks of the subject as situated,
thereby escaping both the mind/body dualism and notion of an unencum-
bered self dominant in Western (modern) philosophy, this perspective
holds that Beauvoir points to a notion of the body-subject that is always
immersed in, defined by, and active through its situation. Importantly, how-
ever, rather than reducing this body-subject to its situation or making the
latter a determined effect of the former, Beauvoir is taken to “both acknowl-
edge the weight of social construction . . . in the formation of the self and
yet refuse to reduce the self to an ‘effect’”.87 Instead of an autonomous or
determined subject, Beauvoir is understood to argue for a compatibilist posi-
tion that recognises that the subject is always situated but, crucially, remains
capable of acting within that situation. Such autonomy occurs, however,
within, not from, its situation. Beauvoir therefore rejects the binary logic that
pits a passive body acted upon against a voluntarist position that maintains
that the body simply chooses its situation, to instead affirm the relational
entwinement of both aspects. For this reason, there is, strictly speaking, no
hard and fast division between the subject and its situation, nor is one aspect
privileged over or more essential than the other; their entwinement ensures
a thoroughly ambiguous relation.
This feeds into Beauvoir’s earlier affirmation of ambiguity in The Ethics
of Ambiguity (from 1947), where she notes that, while the default historical
position has been to seek clear-cut categories to thought to deny any form
of ambiguity, the result has been the creation of a number of “false” oppo-
sitions and privilegings: a “free” mind over a constrained body, the “free”
self over the constraining other, and so on.88 Beauvoir’s solution, one she
attributes to existential philosophy, is to abandon the appeal to an ethics of
binary oppositions that allows clarity but does so by rejecting the entwine-
ment of things, to instead recognise and affirm the importance of ambiguity,
where “meaning is never fixed [or clear-cut but] must be constantly won”.89
As a consequence, she insists that human being is not clear-cut or easily
identifiable; “the human condition is ambiguous”.90
Beauvoir calls this an “ethics” because she follows the existentialist tradi-
tion in holding that the being of an entity is its doing, but this conclusion
also implicitly depends upon a particular ontology of entwinement. Rather
than being clear-cut and monadic, entities are complex, situated, continuous

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 113

becomings, and, as such, “are” always in flux and so highly ambiguous. The
emphasis placed on (sexual) ambiguity lays the groundwork for later queer
and trans* theories, but tying this back to Beauvoir’s account of the relation-
ship between biology and woman, we see that her affirmation of an ethics/
ontology of ambiguity underpins her rejection of a straightforward ground
for the notion of “woman”, whether that be biological, psychological, or
social-historical. For this reason, it is not possible to reduce “woman” to her
biology, which is also not to say that there is no such thing as biology.
Indeed, Beauvoir recognises that “[o]n average, [woman] is smaller than
man, lighter; her skeleton is thinner; the pelvis is wider, adapted to gesta-
tion and birth; her connective tissue retains fats, and her forms are rounder
than man’s”91 and that

[w]oman has much less muscular force: about two-thirds that of man; she
has less respiratory capacity . . . Instability is a striking characteristic of
[woman’s] bodies in general . . . More instability and less control make them
more emotional, which is directly linked to vascular variations: palpitations,
redness, and so on; and they are thus subject to convulsive attacks: tears,
nervous laughter and hysterics.92

Although these statements affirm many of the stereotypes of woman that

have long dominated Western patriarchal thinking – women are naturally
weaker than men, more emotional, and so on – Beauvoir immediately calls
them into question by explaining that “they do not carry their meaning in
themselves”.93 Biological differences ensure that the world is experienced
differently by the sexes, but the species is not a static entity; it “realizes itself
as existence in a society”94 and a society is defined by “customs [that] cannot
be deduced from biology”.95 As a consequence, “individuals are never left
to their nature; they obey this second nature, that is, customs in which the
desires and fears that express their ontological attitude are reflected”.96 For
this reason, Beauvoir concludes that “woman’s body is one of the essential
elements of the situation she occupies in the world. But her body is not
enough to define her.”97 “We refuse the idea that [biological data] form a
fixed destiny for her. They do not suffice to constitute the basis for a sexual
hierarchy; they do not explain why woman is the Other; they do not con-
demn her for ever after to this subjugated role.”98 Instead, woman’s biology
only gains meaning once it is “taken on by consciousness through actions
and within a society”;99 an issue that brings to the fore “the question [of]
what humanity has made of the human female”.100
With this, Beauvoir once again engages with various historical theories
that have been proposed to explain the question of “woman”, as a precursor

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 114 / Questioning Sexuality

to showing that they are either mistaken or one-dimensional. Her overrid-

ing point is that, as a situated becoming, “woman” cannot be thought from
a singular causal fixed ground, but must be thought from the constellation
of a variety of different perspectives – biology, society, psychological, and
so on – all of which are in constant entwined alteration. The subject cannot
be thought in terms of clear-cut divisions or a foundational principle; the
subject is a complicated, ambiguous process. In turn, this feeds through to
her response to the question of sexuality more generally, which is and must
also be recognised as multidimensional, complex, fluid, and, by extension,
ambiguous. Indeed, as noted, it opens the possibility, which will be key
to subsequent queer and trans* theories, of being constituted by multiple
(sexual) roles and identities or even moving between different roles and
identities. If sexuality and sexual expression are not foreclosed but become
what they are through an open-ended process of (social) becoming, there
is no reason for them to be limited to particular predefined roles or ends.

Ambiguity and the Logic of Patriarchy

To this point, I have argued that Beauvoir’s critical discussion of the biologi-
cal differences between the sexes and, by extension, their implications for
the question of woman has been orientated against the logic of patriarchy,
in so far as she aims to expose and call into question the bond long held to
exist between female biology and its implications for woman. Whereas those
defending a logic of patriarchy tend to maintain that the latter is grounded
in the biology of the former, Beauvoir recognises the former but insists that
it has no determination for the latter. She therefore rejects the notion that
biology determines and justifies woman’s secondary status.
The claim that woman is constructed, not biologically given, has been
fundamental to the development of feminist theory and, indeed, continues
to find expression throughout contemporary debates. In particular, I will
focus on two issues that have sprung from it; namely, whether Beauvoir’s
supposed affirmation of woman is dependent on and so continues to affirm
a logic of patriarchy and the extent to which The Second Sex can be said to
offer a theory of gender. I engage with the first charge in this section, and the
second in the subsequent section. The aim is to (1) show the continuing rel-
evance of Beauvoir’s thinking to contemporary debates around the question
of sexuality, and (2) highlight how her affirmation of ambiguity has given
rise to distinct positions within the literature, although I will argue that this
influence is premised on something of a misreading, in so far as it arises
from the attempt to attribute to Beauvoir a single, clear-cut theory which

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 115

has tended to downplay the fundamental role that ambiguity plays within
her thinking on the human condition generally and sexuality specifically.
As noted in previous chapters, although they reject the notion that sexu-
ality can be understood in essentialist terms, Freud’s, Heidegger’s, and Mer-
leau-Ponty’s theories are all subject to the charge – one that I rejected in
the case of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty – that they continue to, at least,
implicitly affirm a male perspective. On first appearances, Beauvoir seems
to escape this charge; after all, she not only explicitly calls into question the
logic of patriarchy but also appears to affirm the importance of questioning
“woman” as opposed to man. Such a project appears then to undercut the
logic of patriarchy by bringing to the fore and explicitly rejecting many of
the traditional theories supporting that logic. However, a number of com-
mentators have argued that Beauvoir’s analysis continues to depend upon
an implicit privileging of the masculine, as evidenced, most explicitly, by
her claim that woman is the second sex, which indicates that she is always
defined from the perspective of the masculine.
On this issue, however, it must be noted that Beauvoir’s comments are
fragmentary and ambiguous, thereby again permitting different interpreta-
tions. For example, she claims that “[t]o emancipate woman is to refuse to
enclose her in the relations she sustains with man, [but it is] not to deny
them”.101 Instead, and “while [woman] posits herself for herself, she will
nonetheless continue to exist for hi[m] as well: recognizing each other as
subject, each will remain an other for the other”.102 From this, it could be
concluded that rather than aim to mirror masculine transcendence, femi-
nine liberation requires a relationship of mutual recognition between the
sexes, one that does not abolish the fundamental division between them:
“reciprocity in their relations will not do away with the miracles that the
division of human beings into two separate categories engenders”.103
If, however, this is so, it is not clear what it might entail. For example,
when Beauvoir claims that “the phallus is assimilated with transcendence”104
as is autonomy, both of which woman lacks, does this mean that woman
should strive for autonomy and by extension the phallus; a position that
would continue to define woman from the masculine perspective. Or, when
Beauvoir continues to push for woman’s liberation from the structures of
patriarchy, does this affirm strict equality (= sameness) with men, thereby
undermining the differences that she otherwise claims “will always exist”,105
or, is it the case that she wants to maintain equality in difference, which she
otherwise appears to reject when she explains that “those who talk so much
about ‘equality in difference’ would be hard put not to grant me that there
are differences in equality”.106

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Such ambiguities have led to wildly different assessments of Beauvoir’s

thinking: Céline Léon, for example, accuses Beauvoir of taking the status
of the masculine as the goal of woman’s liberation: “Not only does Beau-
voir take her cues directly from Sartre’s nauseous distaste of a world whose
grasp eludes him, but she indirectly accepts as given the binarities of Oedi-
pal culture – man/woman, activity/passivity, culture/nature.”107 As a con-
sequence, “[n]otwithstanding all protestations to the contrary, [woman’s]
desire remains based on a lack, a stasis, and [Beauvoir] never moves away
from the cultural stereotypes she attacks”.108 For this reason, Léon charges
that “[e]ven as Beauvoir rejects the concept of a feminine essence, there
sprout, through the crevices that riddle Western man’s discourse, the very
seedlings she has trampled underfoot”.109 In other words, Beauvoir takes
the characteristics that define masculinity as her model of and for feminine
liberation and, in so doing, continues to reduce woman to the male per-
spective to implicitly perpetuate the logic of patriarchy otherwise rejected.
Léon’s assessment does however appear to depend upon an “ontologi-
cal” reading of Beauvoir’s thinking, where Beauvoir’s description of a num-
ber of binary oppositions is taken as both describing and affirming the
ontological reality of woman regardless of her social situation. In contrast,
a “phenomenological” reading would argue that Beauvoir’s identification
of those oppositions is not, at the same time, an affirmation of them, but
merely describes how the problem presents itself through the logic domi-
nant in contemporary patriarchal society; a description that permits a pre-
scription regarding how to overcome such divisions. Again, however, the
ambiguities inherent in the prescriptive aspect of Beauvoir’s analysis have
given rise to wildly different interpretations.
Nadine Changfoot, for example, argues that, contrary to Léon’s assess-
ment, Beauvoir does not try to overcome the logic of patriarchy by mod-
elling women’s liberation on masculinity. Rather, Beauvoir challenges the
binary logic underpinning patriarchy – wherein the sexes are divided into
two opposing sexes structured around a privileging of the masculine – by
affirming a future wherein the sexes are structured around a relation of
entwinement. However, Changfoot argues that the problem with this is
that it can entail, at least, two options. First, that the future appealed to is
thought from the present, with the consequence that it continues to depend
upon the imagination currently constituted. This does not, however, permit
a material alteration to the situation, not only because it entails an “ideal-
istic” alteration that does not actually affect a material change in the status
of woman, but also because its grounding in the present means that it will
likely continue to implicitly depend upon and affirm the unequal relations
between the sexes that structures the present. Second, and for this reason,

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Changfoot insists that Beauvoir affirms an alternative understanding of the

future, wherein “both genders culminate in a completed transcendence, but
this is envisaged as a condition free from the encumbered bodily experience
and consciousness of the present”.110
Changfoot’s argument does, however, depend upon the notion that
“transcendence” can be “completed”,111 which is an impossibility for Beau-
voir, in so far as she follows Heidegger and Sartre in holding that “tran-
scendence” entails a continuous projection into the future. Rather than a
state attained, transcendence describes a continuous, open-ended process
of becoming. Furthermore, Changfoot’s interpretation depends upon the
affirmation of unencumbered bodies that is explicitly rejected by Beauvior’s
insistence that embodiment is always situated. There is no such thing as an
unencumbered, trans-historical body or subject for Beauvoir; that is pre-
cisely the ontology that she associates with the logic of patriarchy that has
dominated Western thinking and which she explicitly criticises.112 As a con-
sequence, Changfoot’s affirmation of unencumbered (sexed) bodies recu-
perates Beauvoir’s thinking within the logic of patriarchy to be overcome.
For this reason, another line of interpretation has claimed that Beau-
vior’s thinking on woman’s liberation is not and cannot be based on sim-
ply mirroring the characteristics associated with masculinity in patriarchal
societies nor, indeed, affirming a flight to an unencumbered future. Rather,
as Tom Grimwood argues, Beauvoir insists on a process of indeterminate
and open-ended becoming that affirms “the constitutively unstable process
that both confirms the position of woman as man’s constructed ‘other’ and
also questions the determinacy of this position”.113 “Beauvoir is not arguing
that one is a woman, in so far as ‘woman’ is the ‘other’ constructed by man’s
One, but that the female sex is one of unrealized futurity”.114 The emphasis
on the future as a site of liberation is not premised on an escape to disem-
bodiment, but is based on the notion of projection that Beauvoir ties to
(situated) transcendence. While it might be objected that, because Beauvoir
ties “transcendence” to masculinity, this recuperates woman’s liberation
to the male perspective currently dominant, a phenomenological reading
would respond that Beauvoir’s account of the masculine–transcendence
relation is based on how “masculinity” has been historically constructed.
Just because “woman” has been historically excluded from “transcendence”
does not mean that she must be. The open-ended challenge is for “woman”
to alter the social dynamics so that they too will be able to constantly tran-
scend her situation. For this reason, Grimwood explains that “[t]he iconic
statement ‘that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ is both a
statement of woman’s oppression and her potential freedom”.115 As Susan
Hekman puts it, “if . . . the One/Other dichotomy gives woman no way

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out . . . it is incumbent on woman to develop a new approach to find that way

out”.116 On this reading, Beauvoir’s affirmation of woman’s liberation offers
not a blueprint, but a “challenge that women must meet and transcend”.117
The jury is then still out regarding whether Beauvoir continues to implic-
itly depend upon and affirm the logic of patriarchy. On the one hand, those
who read The Second Sex as offering an ontology of woman maintain that,
when she describes woman as the Other, Beauvoir is making a universal
ontological statement about woman that defines her negatively from the
male perspective. On the other hand, a phenomenological reading main-
tains that she is merely describing the situation of “woman” within the
logic of patriarchy that has dominated Western society; a positioning that,
due to her affirmation of open-ended becoming, does not necessarily need
to structure the future. The former reading lends support to the charge that
Beauvoir continues to implicitly affirm the logic of patriarchy, while the
latter offers a way to undercut it but leaves open the question regarding
the action and type of relationship that would do so. Although I am more
inclined to the latter position, as Ulrika Björk notes, Beauvoir’s comments
are simply too “indefinite”118 to be conclusive. Again, however, this is per-
fectly in keeping with her affirmation of ethical and ontological ambiguity
and insistence that the future is contingent and defined by open-ended pro-
jection that cannot (and so should not be) predetermined.

The Second Sex and Gender Theory

Although Beauvoir’s thinking, particularly on the question of woman’s lib-
eration, has given rise to a lively contemporary debate regarding whether she
continues to depend upon the logic of patriarchy that she aims to undermine,
I have argued that this is a consequence of her attempt to affirm the ambigu-
ity of lived experience and, by extension, sexuality. Her thinking has then
often frustrated readers precisely because it (purposefully) does not provide
definitive answers, but, instead, affirms the heterogeneity of lived experience.
Those looking for such answers have fundamentally missed her point that
existence cannot be predetermined, nor does it fit neatly into clear-cut boxes
or plans. Rather, Beauvoir points out that an individual’s lived situation is
“messy”, fluid, and various. Instead of providing definite answers to be fol-
lowed, she aims to open up thinking on sexuality by freeing it from the logic
underpinning the historically dominant essentialist-patriarchal conception
so that individuals can project themselves in their own way based on their
particular situation.
While those, such as Mathew Braddock, who demand determined “guid-
ance”119 for future action in the form of specific norms and principles to be

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 119

followed have found her thinking to be “vacuous”120 and frustrating, Beau-

voir’s point is that such a rule-based form of thinking subjugates our future
projections to predetermined rules that both foreclose concrete reality to a
predetermined schema, and, in so doing, permit each individual to abrogate
responsibility for deciding on how to live their particular concrete situation.
Beauvoir does not then aim to provide the final word on sexuality, but argues
that thinking on sexuality must be opened so as to prevent it from being fore-
stalled within one-dimensional forms.
Whatever the conceptual merits of such a position, it also has historical
importance, in so far as it has allowed her thinking to act as a stimulus for a
variety of positions, as evidence by the way that Beauvoir has been appropri-
ated by different sides in contemporary debates regarding (1) whether femi-
nist theory should tie embodiment to gender (rather than sexuality), and
(2) whether to reconfigure sexuality in terms of embodiment understood
not in terms of a monadic substance or signification, but as “an” immanent,
dynamic, relationally entwined, and open-ended material becoming.
These issues come fully to fore with Judith Butler’s claim that Beauvoir’s
insistence that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman”121 “distin-
guishes sex from gender and suggests that gender is an aspect of identity
gradually acquired”.122 The sex/gender division has, as Butler notes, “been
crucial to the long-standing feminist effort to debunk the claim that
anatomy is destiny”.123 We will also see (Chapter 7) that it is fundamen-
tal to Butler’s own theory of performative gender. Within the traditional
sex/gender division, “sex is understood to be the invariant, anatomically
distinct, and factic aspects of the female body, whereas gender is the cul-
tural meaning and form that that body acquires, the variant modes of that
body’s acculturation”.124 Butler explains that the power of this division
arises from the fact that it makes it “no longer possible to attribute the
values or social functions of women to biological necessity, and neither
can we refer meaningfully to natural or unnatural gendered behavior: all
gender is, by definition, unnatural”.125 Not only does the sex/gender divi-
sion undermine the notion of a fixed, determinate sex – after all, gender
is the more important term – but by decoupling sexuality from gender, “[t]he
presumption of a causal or mimetic relation between sex and gender is
undermined”126 for the simple reason that

[i]f being a woman is one cultural interpretation of being female, and if that
interpretation is in no way necessitated by being female, then it appears that
the female body is the arbitrary locus of the gender ‘woman’ and there is no
reason to preclude the possibility of that body becoming the locus of other
constructions of gender.127

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As a consequence, Butler reads Beauvoir as offering “a radical heteronomy

of natural bodies and constructed genders with the consequence that ‘being’
female and ‘being’ a woman are two very different sorts of being”.128
From this, Butler goes on to identify the prescriptive aspect of Beauvoir’s
thinking by first exploring the charge that Beauvoir’s dependence on the
notion of “transcendence” binds her to “the model of freedom currently
embodied by the masculine gender”,129 before, second, defending Beau-
voir against this charge by reading it through Hegel’s master–slave dialectic
“to show that, for Simone de Beauvoir, the masculine project of disem-
bodiment is self-deluding and, finally, unsatisfactory”.130 Instead, Butler
develops the logic of the constructivism inherent in Beauvoir’s notion of
“woman” to conclude that, because it involves a continuous process of
becoming, “woman” does not (have to) conform to any predetermined
models, logics, or universal categories. Indeed, Butler claims that, as a con-
struction, the way in which one exists gender can not only “be the place in
which the binary system restricting gender is itself subverted”,131 but also
“promises to proliferate into a multiple phenomenon for which new terms
must be found”.132
On Butler’s reading, then, the strength of Beauvoir’s approach is “the
radical challenge she delivers to the cultural status quo”,133 in so far as Beau-
voir undermines both any foreclosing of sexual expression and indeed any
determination to sexual expression in a way that opens up the possibilities
for sexual (gender) expression. The problem, however, is that it is not clear
that Beauvoir actually does this. Not only does Butler subsequently reject
their previous argument by criticising Beauvoir for continuing to implic-
itly depend upon a logic of patriarchy,134 but Butler’s claim that Beauvoir’s
female/woman division is a precursor of the sex/gender one inherent in
Butler’s gender theory has also been challenged.
Stella Sandford, for example, argues that Butler’s position is undermined
by Beauvoir’s discussion of biology, which, as we have seen, makes it clear
that “woman” is not simply a social construction, but must actually con-
tend with biological sex.135 Sandford’s point is that Butler’s privileging of
gender construction makes biology an effect of that construction, with the
consequence that, for Butler, there is no such thing as a “prior” biological
component within Beauvoir’s thinking. Sandford points out however that
Beauvoir does accept that there is a biological bedrock that demarcates the
female body. As such, Sandford charges that while Butler operates through
the biological/construction, nature/culture oppositions, Beauvoir’s account
undercuts these by offering a compatibilist account wherein, as Beauvoir
puts it, “the woman’s body is one of the essential elements of the situa-
tion she occupies in this world. But her body is not enough to define her;

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 121

it has a lived reality only as taken on by consciousness through actions and

within a society.”136 For this reason, Sandford concludes that “the notion
of ‘woman’ in The Second Sex is not simply translatable into the category
of ‘gender,’ indeed it cuts across or problematizes the traditional sex/gen-
der distinction”.137 It is, however, significant that although Sandford affirms
that “strictly speaking, there is no sex/gender distinction in The Second
Sex”,138 she also subsequently accepts that “the move from ‘woman’ to ‘gen-
der’ in feminist theory was an extraordinarily productive development of
Beauvoir’s work”,139 thereby confirming the important role that Beauvoir’s
thinking played in opening up the theoretical movement to gender.
While I will return to this movement and Butler’s thinking specifically
in Chapter 7, it is important to recognise that Beauvoir’s analysis was also
significant for the development of the new materialist reception of Butler’s
gender theory. I will (re)turn to this in Chapter 8, but, very schematically,
the new materialist critique argues that Butler’s gender theory reduces mate-
rial bodies to linguistic-social constructions and so fails to understand and
account for the material processes constitutive of the lived body. Rather
than turn to the constructionism of gender, it is necessary to examine how
the lived material body becomes from the queer processes inherent in
nature. Crucially, Beauvoir’s thinking on the female/woman division, in
combination with her affirmation of the becoming of the situated body,
has been identified as a precursor to this development. Ruth Groenhout, for
example, argues that, according to Beauvoir,

material embodiment is the very condition of freedom, what freedom can

mean for us occurs within the constraints of being a physical being, and that
physicality includes sex characteristics. Flesh and freedom are coextensive.
Human freedom and transcendence do not remove us from our material
existence. Material existence is the situation within which freedom and tran-
scendence are possible. Embodiment is simultaneously the ground and the
boundary of our freedom to act and become.140

In a similar vein, Sara Heinämaa argues against Butler’s reading of Beau-

voir to, instead, claim that Beauvoir offers a sophisticated account of the
concrete, lived, fluid, and situated body that cannot be captured by uni-
versalist terms such as “sex” or “gender”. Here, Beauvoir is taken to offer
an understanding of the body as it is manifested and experienced through
“the feminine and masculine styles of lived experience”.141 Although Heinä-
maa’s reading reaffirms Beauvoir’s links to the phenomenological tradition,
it also emphasises a fundamental point inherent in contemporary analyses
of the body: instead of being reduced to an inert substance opposed to the

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becoming inherent in the construction of its meaning, Beauvoir permits

a rethinking of sexuality and the body in terms of situatedness, fluidity,
and processes that undercuts both the substance and essentialist premises
and the nature/culture, mind/body, essentialism/constructivism oppo-
sitions, that have long defined Western thinking on sexuality.142 On this
reading, Beauvoir prefigures and justifies the need to turn away from gen-
der construction to return to a purely materialist explanation of sexuality
that places the body and processes of emergent materialisation as its site of
interrogation.

Conclusion
There are, of course, many other facets to Beauvoir’s thinking and, indeed,
its reception, but I have argued that her raising of and engagement with the
question “what is a woman?”143 offers a particularly innovative and important
contribution to the critique of the essentialist-patriarchal model that has long
dominated Western thinking on sexuality. Conceptually, she not only brings
to the fore the question of “woman” to combat the logic of patriarchy inher-
ent in Freud’s thinking and the affirmation of ontological neutrality consti-
tutive of the phenomenological analyses of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty,
but also emphasises the ways in which Western thinking has constructed
an abstract value schema to evaluate the worth and status of concrete, sexed
beings. Indeed, by explicitly recognising the all-pervasive role that the logic
of patriarchy plays in constructing the social and sexual roles of men and, in
particular, women, Beauvoir brings to our attention the limiting effects that
this logic has on the actions and possibilities of the latter.
Second, she explicitly calls into question the premises sustaining argu-
ments that justify the logic of patriarchy in terms of the inherent biologi-
cal inferiority of woman. Beauvoir does not deny the biological differences
between the sexes; she accepts them and so enters onto her opponent’s ter-
rain to show that, on their own terms, their arguments do not stand up
to scrutiny. Woman may, on average, be physically weaker than men, but
this is not determinate for her existence, which is fundamentally defined by
socio-cultural norms and values.
Third, by insisting that sexuality generally and “woman” specifically
are a constant socio-somatic-symbolic becoming, Beauvoir points to the
embedded “nature” of sexuality in a way that undercuts any notion of
clear-cut sexual divisions. That the body is tied to and expressed through
its situation means that it is inherently ambiguous, being both what it
appears to be and that which it does not. This ambiguity is a source of frus-
tration to those seeking clear-cut definitions, but it is perfectly in keeping

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 123

with Beauvoir’s existentialist claim that the lived body is fluid, malleable,
relational, and equivocal; any attempt to reduce sexuality to clear-cut defi-
nitions, a single ground, or simple determination will only ever offer, at
best, reductive analyses that fail to recognise and accept that opacity is
both the price to be paid for, and the necessary condition of, the transcen-
dence and freedom that prevents individuals from being pigeon-holed in
and limited to predetermined categories.
Finally, I have argued that Beauvoir’s affirmation of ambiguity has per-
mitted her thinking to remain relevant because her notion of sexuality-as-
ambiguous is sufficiently open to be capable of providing inspiration to a
variety of contemporary theoretical positions. Indeed, I briefly showed how
this has played out in relation to contemporary debates regarding the turn
to gender within feminist theory and the materialist queer response(s) to
that turn, both of which have been linked to different aspects of Beauvoir’s
thinking. Rather than seek to resolve this dispute, I purposefully left it open
to show that Beauvoir’s continuing relevance is perhaps best understood
not in the conclusions that she arrives at, but in terms of the ways in which
she works to undermine long-held assumptions to open up the space from
and through which sexuality can be rethought through a situated body
defined by open-ended becoming. Understood in this way, the ambiguity
inherent in her thinking on the question of “woman” becomes (and has
been) a continuing and positive resource for engaging with and challeng-
ing the essentialist-patriarchal paradigm that has long dominated Western
thinking on sexuality.
Unfortunately, however, such a conclusion was not immediately obvi-
ous to her contemporaries. Although The Second Sex was, upon publication
in France, an instant success, its fortunes ebbed rather quickly because of
phenomenology’s eclipse by structuralism in the 1950s. Rather than give
primordial importance to subjectivity, structuralism thought of subjectiv-
ity as an effect of social and linguistic structures. Beauvoir’s ties to and
dependence on the existential-phenomenological framework generally
and the primary role that she affords to subjectivity specifically, meant that
her work was quickly sidelined.144 Although her reputation would rise once
more, the continuing dominance of poststructuralism on feminist theory
in the 1970s and 1980s meant that this did not occur until the 1990s when
it was recuperated posthumously; Beauvoir having died in 1986. In the
meantime, through the work of Jacques Lacan, structuralism fused with
psychoanalytical theory to reinvigorate the latter in a way that would have
radical implications for future thinking on sexuality, and, indeed, influ-
ence how Beauvoir’s analysis would subsequently be evaluated. It is to this
that we now turn.

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Notes

1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-
Chevallier (London: Vintage, 2011).
2. This figure is quoted by Ingrid Galster, “‘The Limits of the Abject’: The Reception
of Le Deuxième Sexe in 1949”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by
Laura Hengehold and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 37–46
(p. 39).
3. Sandra Reineke, “The Intellectual and Social Context of The Second Sex”, in A
Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold and Nancy Bauer
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 28–36 (p. 28).
4. Ibid., p. 28.
5. Ibid., p. 28.
6. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 50.
7. Ibid., p. 51.
8. Ibid., p. 294n.
9. For a discussion of their relationship, see Hazel Rowley, Tête-à-Tête: The Tumul-
tuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (New York:
Harper, 2006).
10. For a general discussion of the intellectual relationship between Beauvoir and
Sartre, see Christine Daigle, “Unweaving the Threads of Influence: Beauvoir and
Sartre”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold and
Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 260–270. For reconstructive
accounts that argue that it was Beauvoir who was instrumental to the develop-
ment of Sartre’s thinking and not vice versa as has long been thought, see Karen
Vintges, “The Second Sex and Philosophy”, in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de
Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simmons (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1995), pp. 45–48; and Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook,
Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre (London: Continuum, 2008).
11. Michèle Le Doeuff, “Simone de Beauvoir: Falling into (Ambiguous) Line”, in
Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simmons
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 59–66;
Kimberley Hutchins, “Beauvoir and Hegel”, in A Companion to Simone de Beau-
voir, edited by Laura Hengehold and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2017), pp. 187–197; Zeynep Direk, “Simone de Beauvoir’s Relation to Hegel’s
Absolute”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold
and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 198–210.
12. Eva Gothlin, “Reading Simone de Beavoir with Martin Heidegger”, in The Cam-
bridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Claudia Card (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 45–65; Nancy Bauer, “Beauvoir’s
Heideggerian Ontology”, in The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays,
edited by Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2006), pp. 65–91.

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 125

13. Eleanor Holveck, “Can a Woman be a Philosopher? Reflections from a Beau-

voirian Housemaid”, in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by
Margaret A. Simmons (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1995), pp. 67–78; Sara Heinämaa, “Simone de Beauvoir’s Phenomenology of
Sexual Difference”, in The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays, edited
by Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006),
pp. 20–41.
14. Sonia Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir: Teaching Sartre about Freedom”, in Feminist
Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simmons (Univer-
sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 79–96; Kristina
Arp, “Beauvoir’s Concept of Bodily Alienation”, in Feminist Interpretations of
Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simmons (University Park, PA: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 161–178; Sara Heinämaa, “What is
a Woman?: Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference”,
Hypatia, vol. 12, n. 1, 1997, pp. 20–39; Jennifer McWeeny, “Beauvoir and Mer-
leau-Ponty”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold
and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 211–223.
15. Stella Sandford, “Beauvoir’s Transdisciplinarity: From Philosophy to Gender
Theory”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold and
Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 15–27 (p. 18).
16. Anna Alexander, “The Eclipse of Gender: Simone de Beauvoir and the Différance
of Translation”, Philosophy Today, vol. 41, n. 1, 1997, pp. 112–122 (p. 116).
17. Sandford, “Beauvoir’s Transdisciplinarity”, pp. 18–19.
18. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 5.
19. Ibid., p. 289.
20. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New
York: Open Road, 2018).
21. Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Second edi-
tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 169.
22. Proponents of the charge that Beauvoir depends upon and perpetuates the logic
of patriarchy include Céline T. Léon, “Beauvoir’s Woman: Eunuch or Male?”,
in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simmons
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 137–161;
and Nadine Changfoot, “Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second
Sex: Revisiting Masculinist Ontology”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 35, n.
4, 2009, pp. 391–410. For a defense of Beauvoir against this charge, see Tom
Grimwood, “Re-Reading The Second Sex’s ‘Simone de Beauvoir’”, British Jour-
nal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 16, n. 1, 2008, pp. 197–213; and Susan
Hekman, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Beginnings of the Feminine Subject”,
Feminist Theory, vol. 16, n. 2, 2015, pp. 137–151. In contrast to these positions,
Ulrika Björk (“Paradoxes of Femininity in the Philosophy of Simone de Beau-
voir”, Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 43, n. 1, 2010, pp. 39–60) notes the
ambiguity that marks Beauvoir’s thinking on this issue.

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23. Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”, Yale French
Studies, vol. 72, 1986, pp. 35–49; Heinämaa, “What is a Woman?” p. 32; Stella
Sandford, “Contingent Ontologies: Sex, Gender, and ‘Woman’ in Simone de
Beauvoir and Judith Butler”, Radical Philosophy, vol. 97, September/October,
1999, pp. 18–29; Alexander, “The Eclipse of Gender”, p. 117.
24. Sonia Kruks, “Gender and Subjectivity: Simone de Beauvoir and Contempo-
rary Feminism”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 18, n. 1,
1992, pp. 89–110; Ruth Groenhout, “Beauvoir and the Biological Body”, in A
Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold and Nancy Bauer
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 73–86; and Emily Anne Parker, “Becom-
ing Bodies”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Hengehold
and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 87–98.
25. Carol Ascher, “Simone de Beauvoir – Mother of Us All”, Social Text, vol. 6, n. 2,
1987, pp. 107–109.
26. Ursala Tidd, Simone de Beauvoir (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), p. 1.
27. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 3.
28. Ibid., p. 3.
29. Ibid., p. 4.
30. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
31. Ibid., p. 5.
32. Ibid., p. 6.
33. Ibid., p. 6.
34. Ibid., p. 7.
35. Ibid., p. 7.
36. Ibid., p. 7.
37. Ibid., p. 7.
38. Ibid., p. 7.
39. Ibid., p. 9.
40. Ibid., p. 9.
41. Ibid., p. 10.
42. Ibid., p. 10.
43. Ibid., p. 10.
44. Ibid., p. 10.
45. Ibid., p. 12.
46. Georg Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2010), p. 59.
47. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 13.
48. Ibid., p. 17.
49. Ibid., p. 17.
50. Ibid., p. 17.
51. Ibid., p. 17.
52. Ibid., p. 17.
53. Ibid., p. 17.
54. Ibid., p. 17.

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 127

55. Ibid., p. 7.
56. Ibid., p. 17.
57. Ibid., p. 8.
58. Ibid., p. 17.
59. Ibid., p. 21.
60. Ibid., p. 21.
61. Ibid., p. 23.
62. Ibid., pp. 24–25.
63. Ibid., p. 26.
64. Ibid., p. 26.
65. Ibid., p. 26.
66. Ibid., p. 38.
67. Ibid., p. 38.
68. Ibid., p. 38.
69. Ibid., p. 38.
70. Ibid., p. 38.
71. Ibid., p. 39.
72. Ibid., p. 39.
73. Ibid., p. 39.
74. Ibid., p. 39.
75. Ibid., p. 39.
76. Ibid., p. 40.
77. Ibid., p. 43.
78. Ibid., p. 42.
79. Ibid., p. 43.
80. Ibid., p. 43.
81. Ibid., p. 42.
82. For an overview of the debate, see Nancy Bauer, “Simone de Beauvoir on Moth-
erhood and Destiny”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura
Hengehold and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 146–159.
83. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 42.
84. Ibid., pp. 42–43.
85. Ibid., p. 43.
86. Adrian Mirvish, ‘Simone de Beauvoir’s Two Bodies and the Struggle for
Authenticity”, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, vol. 13, n. 1, 2003,
pp. 78–93 (pp. 79–80).
87. Kruks, “Gender and Subjectivity”, p. 92.
88. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 6–7.
89. Ibid., p. 139.
90. Simone de Beavoir, “Jean-Paul Sartre”, in Philosophical Writings, edited by Mary
Beth Marder (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 229–234 (p. 233).
91. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 44.
92. Ibid., p. 44.
93. Ibid., p. 47.

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94. Ibid., p. 48.

95. Ibid., p. 48.
96. Ibid., p. 48.
97. Ibid., p. 49.
98. Ibid., p. 45.
99. Ibid., p. 49.
100. Ibid., p. 49.
101. Ibid., p. 782.
102. Ibid., p. 782.
103. Ibid., p. 782.
104. Ibid., p. 739.
105. Ibid., p. 781.
106. Ibid., p. 782.
107. Léon, “Beauvoir’s Woman”, pp. 145–146.
108. Ibid., p. 146.
109. Ibid., p. 155.
110. Changfoot, “Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex”, p. 393.
111. Ibid., p. 393.
112. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 5–6; Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 49.
113. Grimwood, “Re-Reading The Second Sex’s ‘Simone de Beauvoir’”, p. 210.
114. Ibid., p. 210.
115. Ibid., p. 210.
116. Hekman, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Beginnings of the Feminine Subject”,
p. 141.
117. Ibid., p. 141.
118. Björk, “Paradoxes of Femininity in the Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir”, p. 49.
119. Matthew Braddock, “A Critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s Existential Ethics”,
Philosophy Today, vol. 51, n. 3, 2007, pp. 303–311.
120. Ibid., p. 308.
121. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 289.
122. Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”, p. 35.
123. Ibid., p. 35.
124. Ibid., p. 35.
125. Ibid., p. 35.
126. Ibid., p. 35.
127. Ibid., p. 35.
128. Ibid., p. 35.
129. Ibid., p. 43.
130. Ibid., p. 43. Very simply, Hegel’s master–slave dialectic explores the way in
which the logic of domination inherent in a master–slave relation is under-
mined by the experience of that form of relation. More specifically, as the
dialectic unfolds, the logic of domination reveals that the master, who takes
himself to be independent and primary in the relation, is actually – as master –
dependent upon the slave, who, as such, is revealed to be the master. The

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 Beauvoir and the Question of “Woman” / 129

point is that each position is defined relationally, rather than monadically,

and that for their relation to survive it must morph from one based on a logic
of domination to one based on mutual recognition. Butler discusses this in
Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 17–60. For an extended discussion
of Hegel’s thinking, especially as it relates to that of Sartre, see my Realizing
Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
131. Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”, p. 47.
132. Ibid., p. 47.
133. Ibid., p. 48.
134. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Second edition
(Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), Butler reverses their previous positive assess-
ment, explaining that “[d]espite my own previous efforts to argue the con-
trary, it appears that Beauvoir maintains the mind/body dualism, even as she
proposes a synthesis of those terms” (p. 16), with this being “symptomatic of
the very phallogocentrism that Beauvoir underestimates” (pp. 16–17). As a
consequence, Butler charges that Beauvoir’s thinking continues to implicitly
depend upon and so perpetuate the logic of patriarchy that it supposedly aims
to escape. Butler uses this assessment to justify their move away from ques-
tions of “sex” to those of “gender”.
135. Sandford, “Contingent Ontologies”, p. 21.
136. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 49.
137. Sandford, “Contingent Ontologies”, p. 21.
138. Sandford, “Beauvoir’s Transciplinarity”, p. 24.
139. Ibid., p. 24.
140. Groenhout, “Beauvoir and the Biological Body”, p. 77.
141. Heinämaa, “What is a Woman?”, p. 32.
142. See also, Parker, “Becoming Bodies”, pp. 95–96.
143. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 5.
144. Contemporary scholarship has started to re-engage with the structuralism–
Beauvoir relationship to challenge this oppositional understanding. See, for
example, Eva D. Bahovec, “Beauviour between Structuralism and ‘Aleatory
Materialism’”, in A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Laura Henge-
hold and Nancy Bauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 249–259.

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 C HAPTER 5

Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and

Sexual Difference

In France, the transition from the 1940s to the 1950s was marked not only
by a temporal change, but also a conceptual one wherein the phenome-
nological-existentialist framework that dominated the former was usurped
by structuralism. Whereas this alteration took place primarily through the
anthropological theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the linguistic theory of
Ferdinand de Saussure,1 it quickly spread and instantiated nothing short of
a revolution in philosophical thought. The idea that the individual subject
is foundational was replaced with a form of thinking that emphasised the
foundational role of linguistic structures. Put differently, philosophies of
consciousness were replaced by philosophies of the concept.2 In turn, this
was combined with a resurgence in interest in psychoanalysis, with Jacques
Lacan insisting in the famous 1953 essay “The Function and Field of Speech
and Language in Psychoanalysis” that

[w]e must . . . take up Freud’s work again starting with the Traumdeutung [The
Interpretation of Dreams] to remind ourselves that a dream has the structure
of a sentence or, rather, to keep to the letter of the work, of a rebus – that is,
a form of writing, of which children’s dreams are supposed to represent the
primordial ideography, and which reproduces, in adults’ dreams, the simul-
taneously phonetic and symbolic use of signifying elements found in the
hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt and in the characters still used in China.3

By affirming the intimate bond between language, manifested through sig-

nifiers, and the unconscious, Lacan’s return to Freud had radical implica-
tions for psychoanalytic theory and the understanding of sexuality.
The question of sexuality pervades Lacan’s writings and teachings
throughout the 1950s, with Seminar III,4 from 1955–1956, and a number of

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 131

texts – “The Signification of the Phallus”,5 “Guiding Remarks for a Conven-

tion on Female Sexuality”,6 and Seminar V7 – from 1958 being particularly
important. While multidimensional, these texts outline a conception of
sexuality from Lacan’s conception of the symbolic. This, however, requires
a word on Lacan’s project. According to Lacan, individual experience is
composed of three distinct but intertwined aspects: the imaginary, the
symbolic, and the real. While Lacan always insisted on their entwinement,
methodologically, he focused on them in different periods: from around
1936 to 1953, the emphasis is placed on the “imaginary”, which describes
the creation of an illusionary identity; while from the 1960s onwards, he
focuses on the “real” or that which resists symbolisation. The writings and
teachings of the 1950s concentrate on the symbolic, which describes and
is composed of the differential relations between signifiers that generate
meaning. Crucially, as Lacan explains elsewhere, “it is in the chain of sig-
nification that meaning insists, but . . . none of the chain’s elements consists
in the signification it can provide at that very moment. The notion of an
incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier thus comes to the fore.”8
Extrapolating from this schema, we find that the meaning of the sexes ema-
nates not from an “inner” essentialism or pre-existing monadism, but from
the relationship to the other, which, in turn, gains meaning from its rela-
tion to the first. As a consequence, the relationship and, indeed, the mean-
ing of each position is purely relational; there is no permanence to either
the relation or its aspects.
However, no sooner did Lacan outline this logic than he complicated
it by appearing to reintroduce a privileging of patriarchy. Despite insisting
that the relationship has no fixed foundation, he maintains that each posi-
tion is nevertheless orientated to and gains meaning from a “third” term:
the phallus. Whereas the “imaginary phallus”9 is tied to the pre-Oedipal
castration complex and designates a part-object that can be castrated, the
symbolic phallus is not an object or bodily organ but an empty signifier-
function that grounds the economy of signifiers to generate symbolic mean-
ing. While important in relation to the child’s psychic development, it is also
significant in relation to the issue of sexual difference because Lacan claims
that the masculine and feminine take different positions in relation to the
phallus: the former is constructed to “have” the phallus and so is the central
point from which signification emanates, whereas femininity is positioned
to “be” the phallus and so is removed from the “power” of the phallus all
the while perpetuating it through this removal. By virtue of not being the
phallus, woman looks outside herself – to the phallus – to gain meaning.
As such, her meaning is dependent upon and defined from the masculine
phallus; a conclusion that appears to reach its apogee in Seminar XX, where

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 132 / Questioning Sexuality

Lacan explains that “‘[w]oman’ (la) is a signifier, the crucial property (propre)
of which is that it is the only one that cannot signify anything, and this is
simply because it grounds woman’s status in the fact that she is not-whole.
That means we can’t talk about Woman (La femme).”10
Lacan’s symbolic account of the phallus therefore recognises that the
meaning of sexuality is relational and so undermines any form of sexual
essentialism but continues to define the feminine from the masculine per-
spective; a position that has meant that the reception of his thinking on
sexuality has been contested. Jacqueline Rose, for example, praises Lacan’s
analysis and argues that because it divorces the phallus from the penis, it
undermines the claim that the masculine perspective is the ahistoric ground
of meaning. Her position is premised on the argument that Lacan does not
so much affirm a patriarchal privileging as enter into the logic of patriarchy
to undermine it by showing its “internal” symbolic machinations. Given
that the phallus is a contingent, symbolic construction, “the phallus stands
at its own expense and any male privilege erected upon it is an impos-
ture”.11 By showing that the phallus is the empty signifier that orientates
meaning, Rose argues that Lacan subtly but definitively disrupts the notion
of a grounding masculinity upon which the logic of patriarchy depends.
Instead, Lacan’s argument points to the more fundamental question “as to
why that necessary symbolization and the privileged status of the phallus
appear as interdependent in the structuring and securing (never secure) of
human subjectivity”.12 In other words, he not only internally “deconstructs”
the logic of patriarchy but also brings to the fore the issue of whether the
symbolic relation does, in fact, need to be anchored by the phallus or an
anchoring principle generally.
For other commentators, however, Lacan’s account of the symbolic
phallus does not go far enough in combating the logic of patriarchy pre-
cisely because it continues to simply use the language of “phallus”. The
basic premise is that, regardless of the intention, the use of the linguistic
term “phallus” can only continue to affirm a privileged position for the
masculine. Judith Butler, for example, develops this conclusion across three
critical points. First, Lacan’s account continues to implicitly depend upon
and so (needlessly) perpetuates patriarchal structures because – despite his
insistence that the phallus is not attached to a biological sex but operates
as a symbolic function – the simple use of the term “phallus” always brings
the discussion back to the masculine to devalue the feminine perspective.13
Second, by structuring the discussion of the sexual difference in terms of
the binary opposition between “having” or “being” the phallus, Lacan’s dis-
cussion of sexual difference continues to implicitly affirm a logic of binary
sexual division that remains restrictively heteronormative, in so far as it
is limited to the heterosexual relation.14 Finally, Butler points out that if

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 133

sexuality is symbolically constructed and this construction is not based on

a priori principles then sexuality does not have to conform to the binary
heteronormative division that Lacan affirms.15
In response, a number of commentators have recently sought to recuper-
ate Lacan’s thinking on sexuality by downplaying his symbolic account of
sexuality – with its emphasis on the phallus – to instead focus on his later
works, where, as noted, the emphasis is placed on the real. Eve Watson,16 for
example, outlines Lacan’s phallic account of sexuality from the 1950s, as a
precursor to showing how it is extended, altered, and developed in his later
work on the real; Lorenzo Chiesa17 concentrates on the notion of jouissance
to show that Lacan uses the example of a number of feminine mystics to
offer a far more nuanced conception of the feminine–phallus relation than
is usually appreciated; Patricia Gherovici appeals to Lacan’s late notion of
“sinthome”18 – the bind linking the Lacanian notions of real, symbolic, and
imaginary – to suggest that, through it, “we can rethink sexual difference
without the notion of phallus”;19 and Alenka Zupančič argues that Lacan’s
discussion of the phallus does not point to the privileging of a “thing” but
the uncovering of “the missing link between the biological and the Symbolic
(or between nature and culture) as the generic point of sexuation”.20
Although I do not necessarily wish to reject these authors’ conclusions, I
also do not wish to simply repeat and affirm the implicit claim subtending
their line of interpretation which holds that Lacan’s later works correct his
earlier symbolic account and so reveal his “true” theory of sexuality. Instead,
this chapter is guided by the contention that different approaches to the
question of sexuality can be gleaned from Lacan’s writings.21 I take seriously
Lacan’s earlier, symbolic account of sexuality – taken from the writings and
teachings of the 1950s – not only because I wish to argue that these writings
are far more nuanced than is often appreciated, but also because Lacan’s
symbolic account of sexuality forms the basis from which much subsequent
(feminist) thought – such as that of Luce Irigaray (Chapter 6) and Judith But-
ler (Chapter 7) – develops itself by way of contrast. Concentrating on these
writings and teachings will allow me to reconsider an often-neglected aspect
of Lacan’s oeuvre and develop the historical narrative of this book. I start by
outlining Lacan’s analysis of the symbolic division of the sexes in Seminar III
and “The Signification of the Phallus” to argue that it undermines the notion
that the sexes are defined by a (biological) essentialism, but appears to open
him to the charge that this rejection is nevertheless premised on the affirma-
tion of a binary patriarchal opposition between a privileged “masculine”
and a dependent “feminine” position. In response, I appeal to comments
that he makes in Seminar V on the “paternal metaphor”22 to argue that the
symbolic law (both prior and subsequent to the resolution of the Oedipus
complex) is also transferred through the maternal function. This occurs prior

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 134 / Questioning Sexuality

to the resolution of the Oedipus complex, but, given Lacan’s reliance on a

logic of negative relationality – where A is A because it is not B, meaning that
“having” the phallus depends upon it being distinguished from the posi-
tion of “being” the phallus and vice versa – I argue that the resolution of the
Oedipus complex does not lead to the simple affirmation of the paternal law
absent the maternal; the paternal law continues to be logically related (and
so bound) to the maternal. While the acceptance of the symbolic law is often
understood to be underpinned by the simple adoption of the paternal law, it
is actually the acceptance of a law that is conditioned by a complex entwine-
ment of the maternal and paternal. This undermines the notion of a strict
opposition between the symbolic positions, which, in turn, prevents them
from joining together in a unity; a conclusion echoed in his later famous
claim that “[t]here’s no such thing as a sexual relationship”.23 From this, I
claim that Lacan’s comments on the “phallic” anchor point that orientates
the “two” positions is inherently fragile, with the consequence that far from
holding the positions together, it is chimeric, acting as the illusionary point
that generates the masquerade of masculine privilege. The phallus is not
a “thing” but an empty position; as such, it can be replaced, although the
anchoring function it fulfils must always remain. This undermines the neces-
sity of the logic of patriarchy, but continues, somewhat strangely, to affirm it
by virtue of, at least, positing the issue in terms of a privileging of the foun-
dational logic underpinning the phallic economy.
By way of conclusion, I note that Lacan would probably defend himself
by insisting that this conclusion emanates from concrete (clinical) analysis
– i.e. the discussion of the phallus mirrors the patriarchal structures found
in his society and from which is derived his theory – but because he is not
sufficiently clear regarding the continuing role of the phallus, it is not obvi-
ous whether (1) the phallus must remain, or (2) another principle fulfill-
ing the same role can take its place. As a consequence, Lacan’s symbolic
account undermines the essentialism underpinning the essentialist-patriar-
chal model of sexuality, but is ambiguous regarding the patriarchal aspect.
If (1), the logic of patriarchy continues; if (2), the argument moves away
from sexuality towards a meta-principle/debates regarding the structure of
language and specifically what function the anchoring principle fulfils and
what options can fill it; a movement that turns us away from the study of
sexuality per se to the structure(s) of language.

Lacan on the Symbolic Phallus

One of Lacan’s earliest discussions of sexuality occurs in Seminar III, given in
1955–1956, where, in lecture thirteen, he offers an analysis of the question

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 135

“What is a woman?”24 through an interpretation of the famous Dora case

in Freudian theory.25 Lacan uses a brief discussion of it to move the dis-
course from the question of hysteria to that of the asymmetrical ways that
the sexes enter into and resolve the Oedipus complex. Arguing that Freud
struggled to satisfactorily explain this dissymmetry because he located the
difference anatomically, Lacan insists that it must be explained “at the sym-
bolic level”.26 It is not the case that Lacan rejects biology, but that he thinks
that it is not capable of explaining the complexity of psychic life. Biology is,
to put it one way, merely the undifferentiated stuff from which the differ-
entiation of the symbolic world emanates from and, indeed, whose mean-
ing depends upon how the symbolic is structured. For this reason, Lacan
acknowledges that there is a biological difference between the sexes, but
in Seminar XIX dismisses it as merely “the small difference”27 before, in
Seminar XX, explaining that “[t]he body’s being (l’être du corps) is of course
sexed (sexué), but it is secondary, as they say”.28 Rather than explain sexu-
ality in naturalist or biological terms, it must be understood psychically,
which, for Lacan, means symbolically.
From this premise, Lacan makes the strong claim that “there is no sym-
bolization of woman’s sex as such”,29 before weakening it to accept that,
while there might be some symbolisation possible, “it doesn’t have the
same source or the same mode of access as the symbolization of man’s
sex”.30 The reason for this fundamental symbolic difference is that “the
phallus is a symbol to which there is no correspondent, no equivalent”.31
As a consequence, “one of the sexes is required to take the image of the
other sex as the basis of its identification”.32 Because masculinity is the phal-
lus by virtue of possessing the phallus, and indeed because there are only
two sexes, it is femininity that is marked by a lack of its own symbolic sta-
tus; it “only furnishes an absence where elsewhere there is a highly preva-
lent symbol”.33 Indeed, Lacan goes further, explaining that because “[t]he
female sex is characterized by an absence, a void, a hole . . . it happens to
be less desirable than is the male sex for what he has that is provocative”.34
Femininity therefore depends upon the other sex – masculinity – for its
significance and, based on its lack and dependence, is simply less desirable
than the masculine sex. Dora’s problem, according to Lacan, is that she
ignores this and by “wondering, What is a woman?, [attempts] to symbolize
the female organ as such”.35 Her inability to do so, brings her to realise that
there is nothing to symbolise and no way to do so. Instead, she identifies
“with the man, bearer of the penis, [who] for her on this occasion [is] a
means of approaching this definition that escapes her. She literally uses the
penis as an imaginary instrument for apprehending what she hasn’t suc-
ceeded in symbolizing.”36 When that does not turn out to be as she thought,

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 136 / Questioning Sexuality

the ground from which she signified herself shifts, with this bringing forth
her hysteria.
Regardless of whether this diagnosis of Dora is accurate or not,37 Lacan’s
comments on sexuality in Seminar III are important because they point, in
very schematic form, to a symbolic account of sexuality that rejects biologi-
cal essentialism and insists on a fundamental symbolic difference between
man and woman, all the while privileging the masculine position to think
femininity as an absence that is defined from its relation to the masculine
phallus. This logic and the positions contained therein are developed in far
more conceptual depth three years later in the short dense text “The Signi-
fication of the Phallus”.
Here, Lacan reiterates his famous return to Freud; this time, in relation
to the question of the role that the phallus-function plays within psycho-
analytic theory. While noting that Freud emphasises the important role
it plays in the castration and Oedipus complexes, Lacan claims that his
comments led to a number of unresolved problems including why a girl
ever considers herself to be castrated, the reason why both sexes identify
the mother with the phallus, why the discovery of the mother’s castration
is so clinically problematic, and, perhaps most important of all, Freud’s
exclusion “in both sexes [of] any instinctual mapping of the vagina as the
site of genital penetration until . . . the dissolution of the Oedipus com-
plex”.38 Having outlined Freud’s “ignorance”39 on these issues, Lacan briefly
criticises contemporary attempts, namely those of Helene Deutsch, Karen
Horney, and especially Ernst Jones, for having “los[t] their way to a greater
or lesser degree”.40
To start to rectify this, Lacan reiterates that the signifier is the key to any
analytic theory and practice.41 While noting that the theory of the signi-
fier in modern linguistics postdates Freud, Lacan claims that this notion
can only be fully understood through and from Freud’s thinking. Specifi-
cally, with the notion of the unconscious, “the signifier . . . becomes a new
dimension of the human condition in that it is not only man who speaks,
but in man and through man that it speaks”.42 Rather than think of the indi-
vidual in substantive terms or as a constituting ego, Lacan maintains that
the ego is an effect of the unconscious, which is structured like language. Far
from being the foundation of knowledge, the conscious ego is “grounded”
in the unconscious subject and, for this reason, is always “the ego of the
[unconscious] subject”.43 To truly comprehend the subject, therefore, we
must move away from the conscious ego to “[t]he true subject – that is, the
subject of the unconscious”.44
To understand why, it is necessary to have a basic knowledge of the
linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure and, in particular, his claim that

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 137

language is composed of signs. These are constituted by a signifier and signi-

fied that relate to one another in a particular way. As Lionel Bailly explains,
for Saussure,

the signifier (sound image/acoustic image) is not the material sound but the
hearer’s impression it makes on our senses. Also, the signified (concept) is
not the object (the chair in front of you) but the idea of the object (any chair –
the property of being a chair – of which an example may or may not be
before you at the time of speaking).45

Because the (immaterial) signifier represents an immaterial signified, Sau-

ssure holds that signs are immaterial. Lacan, in contrast, holds that “lan-
guage is not immaterial. It is a subtle body, but a body it is”.46 The object
designated by the signifier “chair” is not a chair apart from its signification
– apart from its signification it is simply an object – it becomes a “chair”
through being named as such.
Furthermore, Lacan accepts Saussure’s47 claim that meaning arises from
the relations between signifiers, but radicalises it by claiming that, if meaning
is dependent upon the movement between signifiers, they must take prece-
dence over that which is signified. Meaning is not generated from the move-
ment from signifier to signified, but is created from the constant and incessant
movement between signifiers. For this reason, “the empty spaces are as sig-
nifying as the full ones”.48 Indeed, Lacan defines the chain of signification as
“presence in absence and absence in presence”49: the (presented) signifiers
only attain meaning from the differences (= absence) between them:

the sun in so far as it is designated by a ring is valueless. It only has a value

in so far as this ring is placed in relation with other formalizations, which
constitute with it this symbolic whole within which it has its place, at the
centre of the world for example, or at the periphery, it doesn’t matter which.
The symbol only has value if it is organised in a world of symbols.50

As such, it is “in the chain of signifier that meaning insists, but . . . none of
the chain’s elements consists in the signification it can provide at that very
moment. The notion of an incessant sliding of the signified under the signi-
fier thus comes to the fore.”51 This constant sliding is contained by “the laws
of a closed order”,52 but even within that order signifiers continue to relate
to others in different ways so that meaning is constantly changing. For this
reason, “[e]verything that is language proceeds via a series of steps like those
of Achilles who never catches up to the tortoise – it aims at re-creating a full
sense which, however, it never achieves, which is always somewhere else”.53

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In relation to the subject, the constant sliding of the signifier “under” the
signified ensures that the subject is not a unified entity; “it” is defined by a
constant process of becoming wherein the signifying chain that subtends
the signified (name) undermines the latter to reproduce it. This is not how-
ever an act done by the subject to itself; the subject does not act to subvert
its own identity in a process of wilful becoming. Rather, “this division stems
from nothing other than . . . the play of signifiers”,54 which marks the very
structure of the unconscious from which the subject arises.
Importantly, Lacan claims that “the unconscious is structured like a lan-
guage”55 rather than by language. If it were structured by language it would
be defined by both a signifier and signified in the same way that language is:
there would be a chain of signification that led to a particular signification
of word. The unconscious, however, lacks signifieds; it is pure movement
across the signifying chain. “If there were signifieds as well, then the mean-
ing of any particular signifier for a [s]ubject would be quite rigid: a signifier
(and its emotional load) would remain immovable, attached forever to one
particular thing and not be transferable to another.”56 For this reason, Lacan
claims that to understand what the “subject” is requires an analysis of

the chain of materially unstable elements that constitutes language: effects

that are determined by the double play of combination and substitution in
the signifier, according to the two axes for generating the signified, meton-
ymy and metaphor; effects that are determinant in instituting the subject.57

That the subject is an effect of the chain of signifiers ties it intimately to the
differential relations and hence Other that defines that chain.58
It is here that the function of the phallus comes to the fore. As Lacan
explains: “In Freudian doctrine, the phallus is not a fantasy, if we are to view
fantasy as an imaginary effect. Nor is it such an object (part-, internal, good,
bad etc.) inasmuch as ‘object’ tends to gauge the reality involved in a rela-
tionship. Still less is it an organ – penis or clitoris – that it symbolizes.”59
Rather, “the phallus is a signifier . . . whose function . . . is destined to desig-
nate meaning effects as a whole, insofar as the signifier conditions them by
its presence as signifier”.60 Put simply, the phallus is the anchoring point for
the symbolic system, which supports and generates meaning for signifiers.
From here, Lacan reaffirms the notion that the subject is an effect of sig-
nifiers and, indeed, is only a signifier, before pointing to the relationship
between signifier and desire, with the latter resulting from the relationship
between need and the demand issued to satisfy that need. Through the
demand, the subject reveals not only what it desires but also its depen-

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 139

dence upon the Other, who can choose to satisfy or deny the subject’s
desire. In either case, the Other takes on a privileged role, with this seen
most clearly in “love”.61
Love, in this scenario, is not a “thing” freely given through a wilful act;
it is a consequence of the economy inherent in desire wherein the subject
desires that the other show the subject love by putting aside its own desire
to try to satisfy the subject’s demand. Of course, the subject’s desire can
never be satisfied; it is the lack that distinguishes need from demand, with
the consequence that it keeps returning to, in a sense, sustain the love rela-
tion. The relationship between love and desire is a crucial one for Lacan, but
in “The Signification of the Phallus” the discussion of it is severely under-
developed.62 It appears, however, that, rather than desire structuring and
sustaining “a sexual relationship”,63 for Lacan, it is love – defined by the
lack that binds the lack of social relations and the lack inherent in the desire
for the Other – that fulfils this role. Rather than focus on the Other as that
desired, love describes a structure developed in relation, and hence lack, to
the lack that identifies and distinguishes the object desired. Whereas desire
is focused on an object, to love is to sustain the structure of lack (the “in-
between”) that generates the desire of and for the Other.
Crucially, it is here that the question of the phallus takes on significance.
While the phallus does not explicitly appear, it structures and anchors the
subject’s desire as it is expressed through the demand for/to the Other. For
this reason, the emphasis can only ever be on the subject’s desire, although
such a focus implicitly depends upon and so reveals the subject’s relation
to the phallus. Lacan explains that “[t]hese relations revolve around a being
and a having”.64 To “have” the phallus is to be the signifier for the Other’s
desire; it is, in other words, to be the anchoring point for the Other. The
problem, of course, is that, strictly speaking, the subject that has the phallus
is a symbolic construction defined by the lack constitutive of the symbolic
and its relation to the Other who does not have the phallus and, for this
reason, is designated, somewhat paradoxically, as “being” the phallus. To
be the phallus is to be in a position that is desired without, somewhat para-
doxically, having that which is desired: the phallus.
Importantly, because the sexual difference is symbolically constructed
and so constituted by lack, the sexual relation is always based on a play
of mirrors: the position of having the phallus depends upon the desire of
the Other – the one who “is” the phallus – but the desire of the one who
is the phallus depends upon the one who has the phallus, which, as noted,
depends upon the desire of the one who is the phallus. There is no founda-
tion grounding this relation; it is one of pure relationality. This afounda-
tionality will be important to my argument that the phallic function cannot

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simply be reduced to a patriarchal privileging: if the position of having/

being the phallus is implicitly dependent on the other then it follows that
neither position can simply be privileged over the other in the way that
patriarchy demands.
However, rather than leave the relation as one of pure symbolic lack,
Lacan maintains that this lack is “covered” through the projection of “the
ideal or typical manifestations of each of the sexes’ behaviour, including
the act of copulation itself”.65 It is not clear if this is a universal claim or one
based on the behaviours that Lacan witnessed from his clinical sessions,
which were, of course, conducted from and within a particular patriarchal
society, but the basic point is that the symbolic phallus is covered over
with, sustained by, and associated with the illusion of an imaginary essen-
tial identity. As such, the symbolic relation (which is wholly constructed)
comes to be interpreted and understood through an imaginary essentialist
perspective imposed on it so that the positions – being and having – come
to be confined to a particular heteronormative logic: to have the phallus is
associated with and requires the adoption of typically (socially defined)
masculine characteristics, whereas the one who is the phallus is associated
with and requires the adoption of (socially defined) feminine mannerisms.
However, because the relation to the phallus is a symbolic construction,
Lacan recognises that, within actual relationships, this positioning is based
on playing the role of either sex, which ensures that a biological woman
can take the “masculine” position of having the phallus, while a biological
man can take up the “feminine” position of being the phallus. Nonethe-
less, he notes that for a woman to have the phallus requires that she “rejects
an essential part of femininity”;66 namely, the status of being the phallus.
This, however, generates a particularly problematic situation: on the
one hand, when woman has the phallus, she is the anchor for the Other’s
desire; but, at the same time, she “finds the signifier of her own desire in
the body of the person to whom her demand for love is addressed”.67 She
herself desires another and so is the phallus for another. This reiterates the
point that, because desire is conditioned by lack, even if the individual has
the phallus, his or her desire for the Other means that he or she always lacks
the phallus and so is the phallus. The basic idea behind this convoluted logic
is that, contrary to initial formulations, the being/having dichotomy is not a
zero-sum game; in an actual sexual relation, each position finds itself bound
to and defined by the Other so that the position of “having” the phallus is
actually (but implicitly), at the same time, a position of “being” the phallus
by virtue of the logic of negative relationality that underpins these positions.
Lacan claims, however, that men and women relate to this double bind –
being and having the phallus – differently: heterosexual women always

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 141

privilege “having” the phallus over “being” the phallus (and so affirm the
masculine over the feminine), with the consequence that they tend to privi-
lege a relationship of love, which it will be remembered is understood to
focus on the lack generating desire for that which is desired: the phallus.
Heterosexual males also privilege “having” the phallus over “being” the
phallus but privilege a relationship based on desire, understood as affirm-
ing the desiring of what one already has, i.e. the phallus.
The reason for this conclusion is underdeveloped, but how it is inter-
preted depends upon which hermeneutical strategy is adopted regarding
Lacan’s thinking on the sexes. A reading like Judith Butler’s is implicitly
underpinned by the argument that Lacan’s analysis is a “positive” one that
describes how the sexes relate to one another symbolically and so under-
stands that while the phallus is symbolically structured, the reaction to the
symbolic phallus is determined by the sex of the participants: men always
prefer to “have” the phallus and so, in a sense, have power over the Other.
As such, they privilege a relationship where the phallus is affirmed, and the
relationship is structured as desire for what the Other does not have: the
phallus. Women, in contrast, do not “have” the phallus, but desire to attain
that which has it, with the consequence that their desire is always orientated
to love in so far as they desire the relation with what they do not have. This
problematic essentialism comes further to the fore in Lacan’s comments on
homosexual males and females wherein the former, regardless of the object
of desire, continue to affirm the male privileging of “having” the phallus
with the consequence that a male homosexual relationship “is constituted
along the axis of desire”,68 while female homosexuality is marked by the
female privileging of being the phallus in a way that “strengthens the axis
of the demand for love”.69
If, however, we follow Jacqueline Rose, Alenka Zupancic, and Todd
McGowan in arguing that Lacan’s discussion of sexuality in “The Signification
of the Phallus” does not aim to offer a “positive” conception of sexuality per
se, but undertakes an immanent critique of the logic of patriarchy from the
perspective of the differential logic underpinning his symbolic account, then
we get a different conclusion wherein, rather than prescribing or lapsing back
into essentialist premises, Lacan is showing how such essentialist premises
continue to cling to, are imposed on, and/or operate despite being grounded
in differential relations.70
Lacan’s text is notoriously ambiguous regarding its purpose, but my
sympathies lie with this latter interpretation for two reasons. First, it better
accords with Lacan’s previous claim that the play of mirrors resulting from
the afoundationality of the differential symbolic relations subtending the
sexual relation is covered over with a projected identity.71 It is not the case

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that masculinity or femininity must mean “X”, but that to be considered

masculine/feminine (in a particular society) it must adopt certain charac-
teristics. Failure to do so prevents it from being considered (appropriately)
masculine or feminine. Rather than affirming an essentialist understanding
of the sexes, Lacan is showing that the lack of essentialism resulting from
the differential logic of the symbolic is covered over through the projection
of social ideals and mores that bring the sexes to foreclose themselves to
predefined modes of behaviour.
Second, this understanding better accords with Lacan’s recognition that
such divisions need to be “refined through a re-examination of the function
of the mask”72 – by which he means the illusion of sexual identity assumed
by each subject – inherent in sexual relations. Rather than simply describ-
ing the essential characteristics of both “masculinity” and “femininity”, the
mask distorts the symbolic relationality subtending the meaning of each so
that they appear to possess and be defined by that which they really do not:
essentialist identity traits. To understand how the logic of identity works
and, by extension, to undermine it, we need to better comprehend how the
mask works to distort the play of mirrors inherent in the sexual relation so
that it appears that each sex is defined in a singular essentialist manner.
Indeed, in another short text from 1958, “Guiding Remarks for a Con-
vention on Female Sexuality”, Lacan even wonders whether female sexu-
ality can, in fact, be understood through the phallic function.73 Affirming
the absence of a priori symbolic determinants, he notes that how “woman”
is conceived is not predetermined but is a consequence of each particular
symbolic relation. As such, while he had interpreted “woman” in a particu-
lar way, it is not necessarily the case that we need to tie “being” and “hav-
ing” the phallus to the masculine and feminine in the way that he does or,
indeed, employ those oppositions. In a certain reading, this endeavour is
pointed to in “The Signification of the Phallus”, but it becomes more explicit
in other texts; namely, Seminar V, written in the same year as “The Significa-
tion of the Phallus”, which undermines the notion that the sexes constitute
a binary opposition because they are defined in essentialist “purely” mascu-
line or feminine positions, and his later works, especially Seminar XX, where
the fragility of the relation between two positions is extensively engaged
with to show that there is no substantiality to it.

Symbolic Law and Sexual Division: From Binarity to

Entwinement
Seminar V was held in 1957–1958 under the title “Formations of the
Unconscious”. It is of particular interest to the current discussion because

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 143

a number of its lectures are orientated to the question of the Name-of-the-

Father74 and the maternal–paternal relation,75 which work at different, but
ultimately complementary, symbolic levels. Whereas the Name-of-the-
Father describes the Law that conditions symbolic relations – “This is what
I call the Name-of-the-Father, namely the symbolic father. It’s a term that
subsists at the level of signifiers and that, in the Other as the seat of the law,
represents the Other. This is the signifier that gives the law its support, that
promulgates the law. It is the Other in the Other”76 – the paternal metaphor
and phallus describe the way in which the infant relates to the Law. The for-
mer describes how the meaning of the Law changes as the child develops.
More specifically, it is tied to the triadic structure – child, mother, father – of
the Oedipus complex, although, technically speaking, it is not part of that
structure but “represents” a “dummy”77 fourth term that, while never pres-
ent, supports the other three and, indeed, the relation between them. The
paternal function is fundamentally “a metaphor”78 because it “is a signifier
that comes to take the place of another signifier”.79 More specifically, the
paternal metaphor describes the way in which the perception of the father
function changes as the child develops. Lacan notes, for example, that “[t]he
father’s function in the Oedipus complex is to be a signifier substituted for
the first signifier introduced into symbolization, the maternal signifier”.80
While it takes different forms, these all act as a metaphor for the symbolic
Law (= Name-of-the-Father). The (symbolic) phallus describes the empty
signifier from which the child who has passed into the symbolic anchors
all its symbolic relations. Importantly, the Name-of-the-Father, phallus,
and paternal metaphor are interrelated: the Name-of-the-Father generates
and depends upon the paternal metaphor and phallus to function whereas
the paternal metaphor and phallus are anchored in and generated from
the Name-of-the-Father. For this reason, Lacan’s discussion of the paternal
metaphor and Name-of-the-Father sheds light on the structure and function
of the phallus.
This is clearly seen from Lacan’s remarks on the relationship between
the paternal metaphor and phallus. During the Oedipus complex, the child
appears to move from its desire for the mother to recognise the Name-of-the-
Father. In so doing, the metaphor (and signifier) used to signify the Name-
of-the-Father alters from the mother to the father. In turn, the structure of
the anchoring point (the phallus) alters away from the mother (who is the
phallus) to the father (who has the phallus). With this, the child orientates
itself towards the position that has the phallus: the masculine. This appears
to support Butler’s claim that Lacan’s schema is inherently patriarchal: not
only are the terms that Lacan grounds his theory in related to the masculine
(Father, paternal, phallus), but the infant’s ability to use meaning depends

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upon the adoption of the Name-of-the-Father and the movement from the
maternal to the paternal so that rather than desire a signifier that “merely” is
the phallus, he desires one that actually has it.
However, Lacan muddies this substantially by pointing out that the place
and function of the symbolic phallus (and paternal metaphor) are far more
nuanced and unsettled, in so far as the maternal function is also always
an implicit “carrier” of the symbolic law. What this entails depends upon
whether the examination takes place prior or subsequent to the resolution
of the Oedipus complex, but the basic point in both is to complicate and
undermine any notion of a straightforward binary opposition between the
maternal and paternal. For example, the pre-Oedipal “state” is not based on
a straightforward mother–child relation absent the father; while the mother–
child relation is dominant, it is conditioned by the presence (through the
mother function) of the imaginary father, which is the symbolic father as it
is mediated through the actions of the mother who has entered the symbolic
and so adopted the paternal law, which she exhibits and transmits through
her actions and speech. The mother represents the (symbolic and imaginary)
father through her actions because she desires the phallus: “Everyone realizes
that many things depend on her relations with the father, especially when
. . . the father fails to play his role, as they say.”81 As such, the pre-Oedipal
mother–child relation is not absent the father. Through the mediation of the
mother, the father function takes on an imaginary importance to the child
who “has not yet made his entry”82 into the symbolic.
From this, it is tempting to conclude that Lacan affirms (1) a patriarchal
binary opposition between the mother and father, wherein the mother is the
phallus because she desires the male who has the phallus, with the conse-
quence that the mother is a mere vassal for the transmission of the paternal
symbolic law, and (2) a linear movement to the child’s psychic develop-
ment in which he moves from the desire for the mother to the acceptance of
the paternal symbolic law. Lacan, however, rejects such a simplistic binary
opposition and linear movement between the maternal and paternal func-
tions by appealing to the work of Melanie Klein to note that “[t]he further
back she goes on the imaginary plane, the further back she discovers – very
difficult to explain if we cling to a purely historical notion of the Oedipus
complex – the appearance of the paternal third term, and this is so from the
child’s earliest imaginary phases”.83 While the maternal function may be the
child’s first “historical” relationship, the mother is always implicitly tied to
the symbolic paternal law that exists in the background:

This something extra, which must be there, is precisely the existence behind
her of this entire symbolic order on which she depends, and which, since

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 145

it’s always there more or less, permits a degree of access to the object of her
desire, which is already such a specialized object and so marked with the
necessity the symbolic system institutes that in its prevalence it’s absolutely
unthinkable in any other way.84

This complicates the maternal function by ensuring that it is never “pure”,

but always located in and through the paternal function. As Lacan explains,
“it’s not so much a question of the personal relations between the father
and the mother, nor . . . simply of the person of the mother to the person of
the father, but of the mother with the father’s speech”.85
While a linear understanding of the resolution of the Oedipus complex
would hold that the father’s pre-Oedipal spectral appearance through the
mother morphs into an explicit affirmation of the paternal phallus once the
symbolic law is accepted to, in so doing, “clear-up” the messiness of the pre-
Oedipal maternal function by establishing a clear patriarchal binary oppo-
sition between the privileged paternal and downgraded maternal functions,
Lacan’s comments in Seminar V point to an alternative conclusion in which
the resolution of the Oedipus complex does not establish a straightforward
patriarchal binary opposition between the maternal and paternal functions
nor does it simply affirm the paternal over the maternal. Whereas in the
pre-Oedipal mother–child relation, the father appears spectrally through
the mother, Lacan makes it clear that this continues to occur once the sym-
bolic law is accepted. He gives the example of little Hans, “where it’s the
mother who says ‘Put it away, you don’t do that.’ In general, it’s most often
the mother who says, ‘If you keep on doing that, we will call the doctor who
will cut it off.’ It’s therefore correct to point out that the father, as he who
prohibits at the level of the real drive, isn’t so essential.”86
There are, at least, two key issues with this statement. First, it demon-
strates that far from simply substituting the father for the mother, the reso-
lution of the Oedipus complex continues to be structured around, albeit in
different ways, the complex entwinement of the mother, child, and father
triad. There is no straightforward movement from a pre-Oedipal mother–
child relation to a post-Oedipal father–child one; the third (whether mother
or father) always intervenes to disrupt any linearity to the movement or
straightforward affirmation of the maternal (as in the pre-Oedipal stage) or
paternal (once the Oedipus complex has reached resolution).
Second, Lacan makes the claim that the symbolic father “isn’t so essen-
tial”87 to the transmission of the symbolic law. Rather, the maternal func-
tion is the one that often has the crucial role in transmitting it. This can be
understood in, at least, two ways, in so far as it can be read as (1) reducing
the maternal function to a vassal of the paternal one thereby reinforcing

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 146 / Questioning Sexuality

the claim that the maternal “merely” is the phallus because she depends
upon the paternal who has the phallus; this is the reading upon which But-
ler bases their critique; or (as I maintain) (2) suggesting that, because the
maternal function speaks the symbolic law of the father function, she, in
a very strong sense, becomes mixed with the father function. Rather than
simply being the phallus, she actually comes to have and be the phallus by
virtue of the crossing that occurs when the maternal transmits the Name-of-
the-Father through her actions and speech.
This, in turn, depends upon two sub-arguments. First, the phallus and
paternal metaphor are empty and so can be constructed in a myriad of dif-
ferent ways, with the consequence that they can take on different meanings.
Second, that neither the maternal or paternal functions are pure; rather, hav-
ing or being the phallus is always tied to the other by virtue of the negative
relationality that defines the logic of the symbolic order wherein A only is
A by virtue of its distinction from non-A: “having” the phallus implicitly
depends upon being distinguished from the position of “being” the phallus,
which, in turn, depends upon its distinction from the position of “having”
the phallus. Instead of being a one-off event, this distinction between being
and having the phallus is diachronic, with the consequence that both posi-
tions are always returned to the other and so exist in a relation of entwine-
ment even as this logical entwinement is a condition of their conceptual
distinction. Whereas Butler88 maintains that the maternal and paternal func-
tions are engaged in an endless comedy where each tries, but fails, to be the
other; the comedy actually results when each tries to maintain the binary
opposition that pits the pure maternal against the pure paternal and fails to
recognise and accept the implicit entwinement of both. Lacan’s point is that
because sexual positions are relational, they are coextensive, entwined, and
always impure. This undermines the notion of a strict opposition between
the symbolic positions, which, in turn, prevents them from joining together
in a unity; a conclusion summed up nicely by his later famous claim that
“[t]here’s no such thing as a sexual relationship”.89 The logic of binarism,
upon which patriarchy depends, simply fails to appreciate this, instead
imposing “pure” categories that distort the complexity of the positions and,
indeed, the relation itself.

Conclusion
There is, of course, far more to Lacan’s thinking on sexuality – for example,
and as noted, he returns to discuss the sexual difference in Seminar XIX
and the sexual relation in Seminar XX – but reconsidering his earlier (sym-
bolically focused) writings from the 1950s shows that, far from simply

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 147

discriminating against femininity to privilege the masculine phallus,

Lacan’s thinking on sexuality is multidimensional, complicated, and open-
ended. At no point does it resolve itself into a fixed state, nor was it meant
to. Rather, in line with the dynamism inherent in his notion of the sym-
bolic, sexuality is thought from constantly moving differential symbolic
relations. To show this, I have moved through a lot of material within
Lacan’s oeuvre and by necessity have been forced to downplay the signifi-
cant alterations that take place within his schema(s). Such an approach
has however allowed me to show that the question of sexuality is a near
constant one for him and that he offers a multifaceted and highly origi-
nal rethinking of it. By insisting that sexuality is not defined by biology
or a body part, but is a position taken in relation to a privileged, albeit
ultimately empty, point in the symbolic order (= phallus), he continues
the rejection of sexual essentialism found in the thinkers engaged with in
previous chapters. He does however radicalise their thinking by making
sexuality a fundamentally symbolic position conditioned by ever-changing
differential relations. This implies that sexual positions are never strictly
dual: each position depends upon and is tied to the other, which reveals
their hybrid “nature” and shows that sexuality does not necessarily have
to be foreclosed within predefined roles or binary logic. If they are held to
have a definitive role or nature or be structured within a binary division, it
is as a consequence of a symbolic system that, by definition, can be altered.
The fundamental problem with his analysis, however, relates to the role
that the phallus plays within the symbolic order. While I have argued that
the phallus is an empty signifier that acts as the anchor point of the rela-
tionship between the “two” positions, we saw that the differential relations
subtending each position mean that the bind that ties them is inherently
fragile and illusionary. Whereas this, once again, opens up the configura-
tions that a sexual relationship may take, it does so by actually dissolving
the bind between the “two” positions in the relationship and, by extension,
the “two” positions themselves, which it will be remembered only are by
virtue of the relationship between them. On the one hand, Amy Holly-
wood notes that, as a consequence, Lacan’s schema “refuse[s] the claims to
mastery and wholeness on which male-dominant culture, society, and their
unconscious rest”.90 But, on the other hand, if the relationship is constantly
altering and nothing but an illusionary chimera, it is unclear how the sym-
bolic anchor point operates to bind the positions together.
A Lacanian response might be that this is the challenge posed by Lacan’s
symbolic account of sexuality; rather than expect fixed and definite answers,
it opens up a problematised field wherein “relationality” must be thought as
being conditioned by a necessary mirage that has to be constantly rethought.

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This undermines the necessity of the logic of patriarchy, but continues, some-
what strangely, to affirm it by virtue of, at least, positing the issue in terms of
the foundational logic tied to the phallic economy. Why the phallus contin-
ues to be privileged despite there being no justification for such privileging is
where, according to Lacan, the clinic enters the scene, but, from a philosophical
perspective, the emptying out that his thinking on sexuality entails causes
consternation. It appears to undermine the sexual difference, while insist-
ing that symbolic regimes require an anchoring point which means that it is
not obvious what happens to the phallus function from this emptying out:
Does (1) the phallus necessarily remain as an empty master-signifier, or (2)
another principle that fulfils the same role take its place? If (1), the logic of
patriarchy continues; if (2), not only does this risk re-instantiating the logic of
the phallus under a different name, but it also moves the terms of the debate
away from sexuality towards an analysis of the structure of language and spe-
cifically to the issue regarding the function that the anchoring principle fulfils
and the forms it can take; a movement that risks simply downgrading the
feminine perspective once again and/or turns us away from the study of sexu-
ality per se to that of the structure(s) of language.
With regards to the essentialist-patriarchal model, therefore, Lacan’s
grounding of sexuality in differential symbolic relations is strong at under-
mining the essentialist premise, but weak – based on the ambiguity inher-
ent in it – regarding the patriarchal aspect. This is, as noted, a pattern that
has been repeated throughout many of the analyses examined in previous
chapters. To correct it, post-Lacanian thinking turned its attention more
forcibly to the patriarchal premise; a move that also brings forth various
challenges to the emphasis that Lacan places on the symbolic. To start to
outline what this entails, the next chapter turns to Luce Irigaray’s analysis
of the elusive but totalising manner in which the logic of patriarchy has
operated historically within Western thought and her subsequent attempt
to overcome it through a rethinking of sexual difference.

Notes
1. Good critical overviews of their respective theories are found in Maurice Gode-
lier, Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of his Thought (London: Verso, 2018);
and David Holdcroft, Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008).
2. For an excellent discussion of the historical development of and conceptual
implications inherent in this movement, see Knox Peden, Spinoza contra Phenom-
enology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2014).

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 149

3. Jacques Lacan, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanal-
ysis”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell
Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 197–268 (p. 221).
4. Jacques Lacan, Seminar III: The Psychoses, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Dennis Porter (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), pp. 173–182.
5. Jacques Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in
collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton,
2006), pp. 575–584.
6. Jacques Lacan, “Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality”, in
Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 610–620.
7. Jacques Lacan, Seminar V: Formations of the Unconscious, edited by Jacques-Alain
Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
8. Jacques Lacan, “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since
Freud”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell
Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 412–441 (p. 419).
9. Lacan, Seminar III, p. 319.
10. Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowl-
edge, 1972–1973, edited by Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 73.
11. Jacqueline Rose, “Introduction – II”, in Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the
école freudienne, edited by Juliett Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (London: Macmillan,
1982), pp. 27–58 (p. 44).
12. Ibid., p. 56.
13. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1993), pp. 42, 51.
14. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Second edi-
tion (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), p. 74.
15. Ibid., p. 67.
16. Eve Watson, “Some Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality”,
in Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From “Signification of the Phallus” to “Metaphor of the
Subject”, edited by Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook, and Calum Neill (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1999), pp. 66–91.
17. Lorenzo Chiesa, The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2016), pp. 1–6.
18. Jacques Lacan, Seminar XXIII: The Sintome, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
A. R. Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2016), p. 3.
19. Patricia Gherovici, Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual
Difference (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), p. 8.
20. Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
2008), p. 207.
21. Although I do not discuss it here, this feeds into the claim that Lacan’s conception
of the body is multiple. See Emma Ingala, “Not just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality”,
in Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics,

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Politics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021),
pp. 143–159.
22. Lacan, Seminar V, pp. 180–196.
23. Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 144.
24. Lacan, Seminar III, p. 173–182.
25. Very schematically, the Dora case describes a young woman suffering from a
variety of physical ailments. Brought to Freud by her father (who had previ-
ously been treated by Freud), Freud theorises that her hysteria stems from psy-
chological trauma or problems in the patient’s sexual life. To explain this, Freud
notes that Dora was particularly close to her father, who, having moved to a
new town to treat her tuberculosis, became friends with a couple: Herr and
Frau K. Dora became close to Herr K, but their relationship cooled after she
alleged that he made an indecent proposal to her on one of their walks and,
indeed, on one occasion kissed her by surprise. Dora was disgusted by this act
and told her father. Herr K denied the allegations and her father believed him.
Furthermore, when Dora demanded that her father end the relationship with
Herr and Frau K, her father ignored her, namely because he felt indebted to Frau
K for helping him after he was sick. As a consequence, Dora became resentful
of her father’s relationship with Frau K, which Dora suspected of being a love
affair. The case has generated much attention, not only because of its clinical
importance – including its unsuccessful conclusion when Dora ended treat-
ment – but also because it highlights the complex interplay between different
social relationships and their effect on psychic life. For a detailed and multidi-
mensional discussion of the case, see the essays collected in Daniela Finzi and
Herman Westerink (eds), Dora, Hysteria, and Gender: Reconsidering Freud’s Case
Study (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2018).
26. Lacan, Seminar III, p. 176.
27. Jacques Lacan, Seminar XIX: . . . Or Worse, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Adrian Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), p. 5.
28. Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 5.
29. Lacan, Seminar III, p. 176.
30. Ibid., p. 176.
31. Ibid., p. 176.
32. Ibid., p. 176.
33. Ibid., p. 176.
34. Ibid., p. 176.
35. Ibid., p. 178.
36. Ibid., p. 178.
37. Lacan’s comments on the Dora case in Seminar III are very brief. A fuller engage-
ment is found in the earlier 1951 paper titled “Presentation and Transference”,
in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 176–185. For an overview of this paper
and, indeed, Lacan’s engagement with the Dora case, see Patricia Gherovici,
“Where have the Hysterics Gone?: Lacan’s Reinvention of Hysteria”, English
Studies in Canada, vol. 40, n. 1, 2014, pp. 47–70.

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 151

38. Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, p. 576.

39. Ibid., p. 576.
40. Ibid., p. 577.
41. Ibid., p. 578.
42. Ibid., p. 578.
43. Jacques Lacan, Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, edited by Jacques-Alain
Miller, trans. John Forrester (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 62.
44. Jacques Lacan, “Introduction to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s
‘Verneinung’”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink
and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 308–317 (p. 310).
45. Lionel Bailly, Lacan (London: OneWorld, 2009), p. 43.
46. Lacan, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis”,
p. 248. On Lacan’s materialism, see Gavin Rae, “The ‘New Materialisms’ of Jacques
Lacan and Judith Butler”, Philosophy Today, vol. 65, n. 3, 2021, pp. 655–672.
47. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, edited by Charles Bally,
Albert Sechehaye, Albert Riedlinger, trans. Roy Harris (Chicago, IL: Open Court,
1986), p. 118.
48. Jacques Lacan, “Response to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s ‘Vernein-
ung’”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell
Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 318–333 (p. 327).
49. Jacques Lacan, Seminar II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psy-
choanalysis, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 38.
50. Lacan, Seminar I, p. 225.
51. Lacan, “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since Freud”,
p. 419.
52. Ibid., p. 418.
53. Lacan, Seminar V, p. 92.
54. Jacques Lacan, “Position of the Unconscious”, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in
collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton,
2006), pp. 703–721 (p. 712).
55. Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 15.
56. Bailly, Lacan, p. 48.
57. Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, p. 579.
58. Lacan explicitly distinguishes between “two others, at least two – an other with
a capital O, and an other with a small o, which is the ego. In the function of
speech, we are concerned with the Other” (Lacan, Seminar II, p. 236). In other
words, the other refers to a particular ego-other, whereas the Other refers to the
differential relations inherent in language, discourse, norms, and everything
that Lacan calls the symbolic order.
59. Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, p. 579.
60. Ibid., p. 579.
61. Ibid., p. 580.
62. The heterogeneity of his comments on the topic mean that Lacan’s notion of
“love” is not easily summarised. Indeed, Bruce Fink explains that that there “is,

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in my view, no singular theory of love to be found in Freud’s work or in Lacan’s

work: there are only multiple attempts to grapple with it at different points in
their theoretical development” (Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’s Semi-
nar VIII, Transference [Cambridge: Polity, 2015], p. 34). For example, the most
well-known of Lacan’s definitions is found in Seminar VIII where he explains
that “love is to give what one does not have” (Jacques Lacan, Seminar VIII:
Transference, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink [Cambridge:
Polity, 2015], p. 34). Rather than permitting a simple or singular explanation,
Fink identifies at least three ways in which it can be interpreted. First, “love” is
getting from the other that which it is not easy for them to give: “Giving what
you have is easy – anyone can do it. Giving what you do not have is far more
meaningful” (Fink, Lacan on Love, p. 54). By struggling to give what you do not
have, others are able to “see” the significance that they have for you. Second,
Finks suggests that it can also mean that love is defined by the acceptance and
admittance that one does not have something that the other is taken to have,
with the consequence that the other is needed to “fulfil” it. To admit love is then
to ask the other to both care for and take care of that which you do not perceive
yourself to have (ibid., p. 54). Third, Fink claims another meaning arises if we
treat “love” as a noun rather than a verb and link it to the epistemological igno-
rance of the participants as to what binds each to the other: the lover does not
know what he/she desires in the beloved, who in turn does not know what his/
her lover wants (ibid., pp. 55–56). The basic idea is that at the “heart” of love
is “something” that is fundamental to the functioning of the economy of the
relation but that can never be captured symbolically to explain why we are in
love or even what brings us to love the other. This ensures that love is defined
by a “comical feeling” (Lacan, Seminar VIII, p. 33) wherein the participants tie
themselves to the other without knowing why they do so. It also means that,
rather than being transparent, love is defined by a mysterious and unidentifi-
able unknowable; a conclusion that ties into and affirms the importance that
Lacan attributes to the real within symbolic relations and, by extension, human
existence.
63. Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, p. 580.
64. Ibid., p. 582.
65. Ibid., p. 582.
66. Ibid., p. 583.
67. Ibid., p. 583.
68. Ibid., p. 583.
69. Ibid., p. 583.
70. Rose, “Introduction – II”, p. 44; Zupančič, The Odd One In, p. 207; Todd
McGowan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, in Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From
“Signification of the Phallus” to “Metaphor of the Subject”, edited by Stijn Vanheule,
Derek Hook, and Calum Neill (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), pp. 1–20.
71. Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus”, p. 582.
72. Ibid., p. 583.

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 Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference / 153

73. Lacan, “Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality”, p. 613.

74. Lacan, Seminar V, pp. 129–180.
75. Ibid., pp. 180–196.
76. Ibid., p. 132.
77. Ibid., p. 143.
78. Ibid., p. 158.
79. Ibid., p. 158.
80. Ibid., p. 159.
81. Ibid., p. 174.
82. Ibid., p. 164.
83. Ibid., p. 149.
84. Ibid., p. 166.
85. Ibid., p. 174.
86. Ibid., p. 156.
87. Ibid., p. 156.
88. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 77.
89. Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 144.
90. Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstacy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands
of History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 16–17.

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 C HAPTER 6

Irigaray on Sexual Difference: Jamming the

Patriarchal Machine

Lacan’s return to Freud and the subsequent conceptual developments it

spawned reinvigorated psychoanalytic accounts of sexuality, while altera-
tions within Lacan’s conceptual schema, namely the growing emphasis he
placed on the unknowable real within the symbolic realm, contributed to the
movement from structuralism to poststructuralism that occurred in France in
the 1960s.1 Very simply, the poststructuralist position rejected what was per-
ceived to be structuralism’s continuing dependence on ahistoric foundational
structures and/or symmetrical binary relations. Whereas structuralist thought
recognised the importance of relationality to the generation of meaning, post-
structuralist thinkers argued that this approach continued to depend upon
a restricted economy wherein two positions were defined relationally.2 As a
consequence, structuralism undermined the essentialist premises upon which
traditional metaphysics had tended to depend, but was held to continue to
implicitly depend upon and emphasise a closed totality that, in so doing,
affirmed the importance that traditional metaphysics placed on unity, sin-
gularity, and sameness. The key lesson learnt was that the logic of essential-
ism (= one = totality = foundations) was a subtle and conniving opponent;
while it may be explicitly rejected, it can all too easily regroup to find expres-
sion implicitly. As a consequence, poststructuralists argued – in heterogeneous
ways – that it was not only important to reject a foundational metaphysical
unity or identity; it was also necessary to be ever vigilant to foreclose the
implicit recuperation of unity or identity within a closed system of thought.
This led to the affirmation of the “foundational” importance of difference,
asymmetric relations, heterogeneity, and open-ended becoming; a reorienta-
tion that had significant important for the issue of sexuality.3
We see this alteration if we turn to Jacques Lacan’s late seminars from
1971–1973 on the question of (female) sexuality, which, on first appearance,

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 155

seem to entail a significant departure from his earlier work on the topic
from the 1950s.4 While we saw in the previous chapter that his earlier work
insists that sexual positions are defined from their orientation to the phal-
lus and so depends upon an anchoring principle to give meaning to each
sexual position – one that is necessarily restrictive – his later work on the
topic focuses, to a much greater degree, on the relationality – or, as Lacan
calls it, the “not-all”,5 which, for the sake of clarity, we may designate as
the “between-ness” – inherent in sexual positions. Contemporary Lacanian
scholarship has focused on this later work to claim that it severs the deter-
mining role that Lacan had previously given to the phallus to, in so doing,
open up sexuality to heterogeneous forms.6
The problem with this line of critique is that it ignores the extent to
which Lacan’s later work continues to give an important role to the logic
of the phallus. For example, he famously claims that “[t]here’s no such
thing as Woman, Woman with a capital W indicating the universal”.7 On
first reading, this appears to indicate that Lacan is simply affirming that
individual women cannot be recuperated into a universal essence defining
“Woman-as-such”. He would then be rejecting the essentialist claim that
all women are defined by a universal essence to, instead, ask that each par-
ticular woman be studied in her sexual particularity. However, as we read
on, we see that this is not the case: the reason why women “cannot signify
anything”8 is not because there is no universal per se, but because she lacks
the phallus;9 a conclusion that returns Lacan to his earlier privileging of the
phallus and the degradation of female sexuality to secondary status.
To correct this, feminist poststructuralist theory turned more forcibly
to question the logic of the phallus and, by extension, patriarchy that was
held to underpin Lacan’s thinking to argue that a radical rethinking of sexu-
ality was needed for the differences between the sexes to be recognised,
respected, and thought. Luce Irigarary’s work on sexual difference – a topic
she calls “one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our
age”10 – is particularly important in this regard. While trained in Lacanian
psychoanalysis, Irigaray calls attention to the continuing role that the logic
of patriarchy plays within Freudian, and by extension Lacanian, psycho-
analysis. By showing that Freud’s discourse of sexuality is infected by and
depends upon a privileging of the masculine phallus, Irigaray claims that
it is incapable of adequately thinking woman and so either ignores her or
reduces her to the masculine: “The enigma that is woman will therefore con-
stitute the target, the object, the stake, of a masculine discourse, of a debate
among men, which would not consult her, would not concern her. Which,
ultimately, she is not supposed to know anything about.”11 Ironically, the
Lacanian reaction to Irigaray’s critique meant that she was removed from

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the faculty at the University of Vincennes.12 While personally difficult, it was

a pyrrhic victory of sorts because it demonstrated her theoretical point that
Freudian-Lacanian theory was not willing to listen to a (female) perspective
that departed from the centrality given therein to the phallus or that aimed
to discuss “woman” in alternative (non-masculine) terms.
Importantly, Irigaray does not simply content herself with a critique of
Freudian psychoanalysis, but expands her critical stance by claiming that
the masculine bias inherent in Freudian psychoanalysis is but the latest
manifestation of the logic of patriarchy that has defined Western philoso-
phy and culture: “We can assume that any theory of the subject has always
been appropriated by the ‘masculine.’”13 To develop and defend this, she
undertakes sweeping and extended engagements with the history of West-
ern philosophy, showing that some of its major figures – Plato, Descartes,
Kant, Hegel, and Freud in Speculum of the Other Woman; Nietzsche in Marine
Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche;14 Heidegger in The Forgetting of Air in Martin
Heidegger;15 Aristotle, Spinoza, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty in An Ethics of
Sexual Difference – are guilty of perpetuating a system of representation that
is incapable of doing justice to the difference of women.16 From this, she
makes the strong claim that the Western system of representation has been
unable to accurately describe sexual difference and so has instead affirmed
a foundational unity that ignores “femininity” or “hom(m)osexualiz[es]
her”17 by reducing her to the “masculine” (= foundation = one = same).
Irigaray’s guiding contention, one that will bring her into the political
realm, is not that the sexual difference per se must be overcome, but that the
patriarchal form of sexual difference must be overcome to re-instantiate the
“proper” form of sexual difference, wherein the differences between sexu-
alities are respected on their own terms.18 With this, Irigaray opens up a
new perspective within feminist theory, one that rejects Beauvoir’s earlier
emphasis on equality, which is held to make the “theoretical and practical
error”19 of continuing to think “women” in relation to her otherness from
“men” and, in so doing, reduce “woman” to the vassal status of the “mascu-
line”. Rather than affirm “woman’s” equality with “men”, Irigaray demands
that “woman” be thought from “her” difference from “men”.20
This also brings to light a fundamental distinction between phenomeno-
logical and poststructuralist approaches to sexuality. Whereas I previously
(Chapters 2 and 3) pointed out that a key aspect of Heidegger’s and Merleau-
Ponty’s phenomenological accounts of sexuality is their affirmation of an
originary neutrality that allows sexuality to be revealed through experience
rather than through the imposition of conceptual presuppositions or logic,
Irigaray interprets their comments on an originary neutrality as entailing the
affirmation of sexual neutrality per se. Her poststructuralist account rejects

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 157

this to affirm the fundamental importance of sexual difference: “The human

race is divided into two genres which ensure its production and reproduc-
tion.”21 Based on this presupposition, she claims that suppressing this dis-
tinction in the name of “neutrality” would require the elimination of half
the human race and so “invite a genocide more radical than any destruction
that has ever existed in History”.22
In other words, for Irigaray, the affirmation of neutrality does not, in
fact, lead to a “neutral” stance. Because she maintains a binary masculine/
feminine binary opposition and holds that thought is conditioned by that
division, she claims that any investigation located within contemporary
Western culture can only ever be taken from the perspective of the “mas-
culine” or “feminine”, which, given her analysis of the history of Western
systems of representation, Irigaray takes to mean the affirmation of the
“masculine” over the “feminine” and, indeed, the collapsing of the later
into the former. As a consequence, Irigaray claims that Heidegger’s and
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approaches actually produce a mascu-
line-defined analysis of sexuality that is unable to account for the specific-
ity of female sexuality. To avoid this, Irigaray’s poststructuralist account of
sexuality insists that any investigation must start from and indeed affirm
the pre-existing concrete factical difference(s) between the “masculine” and
“feminine” sexes.
To develop this, I first outline the parameters of Irigaray’s critique of
the logic of patriarchy found within Western philosophy and her concep-
tion of sexual difference, before going on to engage with the long-standing
question of whether Irigaray’s affirmation of a fundamental sexual differ-
ence depends upon and so perpetuates ahistoric, essentialist conceptions
of sexuality.23 I agree with those who defend Irigaray against this charge by
arguing that, rather than simply and simplistically reaffirming the essential-
ist thinking underpinning the logic of patriarchy, she actually develops a
far more sophisticated account of how the logic of patriarchy must be com-
bated from “within” its own parameters that adopts, and at the same time
subverts, the essentialist premises underpinning that model.24 The means
through which this is undertaken are subtle and complex, but I argue that
her aim is to bring to light the absurdity of the essentialist justifications for
the logic of patriarchy as a means of “jamming the theoretical machinery”25
supporting it.
From here, I engage with Alison Stone’s26 influential, albeit controver-
sial, claim that Irigaray’s early strategic or political essentialism is unable to
explain her subsequent development of and dependence on a realist form
of essentialism that affirms the foundational importance of an actual –
as opposed to mimetic or strategic – binary sexual division between a

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masculine sex and a feminine sex. While accepting Stone’s basic claim
that Irigaray relies upon and affirms an actual material difference between
(the) two sexes, I question Stone’s distinction between an “early/later”
Irigaray by (1) arguing that this reads Irigaray’s work through a logic of
binary opposition that implicitly repeats the fundamental binary structure
underpinning the logic of patriarchy (“masculine” versus “feminine”);
and (2) claiming that there is no fundamental rupture within Iriga-
ray’s oeuvre, but a gradual alteration wherein she moves from an initial
“negative” focus that criticises the logic of representation historically
dominant in Western philosophy and culture to the complementary ques-
tion of how a “positive” ethical-political programme of sexual difference
could be developed and, crucially, justified from an expressive concep-
tion of nature.27 Although this demonstrates the ambition and subtlety
of Irigaray’s thinking, I conclude that her insistence that sexual difference
is structured around a binary heteronormative biological division fore-
closes sexual expression within heteronormative parameters to implicitly
depend upon and perpetuate the hierarchal logic of exclusion – namely
against non-heteronormative forms of sexuality – inherent in the patriar-
chal system to be overcome.

Sexual Difference and the Logic of Patriarchy

Irigaray’s thinking starts from the Heideggerian premise that each age is
dominated by a single issue. Whereas, for Heidegger, this is the question of
the meaning of Being, Irigaray argues that it is the question of sexual dif-
ference.28 Starting from the premise that sexual difference “belongs univer-
sally to all humans”,29 Irigaray claims that the world is simply and always
divided between two sexes: men and women. Indeed, because this division
is universal, sexual difference is held to be “the fundamental paradigm of
the difference between us”30 and, by extension, the difference upon which
all other differences – class, race, nationality, and so on – depend.
Importantly, Irigaray maintains that the criteria upon which sexual dif-
ference depends cannot be reduced to genitality. Here, she is critiquing
Freud’s claim that at puberty the genitals come to be the source of (adult)
sexuality. This however makes sexual difference derivative of a prior process
of development. In contrast, “we need to recall that the girl has a sexualized
body different from the boy’s well before the genital stage”.31 As a conse-
quence, Irigaray commits herself to the claim that, while sexual difference
cannot be reduced to differences in genitalia, there is a fundamental bio-
logical difference that distinguishes the sexes.

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 159

The danger however of this initial formulation is that it runs the risk of
reducing sexuality to a determining biology. I will subsequently show that Iri-
garay introduces an important modification to how “biology” is understood
to avoid this charge, but, at this stage, it is important to note that, although
she claims that sexual difference is the question grounding all others, she also,
somewhat paradoxically, claims that this does not entail a privileging of it
over other questions. This conclusion is premised on the idea that “privileg-
ing” entails an arbitrary choice to affirm one principle over an equally valid
one. Focusing on the question of sexual difference does not do this, how-
ever, because sexual difference is, for Irigaray, not one difference amongst
others, but the difference upon which all others depend. Engaging with it is
not therefore to negate other differences or questions but to engage with the
conditions upon which all others depend.32
From this bedrock, Irigaray moves to question the way(s) in which the
sexual difference has been organised and thought in Western culture, which
takes her to question the logic of representation inherent in Western thought.
To frame her discussion, it is necessary to make a preliminary remark regard-
ing the logic underpinning her analysis, in so far as Irigaray rejects Lacan’s
claim that sexual difference is premised on a form of negative relationality
which holds that something is what it is by virtue of being defined as not
another: A is A because it is not B, which is B because it is not A. This can take
a weaker form, where two beings pre-exist the relation but their individual
meaning only results from being defined negatively against the other, or a
stronger form, where both the being and meaning of each aspect depends
upon the other. Rather than affirm the weak or strong version of this logic,
Irigaray’s questions the logic itself by claiming that it implicitly makes each
entity dependent on and so subordinate to the other. Not only does this
logic necessarily establish a hierarchical relation between the parts, but, in
so doing, the danger is that one aspect comes to be continuously privileged
over the other. Trying to overcome this imbalance by simply reaffirming the
mutual dependence inherent in the logic of negative relationality does not
go far enough because there will continue to exist the dangerous possibility
that the relation will once again fall into a hypostatised hierarchy.
To fully prevent this possibility requires, on Irigaray’s telling, a radical
alteration to the logic through which sexual difference is premised, away from
one of negative relationality to a logic of difference. There are, at least, two
aspects to this. First, although recognising that each sex exists in relation to
the other, Irigaray maintains that there is no constitutive bond between them
that makes each dependent on the other. The sexes are different to one another,
defined by their own being. Second, and for this reason, Irigaray depends

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upon a distinction between the “being” of and “representational meaning”

attributed to each sex. This distinction is important because it allows her to
(1) undertake a critical analysis of the ways in which representation has failed
to respect the difference between the sexes and, in particular, the “being” of
women; (2) insist that the “being” of each sex must be engaged with on its
own terms; neither can be understood through or from the “being” of the
other sex; and (3) argue for a conceptual movement from representationalism
to expressivism to undercut any ontology of substances, all the while taking
heed of and respecting the difference(s) defining the two sexes.
Irigaray starts by claiming that “[t]o approach the question of sexual dif-
ference is to realize that this difference has been forgotten, overlooked by
the Western tradition”33 because “in the West, being is always understood as
‘one’ or a ‘multiple of one’”.34 As a result, Western culture has been defined
by “hierarchies and subordinations between One and the other, One and
others, One and the multiple”.35 By affirming a single principle, all else has
been thought from and as derivative of that foundational point. Irigaray
ties this to her affirmation of the primordial importance of the sexual dif-
ference to conclude that the masculine has been historically defined as the
One and the feminine as that which is subordinate to the former: “Man has
been the subject of discourse, whether in theory, morality, or politics”.36
Even when the fundamental premise does not explicitly affirm a masculine
perspective, Irigaray claims that the masculine is simply recuperated in the
“new” anchoring points created to ground the system of representation. For
example, she notes that “[t]he Copernican revolution has yet to have its
final effects in the male imaginary”,37 in so far as it removes the immediate
human male as the locus of the universe only to re-instantiate “him” as “the
transcendental (subject)”38 who rises to a “perspective that would dominate
the totality, to the vantage point of greatest power, [and] cuts himself off
from the bedrock, from his empirical relationship with the matrix that he
claims to survey”.39
Similarly, psychoanalysis’s turn to the unconscious perpetuates a simi-
lar exclusion, in so far as it relies upon a logic of “verticality”40 that returns
the discussion to a singular point, which, when combined with Irigaray’s
claim regarding the dominance of the masculine over the feminine, leads
her to conclude that the single foundation is masculine; hence Lacan’s (and
Freud’s) valorisation of the phallus. However, as Irigaray puts it, “[w]oman
has no cause to envy the penis or the phallus”.41 This association is simply
the clearest and most explicit expression of “the failure to establish a sexual
identity for both sexes – man, and the race of men, has transformed the
male organ into an instrument of power with which to master material
power (puissance)”.42 As a consequence, psychoanalysis reduces woman to

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 161

the masculine perspective – “the clitoris is conceived as a little penis . . .

and the vagina is valued for the ‘lodging’ it offers the male organ”43 – and
defines her “as the necessary complement to the operation of male sexual-
ity, and, more often, as a negative image that provides male sexuality with
an unfailingly phallic self-representation”.44
Even when a privileging of the masculine perspective is explicitly denied,
Irigaray claims that the logic that supports its privileged status continues
to implicitly structure discourse. For example, and as noted, her reliance
on a binary model of sexual difference, wherein each sex must be either
“masculine” or “feminine”, leads Irigaray to dismiss the possibility of neu-
trality – as found in Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological
approaches: “For everyone claims neutrality without noticing that he is talk-
ing about one neuter, his neuter, and not an absolute neutrality.”45 There is
no neutral position; only a masculine one masquerading as neutral to cover
over and perpetuate its dominance. As a consequence, she concludes that
the “neuter . . . does not solve the problem of the hierarchy observed by the
male and female genders, of the injustices this hierarchy perpetuates or the
pathogenic neutralization of languages and values that results”.46
This historic dependence on and affirmation of a masculinist perspective
demonstrates, so Irigaray claims, the phallocentrism of Western representa-
tion. While claiming to represent reality, Irigaray maintains that this logic is
actually defined

by the constitution of a logos, a language obeying rules such as those of self-

identity, of non-contradiction, etc., which . . . have been designed to ensnare
the totality of the real in the nets of language, and thus to remove it from
sensible experience, from the ever in-finite contiguity of daily life.47

Language does not then describe being per se, but creates a parallel “world”
divorced from the sensible one. Irigaray goes further by explaining that the
logic of representation constructed from this divorce recognises the sex-
ual difference – in so far as it is structured around distinct roles for males
and females – but “lift[s] one of the two terms . . . [which is] constituted as
‘origin,’ as that by whose differentiation the other may be endangered and
brought to light”.48 For Irigaray, it has been the masculine that has been
privileged in Western symbolic systems, with the consequence that every-
thing else, including the feminine, has been defined by and from this orig-
inary masculine position “[o]r else carried back into mere extrapolation,
into the infinity of some capital letter: Sexuality, Difference, Phallus, etc”.49
which acts as a placeholder for the originary point”.50 Rather than think-
ing of the sexual difference in terms of difference, Western representation

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has made sexual difference “a derivation of the problematics of sameness

[to be] determined with the project, the projection, the sphere of represen-
tation, of the same”.51
Although Irigaray recognises that this logic distorts “man”,52 she down-
plays this, if only because the masculine is somewhat compensated because
he is privileged within the established logic. In contrast, woman is both dis-
torted and degraded. The former because “she” is thought through or from
those characteristics or modes of expression attributed to “masculinity”53
and, as a consequence, is made to express and define herself through a logic
that “leaves [her] sex aside”.54 The latter because she is held to be inferior to
“man” and, as a consequence, is reduced to “the little structured margins of
a dominant ideology, as waste, or excess”.55 Rather than being a full, individ-
ual partner, woman is reduced to an objectified appendage of the dominant
masculine perspective. She is not then represented on her own terms, but is
portrayed as a devalued other to the privileged male. Because “she” is other
to him, she becomes what he is not, forever linked with mystery, to become,
what Irigaray calls, “La mysterérique”.56
However, somewhat paradoxically, it is precisely because woman is
excluded and distorted in this manner that Irigaray finds a moment of sol-
ace. After all, woman’s status as an outsider within the patriarchal system
of representation presents her with the space from that system to do other
than demanded by it:

Her sex is heterogeneous to this whole economy of representation, but it is

capable of interpreting that economy precisely because it has remained ‘out-
side.’ Because it does not postulate oneness, or sameness, or reproduction, or
even representation. Because it remains somewhere else than in that general
repetition where it is taken up only as otherness of sameness.57

Her heterogeneous relationship to the system of patriarchal representation

ensures that “[p]rovided that she does not will to be their equal . . . she does
not enter into a discourse whose systematicity is based on her reduction into
sameness”.58 As an “excess”,59 woman cannot be fully reduced to the same-
ness of masculinity or delineated by the signifying patriarchal system. Rather
than clear and objective, woman becomes that which “cannot be expressed
in words”.60 She comes across as “fuzzy”,61 “beyond all pairs of opposites, all
distinctions between active and passive or past and future”.62 Of course, this
means that when she is conceptualised by the patriarchal signifiying regime,
she is distorted and turned into that which she is not: the devalued opposite
of the masculine. But again, her excess from that system ensures that she
is always a disquieting figure, always pointing to an otherness that cannot

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 163

be reincorporated into the same. With this, Irigaray moves from describ-
ing woman’s status within Western systems of representation to prescribing
what needs to occur for that system (and, by extension, the way “woman” is
represented) to be altered. This however first requires a word on a topic that
quickly marked the reception of Irigaray’s early critique of patriarchy: the
question of essentialism.

Overcoming Patriarchy and the Problem of Essentialism

In a 1998 debate with Drucilla Cornell, Elizabeth Grosz, and Pheng Cheah,
Judith Butler admitted that when they first read Irigaray in the early 1980s,
their reaction was one of dismissal: “I was not interested in [Irigaray’s] work
at all because she seemed to be an essentialist and that was a term we used
quite easily then, when we thought we knew what it meant.”63 This assess-
ment is premised on the claim that Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference is
constructed around a binary masculine/feminine division, and, crucially,
that both are defined by definitive, a priori characteristics, exclusive to each
sex. Only by implicitly proceeding in this way was it thought that Irigaray
could then evaluate whether the Western system of representation accu-
rately represents “woman”. As Toril Moi argues, however, this leaves Iri-
garay in a problematic situation. After all, on Irigaray’s own terms, “[a]ny
attempt to formulate a general theory of femininity will be metaphysical”.64
Therefore, “having shown that so far femininity has been produced exclu-
sively in relation to the logic of the same”,65 Moi argues that Irigaray “falls
for the temptation to produce her own positive theory of femininity”,66
which by “defin[ing] ‘woman’ is necessarily to essentialize her”.67 For this
reason, Carolyn Burke rhetorically asks:

Does [Irigaray’s] writing manage to avoid construction of another idealism

to replace the ‘phallocentric’ system that she dismantles? Do her representa-
tions of a parler femme, in analogy with female sexuality, avoid the central-
izing idealism with which she taxes Western conceptual systems?68

For these commentators, the fundamental problem with Irigaray’s thinking

is that, although it claims critical force, it implicitly depends upon a num-
ber of ontological assumptions that seem to re-enforce phallogocentrism.
Although Irigaray clearly inverts the privileged term in the binary opposi-
tions constitutive of the logic of patriarchy so that it is the feminine not the
masculine aspect that is affirmed, she continues to think that both terms
can be defined, which appears to depend upon each “possessing” definitive
characteristics. As such, Irigaray’s critique depends upon and re-enforces the

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same logic of ahistoric essence as the regime to be overcome. Indeed, by

often parroting the attributes given to “woman” by the system of patriarchal
representation – for example, when she defines “woman” as mysterious –
Irigaray appears to simply re-enforce those representations. As a conse-
quence, her thinking was understood to contribute little to the project of
female emancipation.
In the 1990s, however, Irigaray’s thinking was subject to substantial re-
evaluation that aimed to show that her earlier critics had fundamentally
misunderstood her project. Rather than simplistically adopt the essentialist
language of the patriarchal system to be overcome, Irigaray was understood
to be engaged in a far more complicated and subtle critique of phallogo-
centrism that, crucially, was aware of the substantial pitfalls involved in this
undertaking. Rather than simply attributing an alternative conception of
essence to woman and affirming that as the “true” nature of woman over
the “false” one found in phallogocentrism, Irigaray was understood to be
doing something far more nuanced. As she notes, the tradition

cannot simply be approached head on, nor simply within the realm of the
philosophical itself. Thus it was necessary to deploy other languages – without
forgetting their own debt to philosophical language – and even to accept the
condition of silence, of aphasia as a symptom – historico-hysterical, hysterico-
historical – so that something of the feminine as the limit of the philosophical
might finally be heard.69

Instead of simply affirming a fundamental rupture from patriarchal rep-

resentation – an affirmation that would establish a binary opposition
between patriarchy and a privileged alternative that would, inadvertently,
re-instantiate the logic of binary oppositions that structures patriarchy70 –
Irigaray was reread as claiming that “[o]ne cannot alter symbolic meaning
by fiat, one cannot simply step outside phallogocentrism, simply reverse
the symbolism or just make strident or repetitive claims that women are
in fact rational”.71 Thought is embedded within and conditioned by its
historical situation. Any attempt to simply leave that tradition behind will
most likely merely continue to implicitly affirm its premises, not least of
which by implicitly establishing a binary opposition between “phallogo-
centrism” and “post-phallogocentrism”. Overcoming phallogocentrism has
then to depend upon a far more sophisticated transitional model of change
that occurs from within and passes through the parameters of that to be
overcome. It is for this reason that Irigaray explains that she works “to go
back through the masculine imaginary, to interpret the way it has reduced

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 165

[woman] to silence, to muteness or mimicry [of masculinity], and I am

attempting, from that starting-point and at the same time, to (re)discover a
possible space for the feminine imaginary”.72
Furthermore, her defenders pointed out that the early essentialist read-
ing of her work was underpinned by a problematic literal hermeneutical
strategy. Not only were Irigaray’s comments on “woman” taken as repre-
senting her actual views, but, by insisting that her statements could only
be interpreted in a unitary fashion, her critics were, somewhat ironically,
charged with subjecting her thought to a masculinist logic that valued liter-
ality and a single answer. In other words, whereas her critics charged Iriga-
ray with continuing to depend upon the logic of patriarchy, her defenders
turned that criticism against her critics to argue that they only arrived at
this conclusion because they themselves were the ones who were locked
within the logic of patriarchy and, as a consequence, interpreted her com-
ments in accordance with its dependence on literality and a unitary truth.
However, as Ping Xu points out, this literal, essentialist reading misses fun-
damental aspects of Irigaray’s early work, such as her affirmation of “mim-
icry”.73 Once this is taken into account, we see that, rather than simply
affirming the logic of patriarchy, Irigaray merely temporarily adopts the lan-
guage of the feminine as outlined in the phallocentric tradition “to exercise
a resistance from within [that] discourse”,74 one that brings attention to
the absurdity of that discourse, all the while showing the absence of any
justification for it.
Irigaray’s aim then is not so much to simply step away from the logic
of patriarchy to an alternative “truth”, but to “[t]urn everything upside
down, inside out, back to front”75 as a means of “jamming the theoretical
machine”.76 Simply affirming another truth-system opposed to the patriar-
chal one would simply re-instantiate the logic of domination inherent in
that logic. Only passing through the patriarchal logic in a particular way,
one that uses its rules, terms, and logic, is it possible to confuse that logic
to deactivate it. Repeating its tropes does not then simply repeat them as if
they are accepted as true, but, in a sense, plays with them by ensuring that
the repetition is slightly “off”:

The ‘subject’ sidles up to the truth, squints at it, obliquely, in an attempt to

gain possession of what truth can no longer say. Dispersing, piercing those
metaphors – particularly the photological ones – which have constituted
truth by the premises of Western philosophy: virgin, dumb, and veiled in
her nakedness, her vision still naively ‘natural,’ her viewpoint still resolutely
blind and unsuspecting of what may lie beneath the blindness.77

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Instead of simply abandoning the identity imposed on women by the phal-

logocentric system, Irigaray adopts it to pass through it.
This occurs through, at least, three strategies. First, rather than appeal to
formal logic to expose the flaws within the patriarchal model – a logic that
depends upon a singular truth reached by a linear path and so returns us to
the foundationalism and linearity inherent in that model – Irigaray insists
on the need to use an alternative model of representation based around
“riddles, allusions, hints, parables”78 and “curl(s), helix(es), diagonal(s),
spiral(s), roll(s), twirl(s), revolution(s), pirouette(s)”.79
Second, as noted, she appeals “to an initial phase . . . the one histori-
cally assigned to the feminine: that of mimicry”.80 She recognises however
that this can take two forms: “mimesis as production”,81 which she associates
with the spontaneous production of music, and “mimesis . . . already caught
up in a process of imitation . . . and reproduction”.82 Having noted that the
later has been historically dominant and has led “woman” to reproduce
herself through the masculine point of reference, Irigaray suggests that it
is the first form of mimesis that holds out possibilities for women. Rather
than conform to a prior model of action, women must find ways to spon-
taneously mimic the patriarchal logic in ways that subtly undermine it.
This, however, is “complex” because it requires that it be possible to “copy
anything at all . . . without appropriating them to oneself, and without adding
anything”.83 There is no singular model for this. Irigaray’s own method takes
place through an engagement with the philosophical tradition, wherein
she undertakes “a fling with the philosopher”84 to highlight aspects of his
thought that remain out of sight to him. This requires that she appear to
affirm his position, all the while holding something back, which requires
that she have such an intimate knowledge of that position that it appears to
be her own. Only then can she take it to the limit, all the while continuing
to remain divorced from it in the way that mimicry permits and demands.85
This duplicity allows her to make statements, perfectly in line with the logic
of his position, but which, by coming to it from a different angle, reveal
the absurdity of the position rejected. So, by affirming the essentialist traits
given to women by the patriarchal system, Irigaray is led to statements that
strike the reader as simplistic and naive. Because these statements are per-
fectly in keeping with the logic of patriarchy historically dominant, the rev-
elation of her supposed naivety also betrays the simplisticity and naivety of
the patriarchal system. Crucially, it does so from within the premises of that
logic, rather than from an external competing “truth” and, as such, disarms
the logic of domination inherent in phallogocentrism.
Third, Irigaray complements these strategies with an exhortation to swap
the ethic of seriousness inherent in phallogocentrism with one orientated

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 167

around and from laughter. Rather than react with outrage at the attributes
given to her – a response that aims to reverse the position affirmed, but
which by meeting it head on merely depends upon and so reiterates the
phallogocentric privileging of a logic of domination – woman must learn
that the best way to disarm the absurdity of that logic is to laugh at it. This
is not to trivialise its content, but to empty its meaning of content from
within.86 In so doing, the aim is not to offer a theory of “woman” or even
to annihilate masculinity per se. “Its function [is] to cast phallogocentrism,
phallocratism, loose from its moorings in order to return the masculine to its
own language, leaving open the possibility of a different language. Which
means that the masculine would no longer be ‘everything.’”87 Only once
this is achieved and a space for the feminine opened from it can the sexual
difference be thought as difference, rather than as the reduction of one sex
to another, which, in turn, will allow both sexes to exist through the specific-
ity of their respective sexualities.
Irigaray’s early work on phallogocentrism is then far subtler than the early
essentialist reading of her thinking recognises or permits, in so far as she
does not simply depend upon an essentialised theory of woman to oppose
the one affirmed by phallogocentrism; she intentionally “carrie[s] out an
inversion of the femininity imposed upon [her] in order to try to define
the female corresponding to my gender: the in-and-for-itself of my female
nature”.88 Overcoming the phallogocentric tradition is not achieved, on Iri-
garay’s telling, by simply affirming an alternative “truth” about “woman” to
that of the tradition; such a manoeuvre would not only repeat the phallogo-
centric discourse of power, dominance, and single truth, but also raise the
question of what justifies one conception over another. Instead, she (tem-
porarily) adopts the premises of phallogocentrism to undermine it from
within. However, while this strategy may jam the theoretical tenets of phal-
logocentrism, such disarming appears, as noted, to be both temporary and
local. It not only needs to be continuously redone, but, as her critics point
out, requires a subtlety that can all too easily go awry. As a consequence,
Irigaray came to accept that “[d]econstructing the patriarchal tradition is
certainly indispensable, but [it] is hardly enough. It is necessary to define
new values directly or indirectly suitable to feminine subjectivity and to
feminine identity.”89 It is to this that I now turn.

From Political to an Ontology of Expressive Essentialism

Alison Stone suggests that this “positive” project finds expression in Irig-
aray’s later works, wherein Irigaray foregoes her earlier dependence on a
temporary and intentional adoption of the essentialist traits attributed to

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woman by the phallogocentric tradition to depend upon a full-blown real-

ist essentialism. For Stone, Irigaray’s later realist essentialism affirms

the view that we can know about the world as it is independently of our
practices and modes of representations. I therefore understand a realist form
of essentialism to consist in the view that male and female bodies can be
known to have essentially different characters, different characters which
exist, independently of how bodies are represented and culturally inhabited.
According to realist essentialism, natural differences between the sexes exist,
prior to our cultural activities.90

Stone’s position is premised on the claim that having disarmed or jammed

the phallogocentric theoretical machine in her earlier works through the
temporary and mimetic adoption of its essentialist premises, Irigaray subse-
quently moves to the positive project of describing a non-patriarchal form
of sexual relation that respects the sexual difference; an endeavour that
depends upon being able to identify what “man” and “woman” entail. In
other words, Irigaray moves from a political or strategic engagement with
phallogocentrism to an ontological description of the sexes and, by exten-
sion, sexual relations that depends upon identifying the defining criteria of
each sex.
For this reason, Irigaray rejects the notion that sexual difference is merely
socially constructed or the consequence of cultural representation. In her
later works, she repeatedly insists that sexual difference is biologically
pre-given, existing “before” any form of symbolic, social, or cultural con-
struction. For example, in In the Beginning, She Was, published in 2013,
Irigaray states that “The human species is composed of two genders.”91 In
The Way of Love, from 2002, we are told that “[t]he difference between man
and woman already exists, and it cannot be compared to a creation of our
understanding”;92 while in the 1996 interview “Thinking Life as Relation”,
Irigaray maintains that “[s]exual difference is a given of reality”,93 which
reinforces her statement in the previous year that “[m]en and women are
corporeally different. This biological difference leads to others: in construct-
ing subjectivity, in connecting to the world, in relating.”94 Furthermore, in
To be Two, from 1994, Irigaray explains that her “work is based on the recog-
nition of sexual difference, of the irreducibility between man and woman,
men and women; an irreducibility which should be treated as a civil and
cultural value, and not only as a natural reality to be overcome in culture
and in community”.95
However, it is important to note that, for Irigaray, the notion that sex-
ual difference cannot and should not be reduced to a symbolic or cultural

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 169

construction does not mean that we should simply fall back on a straight-
forward form of biological determinism. Irigaray’s thinking on what it is
to “become-woman” is composed of a complex and ongoing dialectical
relationship between woman’s sexually conditioned biological parameters
and cultural norms. We will shortly see that this depends upon a particular
rethinking of biology in terms of processes rather than substance, but her
claim that there are biological differences between the sexes that must be
realised socially is the fundamental reason why she rejects Simone de Bea-
voir’s famous claim that “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman”:96
it places too much emphasis on a cultural becoming and not sufficient focus
on the biological corporeality of woman. Instead of operating through a
binary opposition wherein either biology or culture is determinate, Irigaray
insists that there is a particular biological–culture dynamic at play in the
process of becoming-woman, one nicely summed up by her statement that
“I am a woman, but I must still become this woman that I am by nature.”97
Irigaray therefore accepts that there are biological conditions to the sexes
that exist “outside” of cultural representation and, indeed, are the condi-
tions through which any cultural becoming takes place. As a consequence,
we have to return to that biological dimension to rethink it in a way that
is appropriate to sexual difference. The problem of course is that, on her
telling, historical appeals to biology have been “interpreted in terms more
masculine than feminine”,98 with the consequence that female corporeality
has been ignored or reduced to the masculine body. Instead of repeating
this gesture, Irigaray claims that we need to develop a conception of biology
based in “the reality of [womans’s] biological economy”.99
As Stone recognises, however, this not only appears to have as its aim
a theory of woman that Irigaray had previously rejected,100 but also seems
to reduce “woman” to biologically essential characteristics, which seems to
give credence to the early essentialist reading of her work. If she is not to
fall back into the reaffirmation of the essentialist thinking that marks the
phallogocentric tradition she rejects, Irigaray must find some way to define
what distinguishes the sexes without falling into phallogocentric essential-
ist thinking. Stone suggests that it is with the publication of An Ethics of
Sexual Difference, in 1983, that Irigaray takes on this project to “elaborat[e]
a picture of what material bodies are really like and of how those bodies
really relate to the world around them”.101
Before proceeding, however, a quick word is necessary on Stone’s her-
meneutical strategy, in so far as it depends upon and, indeed, introduces a
fundamental chasm within Irigaray’s oeuvre between the early critical works,
such as Speculum of the Other Woman and The Sex which is Not One, and her
later work, starting with An Ethics of Sexual Difference, that Irigaray explicitly

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rejects. For example, in a 1995 interview, Irigaray explains that her work has
been conditioned by three (not two) different but intertwined phases: “The
first a critique, you might say, of the auto-mono-centrism of the western
subject; the second, how to define a second subject; and the third phase,
how to define a relationship, a philosophy, an ethic, a relationship between
two different subjects.”102 More importantly, Irigaray also rejects the notion
that An Ethics of Sexual Difference marks any sort of fundamental rupture in
her oeuvre, instead explaining that this text is the link that binds her first crit-
ical phase with the attempt to redefine female subjectivity on its own terms
in the second phase.103 As a consequence, Irigaray’s self-assessment ques-
tions Stone’s claim that Irigaray’s oeuvre is marked by a fundamental rupture
between an early deconstructive moment and a later reconstructive one.
For this reason, I understand that all periods of her writing are orientated
to the critique of phallogocentrism and, more importantly, an affirmation
of sexual difference as and from difference. The changes in emphasis and
orientation are simply the consequence of her addressing the same prob-
lematic from different, but complementary, directions.
Nevertheless, I do think that Stone’s interpretation of Irigaray’s “later”
positive conception of sexual difference is not only plausible, but also one
of the most sophisticated contemporary readings104 that allows us to clearly
see how Irigaray refocuses thinking on sexuality away from the question
of symbolic representation to that of biology. Crucially, Stone shows that
Irigaray does so by thinking sexual difference not from an ahistoric essential
substance as in the phallogocentric tradition, but from a rethought “natu-
ral” ground premised on the notion of “active bodies”.105 In so doing, Stone
shows that Irigaray offers a particularly powerful and innovative corrective
to Lacan’s supposed symbolic account of sexuality that, as we will see in the
next chapter, also provides a stimulating contrast to Judith Butler’s gender
theory. Without claiming that it is an exhaustive account of Stone’s reading
of Irigaray’s “later” work or, indeed, Irigaray’s rethinking of sexual differ-
ence, the following overview of some aspects of that rethinking will identify
the main trajectories of Irigaray’s positive conception of sexual difference in
a way that also contributes to the development of the historical trajectory of
thinking of sexuality in the late twentieth century.
Stone’s fundamental claim is that Irigaray grounds her rethinking of
sexual difference from a particular philosophy of nature, which, rather than
being thought as a static object to be used – a conception found within the
phallogocentric tradition that sees “nature” as an object for man’s use106 –
is re-conceptualised as a continuous organic becoming that supports and
nurtures that which it expresses. Importantly, this becoming is autopoi-
etic based on the notion that nature is always “at least two”,107 with the
interaction of both parts being responsible for its continuing existence. As

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a consequence, Irigaray insists on a fundamental natural duality, thereby

undermining the monosexuality of the phallogocentric tradition, and
claims that each aspect of this fundamental duality expresses and is defined
by “rhythms”108 specific to each manifestation. The crucial defining aspect
of each sex is not then its genitalia109 nor some ahistoric substantial essence,
but its particular “energy”,110 “style”,111 or “spirit”112 that must be realised
individually and culturally. As Stone explains,

[Irigaray] believes that there is an essential difference between men and women
which exists independently of – indeed, is the necessary precondition of – our
interpretation of it. This essential difference arises at the level of rhythms which
regulate the percipient fluids composing male and female bodies.113

For example, in Sex and Genealogies, Irigaray claims that “[w]omen do not
obey the same sexual economy as men . . . [w]omen have different relations
to fluids and solids, to matter, to form, to touch, to symmetry, to repetition,
etc. . . . They have a much stronger internal regime, which keeps them in a
constant and irreversible pattern of growth.”114 Moreoever, “[t]his female
temporality is hormonally complex and in turn has consequences for the
organization and general equilibrium of the body”.115 For this reason, “time
in a woman’s life is particularly irreversible, and that, compared to men’s
time, it is less suited to the repetitive, entropic, and largely non-progressive,
nullifying economy of our present environment”.116 Whereas male tempo-
rality is linear, female temporality is conditioned by twists, turns, and flows
and, as a consequence, “[f]emale sexuality does not correspond to the same
economy [as men’s]. It is more related to becoming, more attuned to the
time of the universe.”117 With this, Irigaray links (female) bodily rhythms of
the sexes to the cycles and flows of nature, which are reduced by phallogo-
centrism to the linearity suited to the masculine body. Although this action
also distorts the multiple rhythms defining “man”, Irigaray maintains that
“[w]oman suffer more grievously from the rupture with cosmic checks and
balances”118 and so calls for a reconstruction of the female body in accor-
dance with its particular “rhythms of nature”.119
However, it is important to note that the fundamental difference in kind
between masculine and feminine bodily rhythms does not mean that all
woman and men are conditioned by the same rhythm. Each exists within
the rhythmic parameters that define their sex, but within those parameters
each exists on a continuum through which each moves as they age. Thus,

[a] woman’s life is marked by irreversible events that define the stages of her
life. This is true for puberty (which boys also experience), losing her virgin-
ity, becoming pregnant, being pregnant, childbirth, breastfeeding – events

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that can be repeated without repetition: each time, they happen differently:
body and spirit have changed, physical and spiritual development is taking
place . . . During all this time, a woman experiences menstruation, her peri-
ods, as continuously related to cosmic time, to the moon, the sun, the tides,
and the seasons. Finally, menopause marks another stage in the becoming
of a female body and spirit, a stage characterized by a different hormonal
equilibrium, another relation to the cosmic and the social.120

Women do not all move through these bodily alterations at the same time
or in the same way. “Woman” is marked by a particular corporeal style –
one distinct from that which marks “man” – which is grounded in the con-
stantly changing corporeal alterations that are unique to each female body.
Extrapolating from this, we can say that Irigaray’s basic point is that the
sexes are defined by distinct natural parameters that define the “being” of
each sex, although, crucially, following Heidegger, the being of each sex
must be understood as becoming. In contrast to Heidegger, however, Irigaray
maintains that the becoming of each sex is not open-ended; it is constrained
within the parameters of the rhythms that define each sex. There can be and
is plenty of heterogeneity within each sex, but the discussion must start from
and recognise that this heterogeneity occurs within the “universal”121 condi-
tions that define each one. As such, each individual is both singular and uni-
versal, in so far as he or she is a particular, and changing, manifestation of the
universal conditions structuring their sex. The possibilities of the sexes change
and develop historically, but there is and always will be a fundamental and
irreducible difference between the corporeal rhythms of the sexes.
According to Stone, it is here that the strangely troubling aspect of Iri-
garay’s appeal to natural rhythms comes to the fore because “[a]lthough
Irigaray explicitly denies being an essentialist, her later view that men and
women have natural characters which need and strive for expression is
identifiably essentialist”.122 While not essentialist in the sense of affirming
and depending upon an ahistoric substance to think “man” and “woman”
as her early critics charged, Irigaray is essentialist in attributing distinct and
irreducible conditions to both sexes. The key difference is that these condi-
tions are fluid, individually expressive, and rhythmic; at no point do they
turn into a static ground, substance, or identity. The conditions underpin-
ning the two sexual positions are defined as a “groundless ground”:123 the
former because the parameters of the absolute division defining “woman”
or “man” are not static and fixed but fluid and moving; the later because this
fluid becoming is the condition that defines the ways in which an individu-
al’s sexuality can be expressed. It also ensures that, whereas an individual’s
sexuality (understood as the rhythm that marks his or her sexual being) can

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 173

and does change temporally, he or she cannot change his or her “natural”
sex. There is significant flexibility within each sex, but the difference between
them is absolute; a conclusion that, as we will shortly see, raises questions
about the heteronormativity inherent in Irigaray’s schema.124

Conclusion
Therefore, having worked to jam the theoretical machine underpinning the
logic of patriarchy to offer a space to rethink sexual difference in non-hierar-
chal terms, Irigaray’s rethinking depends upon and reintroduces a natural or
biological essentialism to the discussion of sexuality, albeit one that departs
from the substantial, ahistoric essentialism underpinning the historically
dominant essentialist-patriarchal model of sexuality. She walks something
of a fine, but nevertheless highly original, line, wherein she appeals to natu-
ral conditions that exist outside of representation and, in so doing, reaf-
firms that the sexes are defined by distinct essences, but does so without
falling into the (substantive type of) essentialist thinking that has marked
Western thinking on sexuality and that has been used to defend the logic of
patriarchy that Irigaray rejects. In short, Irigaray not only offers a far more
sophisticated engagement with the logic of patriarchy than the other think-
ers engaged with so far, but also brings to our attention the heterogeneous
nature of “essentialism” to, in so doing, complicate our understanding of
“it”. Challenging us to re-engage with and rethink the notion of “essential-
ism” more specifically and the unitary meanings attributed to historically
dominant concepts more generally is one of the ways in which Irigaray’s
analysis remains both interesting and relevant.
Nevertheless, Irigaray’s thinking contains a number of highly problem-
atic aspects. In the first instance, there is the issue of her reduction of the
history of Western philosophy to a single logic. While there is no doubt
that this logic is a particularly dominant one historically, to say that it is the
only logic or that there has only been one logic is deeply reductive; indeed,
it seems to smack of the masculinist privileging of unity that she otherwise
rejects. Now, of course, it could be objected that this book is also structured
around the claim that Western philosophy has been structured around one
model of sexuality, which I have termed the essentialist-patriarchal model,
and so also falls foul of this criticism. However, I have only argued that this
model is a particularly dominant one within Western philosophy, I do not
make the stronger claim, which I take Irigaray to make, that it is the only
one. As such, there is no attempt to cling to or ensure that all positions are
bound to the same logic. One logic is overwhelmingly dominant, but that
does not mean that it has had absolute status.

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Irigaray is able to reduce this tradition to a single logic because her defi-
nition of what counts as patriarchal is particularly wide, encompassing not
only any explicit privileging of masculinity over femininity, but also posi-
tions that affirm neutrality or a third term, while her conflation of thought
with sex means that, strictly speaking, she must hold that any man who
thinks is necessarily patriarchal because he can only ever think from the per-
spective of his sex. As such, Irigaray is implicitly committed to the claim that
any thinking that comes from a “man” is necessarily exclusionary of woman
and so patriarchal. This, however, is conceptually reductive and politically
problematic, in so far as to say that thought is necessarily sexed to the extent
that it is not possible to think of the other makes it difficult to see how the
shared world that Irigaray affirms can be created.
This links to the second problem with Irigaray’s thinking: her expansive
notion of patriarchy means that it is not clear that her privileging of sexual
difference is not itself patriarchal. Although she claims that her privileging
of sexual difference over other forms of difference is due to the universality
of the sexual difference, in structuring differences in this manner Irigaray
creates a hierarchy between the different forms of difference. This is prob-
lematic because she associates hierarchy with phallogocentrism and insists
that overcoming phallogocentrism requires a reconfiguration of logic away
from verticality towards horizontality where each position is understood to
be different from, rather than subordinate to, other positions.125 However,
for her to privilege sexual difference continues to give primordial impor-
tance to a form of difference over others and, indeed, she grounds those
other differences in sexual difference. It therefore depends upon and re-
instantiates the logic of hierarchy that she explicitly rejects. Irigaray would
defend herself by claiming that the sexual difference is both universal and
the condition of all privileging, meaning that her focus is not the con-
sequence of any privileging on her part but a consequence of accurately
understanding “reality”, but it is difficult to see why we must follow her
on this point. It appears that she simply starts from that premise and asks
that we follow her based on trust in her insight or because such a position
is taken to be obvious and clear. If the former, Irigaray is guilty of turning
herself into a singular font of truth and so perpetuating phallogocentrism’s
affirmation of a single unified truth. If the latter, her theory is premised on
empirical observation of phallogocentric society and so ends up taking a
historical division for ontological “fact”. In either case and on her terms, her
privileging of sexual difference does not undermine phallogocentrism, but
actually implicitly affirms it.
The third issue relates to the binary nature of her conception of sexual
difference, and in particular the implicit claim that sexuality must initially

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 175

be structured around “men” and “women”. With this, Irigaray’s schema

forecloses sexuality within two possibilities and so is marked by a funda-
mental inability to discuss alternative forms of sexuality. While she cer-
tainly admits different types of male and female sexuality, her conception
of sexual difference is limited to masculine and feminine forms. It is there-
fore simply incapable of considering, for example, the notion of “intersex”,
where individuals are neither clearly one nor the other. Indeed, Irigaray is
explicitly hostile to the possibility of a non-binary sexual division, as evi-
denced by her rejection of sexual androgyny and her claim that it ultimately
depends upon the binary sexual difference.126 She even claims that “[i]f you
are asexuate, I have nothing to say to you”.127 Starting from a binary sexual
division means that the discussion must always be brought back to that divi-
sion; it is the “foundational” point from which all subsequent discussion
result. Its binary nature must therefore structure all subsequent divisions.
As a consequence, and although Irigaray’s affirmation of sexual difference
may aim to open up thinking on feminine sexuality long devalued, it does
so by perpetuating alternative exclusions simply by foreclosing sexuality as
either male or female.
A further consequence of the binary nature of Irigaray’s conception of
sexual difference is its heteronormative nature. This issue has generated sig-
nificant debate in the literature with commentators split. Those who defend
Irigaray tend to take one of two strategies: on the one hand, Tina Chanter128
and Gail Schwab129 seek to dissolve the charge by arguing that the problem
that Irigaray address is not heteronormativity but the question of sexual dif-
ference and, in particular, the way that women have been devalued within
the West’s phallogocentrism.130 On this telling, it is therefore unfair to ask
of Irigaray something that her thinking never aims to offer.
The problem with this line of reasoning is however twofold. First, it sig-
nificantly reduces the scope and applicability of Irigaray’s thinking, in so far
as “it” must be understood only in relation to a very specific issue – phal-
logocentrism – and cannot be transported to or used to enquire into other
related issues. Furthermore, this defence does nothing to undermine the
charge of heteronormativity; it simply states that it is not Irigaray’s key con-
cern. But even if this is so, it merely means that while her thinking might
resolve one issue (sexual difference), it does so at the expense of another
(heteronormativity). Again, its applicability would be severely restricted.
As a consequence, other commentators have offered a stronger defence
of Irigaray. Ofelia Schutte, for example, claims that the sexual difference is
only exclusionary “from the standpoint of a masculinist logic”,131 with the
implication that once woman is accorded her “proper” place and status, it
will encompass and rectify all exclusions. The problem, of course, is that

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it is not clear why this would occur. In particular, it is not clear why read-
dressing the role and status of women would necessarily overcome exclu-
sions based on race or class, let alone how that would necessarily permit
non-heteronormative forms of sexuality to be included. This latter point
is addressed by Pheng Cheah and Elizabeth Grosz, who claim that Irigaray
maintains that biological sexual determinations are “oddly contentless”,132
which, when combined with her claim that sexual becoming has a biologi-
cal and cultural component, means that her thinking “permits great room
for singularity and variability”133 and “does not militate against queer forms
of desire”.134 In other words, Irigaray’s thought may start from a binary
biological division, but it can subsequently take on multiple forms once
it “mixes” with the cultural aspect. While this recognises that Irigaray can
maintain mulitiple forms of sexuality, it is not clear that it undermines the
criticism that her thinking starts from and so is locked within a binary het-
erosexual biological division. After all, as Alison Stone points out,

Irigaray’s assignation of ontological priority to sexual difference directly implies

that heterosexual relationships have greater value than any other forms of rela-
tionship. Since heterosexual relationships demand openness to someone who
is other at the most fundamental level, such relationships are the most com-
plex and challenging, conferring a proportionately enhanced level of moral
worth upon those who negotiate them. For Irigaray, heterosexuality confers
greater merit on its practioners than [other] forms of sexuality can.135

Therefore, for those who wish to apply Irigaray’s insights to non-heterosex-

ual forms of sexual relations, it seems that they must simply re-enact Dani-
elle Poe’s hermeneutical strategy of disregarding Irigaray’s own comments
to read her in the desired way. Only in this way can Poe claim that despite
“Irigaray’s own interpretation of sexual difference, I read the cultivation of
sexual difference as inclusive of transsexual and transgender experience”.136
There is however, strictly speaking, no textual support for such a reading,
with the consequence that it is unclear whether Irigaray’s thinking can actu-
ally sustain such an interpretation. Indeed, if it can, the result would be a
“Irigaray plus X” amalgamation rather than anything that actually can be
attributed to Irigaray per se.137
Given this, I agree with those who claim that, because Irigaray starts
from a binary biological division between men and women, regardless
of how this is subsequently expressed, her thinking is foreclosed within a
binary heteronormative opposition. As Judith Butler puts it, “[Irigaray] is
not willing to challenge the divide of the human race into two. The state
both expresses and reinforces the truth of how we should be actualized in

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 177

our sexual identities, male/female.”138 Because Irigaray’s sexual difference

is structured around a biological binary heteronormative division, Butler
charges that Irigaray’s thinking remains foreclosed within that division,
even as she insists on the fluid becoming of its sexual expression. Overcom-
ing this cannot, on Butler’s telling, be achieved by rethinking “sexuality” to
unmoor it from ontological determinations to in so doing free up its pos-
sible expressions. As we have seen in previous chapters, this is the approach
taken by proponents of psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and feminist
theories, each of which has either undermined a straightforward essential-
ism at the expense of depending upon a logic of patriarchy or undermined
patriarchy but foreclosed sexuality within (a form of) essentialism. Accord-
ing to Butler, the problem with these approaches is not so much that they
employ the correct critical conceptual paradigm but implement it wrongly,
but, more seriously and problematically, that they use the wrong concep-
tual apparatus to try to undermine the essentialist-patriarchal model of
sexuality. If sexuality is not to be foreclosed within predetermined schemas,
a far more radical conceptual alteration was held to be necessary; one that
moved the terms of the debate away from a primordial questioning of sexu-
ality towards that of gender. It is to this that we now turn.

Notes
1. There is, of course, substantial debate regarding the relationship between “struc-
turalism” and “poststructuralism”. Without entering into these debates, I note
that the definitive history of these “movements” – one that collapses them
into “structuralism” – is François Dosse, History of Structuralism, Volume 2: The
Sign–Sets, 1967–Present, trans. Deborah Glassman (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997). On the continuing relevance of poststructuralism, see
the essays collected in Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (eds), Historical Traces and
Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2021).
2. See, for example, Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse
of the Human Sciences”, in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1978), pp. 351–370.
3. I am of course simplifying dramatically here for narrative effect. It goes without
saying that the affirmation of difference was (appropriately) itself differentiated
within poststructuralist thought. For a discussion of this, see Gavin Rae, Post-
structuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth-Century Theory (Edinburgh: Edin-
burgh University Press, 2020).
4. Jacques Lacan, Seminar XIX: . . . Or Worse, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A.
R. Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), from 1971–1972; and Jacques Lacan, Seminar
XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973, edited by
Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).

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5. Lacan, Seminar XIX, p. 6.

6. Lorenzo Chiesa, The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan (Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 2016); Joan Copjec, Read my Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists
(London: Verso, 2015); Tim Dean, Beyond Sexuality (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2000); Patricia Gherovici, Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian
Perspective on Sexual Difference (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Alenka Zupančič,
What is Sex? (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017). For a critical discussion
of this line of interpretation, see Gavin Rae “Questioning the Phallus: Jacques
Lacan and Judith Butler”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, vol. 21, n. 1, 2020,
pp. 12–26.
7. Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 72.
8. Ibid., p. 73.
9. Ibid., p. 74.
10. Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C.
Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 5.
11. Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 13.
12. Ibid., p. 167n8.
13. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 133.
14. Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
15. Luce Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger, trans. Mary Beth Mader
(Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1999).
16. The most extended narrative overview of this history is found in Luce Irigaray,
In the Beginning, She Was (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
17. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 141.
18. Space constraints mean that I will not discuss this aspect of her thinking, but for
a recent discussion see Laura Roberts, Irigaray and Politics: A Critical Introduction
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
19. Luce Irigaray, “The Question of the Other”, trans. Noah Guynn, Yale French
Studies, vol. 87, 1995, pp. 7–19 (p. 8).
20. Interestingly, Irigaray sent Beauvoir a copy of Speculum of the Other Woman upon
its publication, only to be met with silence. While admitting that this non-
response made her “quite sad” (Luce Irigaray, “Equal or Different?”, trans. David
Macey, in The Irigaray Reader, edited by Margaret Whitford [London: Wiley–
Blackwell, 1991], pp. 30–34 [p. 31]), Irigaray later realised that the reason for it
was most likely her own fault, springing from her adoption and affirmation of
“woman’s” status as “other”, a concept that Beauvoir’s The Second Sex explicitly
rejects. Irigaray concludes that “I must have offended her without wishing to. I
had read the ‘Introduction’ to The Second Sex well before I wrote Speculum, and
could no longer recall what was at stake in the problematic of the other in de
Beauvoir’s work. Perhaps, for her part, she didn’t understand that for me my
sex or gender [genre] were in no way ‘second,’ but that sexes or genders are two,
without being first or sex” (Irigaray, “The Question of the Other”, pp. 9–10).

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 179

21. Irigaray, “Equal or Different?”, p. 32.

22. Ibid., p. 32.
23. Carolyn Burke, “Irigaray through the Looking Glass”, Feminist Studies, vol. 7, n. 2,
1981, pp. 288–306 (p. 302); Judith Butler, Pheng Cheah, Drucilla Cornella,
and Elizabeth Grosz, “The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith
Butler and Drucialla Cornell”, Diacritics, vol. 28, n. 1, 1998, pp. 19–42 (p. 19);
Toril Moi, Sexual–Textual Practices: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Methuen,
1985), p. 139.
24. Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (Abingdon: Routledge,
1991), pp. 70–71; Ping Xu, “Irigaray’s Mimicry of the Problem of Essentialism”,
Hypatia, vol. 10, n. 4, 1995, pp. 76–89 (pp. 77–78).
25. Luce Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn
Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 78.
26. Alison Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 4–5, 29, 45, 105–106.
27. See, for example, Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 134.
28. Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, p. 5.
29. Luce Irigaray, “Thinking Life as Relation”, trans. Stephen Pluhacek, Heidi Bos-
tic, and Luce Irigaray, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two Subjects, edited by Luce
Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins (New York: Semiotext(e),
2000), pp. 145–169 (p. 166).
30. Luce Irigaray, “Introduction”, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two Subjects,
edited by Luce Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins (New York:
Semiotext(e), 2000), pp. 7–13 (p. 5).
31. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 142.
32. Irigaray, “Thinking Life as Relation”, pp. 166–167.
33. Luce Irigaray, “The Civilization of Two”, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two Sub-
jects, edited by Luce Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins (New
York: Semiotext(e), 2000), pp. 71–80 (p. 72).
34. Luce Irigaray, “The Teaching of Difference”, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two
Subjects, edited by Luce Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins
(New York: Semiotext(e), 2000), pp. 121–126 (pp. 121–122).
35. Irigaray, “The Civilization of Two”, p. 72.
36. Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, p. 6.
37. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 133.
38. Ibid., p. 133.
39. Ibid., pp. 133–134.
40. Ibid., p. 136.
41. Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993), p. 17.
42. Ibid., p. 17.
43. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 23.
44. Ibid., p. 70.
45. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, p. 117.

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46. Ibid., pp. 172–173.

47. Irigaray, “Thinking Life as Relation”, p. 154.
48. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 21.
49. Ibid., p. 21.
50. Ibid., p. 21.
51. Ibid., pp. 26–27.
52. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 128. See also, Irigaray, In the Beginning She
Was, p. 151. For a discussion of this, see Britt-Marie Schiller, “The Incomplete
Masculine: Engendering the Masculine of Sexual Difference”, in Thinking with
Irigaray, edited by Mary C. Rawlinson, Sabrina L. Hom, and Serene J. Khader
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011), pp. 131–151.
53. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, pp. 140–141.
54. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 149.
55. Ibid., p. 30.
56. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 191. In a translator’s note, Gillian
Gill explains that “la mystérique” is a neologism of the French words for mysti-
cism, hysteria, mystery, and the femaleness; all of which have been historically
attributed to “woman” to paint her as irreducibly other to the attributes taken
to define masculinity (ibid., p. 191). For a discussion of the role(s) that mysti-
cism plays in Irigaray’s thinking, see Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstacy: Mysticism,
Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 2002), pp. 187–210.
57. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 152.
58. Ibid., p. 152.
59. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 230.
60. Ibid., p. 230.
61. Ibid., p. 230.
62. Ibid., p. 230.
63. Butler, Cheah, Cornell, Grosz, “The Future of Sexual Difference”, p. 19.
64. Moi, Sexual–Textual Practices, p. 139.
65. Ibid., p. 139.
66. Ibid., p. 139.
67. Ibid., p. 139.
68. Burke, “Irigaray through the Looking Glass”, p. 202.
69. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, pp. 149–150.
70. Ibid., pp. 33, 129.
71. Whitford, Luce Irigaray, p. 70.
72. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 164.
73. Xu, “Irigaray’s Mimicry of the Problem of Essentialism”, p. 77.
74. Ibid., p. 78.
75. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 142.
76. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 78.
77. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 136.
78. Ibid., p. 143.

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 181

79. Ibid., p. 238.

80. Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, p. 76.
81. Ibid., p. 131.
82. Ibid., p. 131.
83. Ibid., p. 151.
84. Ibid., p. 151.
85. Ibid., p. 152.
86. Ibid., p. 163.
87. Ibid., p. 80.
88. Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, trans. Alison
Martin (Abingdon: Routledge, 1996), p. 63.
89. Irigaray, “Introduction”, p. 10.
90. Alison Stone, “From Political to Realist Essentialism: Rereading Luce Irigaray”,
Feminist Theory, vol. 5, n. 1, 2004, pp. 5–53 (p. 6).
91. Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was, p. 52.
92. Luce Irigaray, The Way of Love, trans. Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluháček (Lon-
don: Continuum, 2002), p. 106.
93. Irigaray, “Thinking Life as Relation”, p. 166.
94. Luce Irigaray, “The Time of Difference”, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two
Subjects, edited by Luce Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins
(New York: Semiotext(e), 2000), pp. 95–99 (p. 95).
95. Luce Irigaray, To be Two, trans. Monique M. Rhodes and Marco F. Cocito-
Monoc (London: Athlone, 2000), pp. 66–67.
96. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malo-
vany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage, 2011), p. 294.
97. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 107.
98. Irigaray, “Thinking Life as Relation”, p. 150.
99. Ibid., p. 151.
100. Irigaray, Sex which is Not One, pp. 122, 159.
101. Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, p. 39.
102. Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Hirsch, and Gary A. Olson, “‘Je–Luce Irigaray’: A Meet-
ing with Luce Irigaray”, trans. Elizabeth Hirsch and Gaëton Brulotte, Hypatia,
vol. 10, n. 2, 1995, pp. 93–114 (p. 97).
103. Ibid., p. 97.
104. Irigaray’s later work has led to heterogeneous interpretations. Besides Stone’s
“realist” reading, Penelope Deutscher (A Politics of Impossible Difference: The
Later Work of Luce Irigaray [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002])
focuses on the question of Irigaray’s privileging of sexual difference and the
long-standing charge that this downplays other differences, such as race and
class, to show how Irigaray’s thinking can contribute to debates regarding
multiculturalism. In contrast, Virpi Lehtinen (Luce Irigaray’s Phenomenology of
Feminine Being [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015]) argues
that the question of Irigaray’s essentialism is best engaged with by tying her
thought to the phenomenological tradition and, in particular, its thinking of

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embedded corporeality. While Deutscher’s text is interesting, it is orientated to

a question that is distinct from the one motivating this study. Lehtinen’s has
more in common with the topic motivating this study – the question of sexu-
ality – but she thinks Irigaray through the phenomenological tradition and so,
strictly speaking, offers a hybrid interpretation of Irigaray’s thinking. Stone,
in contrast, focuses on the question of sexuality to, in contrast to Lehtinen,
advance a “realist” conception of sexual difference that is based on detailed
readings of Irigaray’s later texts.
105. Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, p. 41.
106. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 150; Luce Irigaray, “Different but
United through a New Alliance”, in Why Different?: A Culture of Two Subjects,
edited by Luce Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins (New
York: Semiotext(e), 2000), pp. 113–119 (p. 117).
107. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 35.
108. Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, p. 99.
109. Irigaray, Sex which is Not One, p. 142.
110. Irigaray, To be Two, p. 55.
111. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, p. 169.
112. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 25.
113. Alison Stone, “The Sex of Nature: A Reinterpretation of Irigaray’s Metaphysis
and Political Thought”, Hypatia, vol. 18, n. 3, 2003, pp. 60–84 (p. 77).
114. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, p. 200.
115. Ibid., p. 200.
116. Irigaray, Hirsch, Olson, “‘Je–Luce Irigaray’”, p. 108.
117. Ibid., p. 108.
118. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, p. 201.
119. Ibid., p. 200.
120. Irigaray, Hirsch, Olson, “‘Je–Luce Irigaray’”, pp. 108–109.
121. Irigaray, I Love to You, pp. 39, 51.
122. Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, p. 6.
123. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 107.
124. Although I will not engage with it, Stone subjects her reading of Irigaray’s
“realist essentialism” to critique, focusing on its (1) biological determinism,
(2) historical narrative, (3) privileging of sexual difference, and (4) heteronor-
mativity (Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, pp. 46–49). In
relation to the latter, it is interesting to note that Stone appeals to the work of
Karen Barad (ibid., pp. 36–37), who I will return to in Chapter 8, to develop an
alternative ontology which she terms “realist non-essentialist” (Stone, “From
Political to Realist Essentialism”, p. 18), wherein the continuous becoming
of each being, including “its” sexuality, is based on non-anthropocentric pro-
cesses of materialisation that are not defined by or pre-constrained within a
binary heteronormative division. In so doing, Stone aims to provide a space to
think non-binary forms of sexuality; an endeavour that she claims is excluded
by Irigaray’s schema.

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 Irigaray on Sexual Difference / 183

125. Irigaray, Sex which is Not One, p. 146; see also Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual
Difference, p. 17.
126. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, p. 123.
127. Irigaray, To be Two, p. 104.
128. Tina Chanter, Ethics of Eros: Irigaray’s Rewriting of the Philosophers (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1995), p. 44.
129. Gail Schwab, “Sexual Difference as Model: An Ethics for the Global Future”,
Diacritics, vol. 28, n. 1, 1998, pp. 76–92 (p. 82).
130. Irigaray herself makes this point in the 1995 interview “‘Je–Luce Irigaray’”: “Mine
is an oeuvre that concerns the relations of sexual difference; its not necessary to
demand that I create the work of others” (p. 112).
131. Ofelia Schutte, “A Critique of Normative Heterosexuality: Identity, Embodiment,
and Sexual Difference in Beauvoir and Irigaray”, Hypatia, vol. 12, n. 1, 1997,
pp. 40–62 (p. 52).
132. Pheng Cheah and Elizabeth Grosz, “Of Being-Two: Introduction”, Diacritics,
vol. 28, n. 1, 1998, pp. 3–18 (p. 13).
133. Ibid., p. 13.
134. Ibid., p. 13.
135. Stone, “The Sex of Nature”, p. 79.
136. Danielle Poe, “Can Luce Irigaray’s Notion of Sexual Difference be Applied to
Transsexual and Transgender Narratives?”, in Thinking with Irigaray, edited by
Mary C. Rawlinson, Sabrina L. Hom, and Serene J. Khader (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2011), pp. 111–128 (p. 116).
137. Judith Butler makes the same point in relation to Pheng Cheah and Eliza-
beth Grosz’s claim that Irigaray’s thinking permits an affirmation of relations
between the same sex: “But you are the one to provide that supplement, and
God bless you, as it were, for doing that, but then let’s claim it as the Liz
Grosz–Pheng Cheah supplement to Irigaray” (Butler, Cheah, Cornell, Grosz,
“The Future of Sexual Difference”, p. 29).
138. Ibid., p. 25. To overcome this, Shannon Winnubst claims that Irigaray must be
read in conjunction with Foucault’s genealogical methodology to bring “Iri-
garay’s insistence on sexual difference as the primary axis of subjectivity into a
historical field where other differences affect how sexual difference gets articu-
lated [and, in so doing,] further dispel the insidious possibility of Irigaray’s
reinscribing the economy of the Same in her articulations of sexual difference”
(“Exceeding Hegel and Lacan: Different Fields of Pleasure within Foucault and
Irigaray”, Hypatia, vol. 14, n. 1, 1999, pp. 13–37 [pp. 29–30]).

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 Part III

Gender Theory and Queer

Materialities

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 C HAPTER 7

Butler and Performativity:

Thinking Sex through Gender

The turn to Judith Butler’s thinking on gender introduces a number of

important alterations within our study specifically and twentieth-century
critical thinking on sexuality more generally. Historically, we move to the
end of the twentieth century; culturally we move from thinkers located in
France and Germany to one located in America; linguistically, English now
becomes the language through which the question of sexuality is engaged
with, an alteration that introduces a distinct conceptual apparatus, in so far
as we move from the focus on the question of sexuality that has marked all
previous chapters, to one that emphasises the “foundational” importance
of gender. This “concept” is absent from the conceptual apparatus of Freud,
Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, and, as I argued, Beauvoir, and while a
number of translators of Irigaray’s works have translated the French “genre”
as “gender”, Irigaray herself maintains that the two do not exactly over-
lap conceptually.1 Irigaray’s suspicion seems to be based on the conclusion
that gender is (1) too indeterminate, and (2) linked to cultural construc-
tions that all too easily risk re-enforcing phallogocentrism.2 Overcoming
this requires, on her telling, a more determinate bedrock that cannot be
constructed away; namely, the “biological” differences between the sexes.
As we saw, however, this ensures that her thinking is foreclosed within a
heteronormative schema. It also seems to implicitly depend upon a biol-
ogy/culture division.
In contrast, in this chapter, I will show that Butler holds that overcom-
ing the logics of essentialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity cannot be
done by tweaking the categories of thought that have previously been used.
Rather, we need a fundamental alteration in the logic shaping such thinking
so that sexuality is understood to be a way of acting that is inherently and
fully “constructed” rather than pre-given and limited by predefined logics

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or categories. In so doing, Butler explicitly criticises both aspects of the

essentialist-patriarchal model to question and undermine any foreclosing
of sexual/gender expression, while, in so doing, also bringing to the fore
an explicit critical questioning of heteronormativity – that is, the idea that
sexual identity and relations are necessarily defined by a masculine/femi-
nine division and/or that this form of division should be affirmed as the
model for all others forms of sexual relations – to open up and respect non-
heteronormative forms of gender sexuality.
To outline this, I focus on Butler’s Gender Trouble,3 published in 1990,
and Bodies that Matter4 (published in 1993), while utilising other texts as and
when necessary to support a point therein. Although Butler’s thinking has
developed substantially from this, especially in the new millennium where
they5 have published a plethora of works that focus on concepts such as
vulnerability,6 precarity, and precariousness,7 Butler’s early work on gender
remains both the “foundation” of their later works8 and, not surprisingly, that
which is most directly applicable to a rethinking of sexuality. For this reason,
I will focus on Butler’s analyses of the relationship between sex and gender,
performativity, and embodiment, to defend three fundamental arguments.
First, Butler’s turn to gender is premised on the attempt to undermine any
form of biological essentialism. Instead, Butler insists that gender “grounds”
sex. This depends upon a further sub-argument that takes us to the heart of
contemporary debates regarding the status and place of pre- or non-discursive
forms of matter. In contrast to the view – outlined by, for example, Beauvoir
and, on a certain reading, Irigaray – that there is an originary bodily sexuality
that is expressed culturally, Butler follows the far more radical (Lacanian) line
that the human world is intimately structured by the symbolic realm of lan-
guage and meaning. As such, not only is the biological world underpinned
by symbolic meaning, but, crucially, perceiving of a biological/symbolic divi-
sion is itself a consequence of a particular symbolic configuration. However,
in contrast to Lacan’s insistence that sexual positions are constructed from the
anchoring point of the (masculine) phallus, Butler claims that their symbolic
construction is unrestricted, with the consequence that the construction of
gender is also open-ended and heterogeneous.
Second, when Butler claims that gender is constructed, they mean it in
a very specific way based on their notion of “performativity”. I argue that
the fundamental difference between “constructivism” and “performativ-
ity” is concerned with the role of intentional agency, in so far as Butler
argues that the former is premised on a passive subject that is moulded by
the social environment, whereas the latter is based on the notion that the
subject arises as a consequence of particular social processes that it also
actively participates in. With this, Butler holds that the question of gender

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 Butler and Performativity / 189

onto-genesis cannot be resolved through the binary opposition that pitches

a founded, passive, and socially conditioned subject who has its gender
defined by others against a voluntarist position wherein a subject simply
wilfully chooses its gender. Instead, Butler maintains that the process is an
immanent one, where a socially conditioned subject also participates in the
creation of itself as a gendered self.
Third, I take up the question of the role of the body in Butler’s gender
theory by engaging with the long-standing claim that it reduces gender to
a symbolic construction that is unable to account for non-discursive forms
of materiality.9 To defend Butler, I first show that they respond to this spe-
cific criticism in Bodies that Matter by arguing that it cannot be resolved
by thinking it through a straightforward signification/materiality opposi-
tion, where one is held to be foundational for the other. Instead, Butler
argues for a particularly innovative position that insists on the fundamental
importance of symbolic meaning for our understanding of embodiment,
all the while rejecting linguistic foundationalism by recognising that there
is always a material excess to symbolic construction. Although it might be
argued that this is susceptible to the charge that Butler makes against their
critics – namely that the affirmation of an excess to the symbolic is itself
a symbolic statement and so affirms the primacy of the symbolic – Butler
argues that this only holds if we examine the issue through the lens of a
logic of binary symbolic/materiality opposition wherein one of these posi-
tions must be foundational for the other. Instead, Butler suggests that what
this issue really points to is the complexity inherent in the materiality–sig-
nification relation, in which neither grounds the other but they instead exist
in a relation of asymmetric dialectical entwinement: materiality has to be
symbolised to pass into human existence and the symbolic is, as a conse-
quence, always tied to materiality, without the latter being reducible to the
symbolic. There is then a bodily dimension to the symbolic construction of
gender, but the symbolic signification of gender cannot capture all aspects
of material being. Rather than being defined by a predetermining essence,
structure, or relation, gender-sexual identity is a constant process of social-
symbolic-embodied creation that occurs without predefinition or foreclo-
sure and, for this reason, never takes definitive finished form or corresponds
to pre-existing structures.

Sex as Gender Performativity

Butler’s Gender Trouble offers a radical critique of feminist thinking on
sexuality, as a precursor to reconfiguring such thinking around the notion
of gender. Butler starts by noting that feminist theory had tended to be

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premised on a particular notion of identity: “For the most part, femi-

nist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood
through the category of woman, who not only initiates feminist interests
and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political
representation is pursued.”10 Butler’s problem with this is that “politics and
representation are controversial terms”11 in so far as “representation serves as
the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility
and legitimacy to women as political subjects”,12 while also describing “the
normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or to dis-
tort what is assumed to be true about the category of woman”.13 In other
words, Butler’s problem with this feminist strategy is that identity is not
a priori, but a normative construction. “Feminist identity” is not, then, an
apolitical bedrock which can act as the foundation for political activity; it
is inherently political and hence changeable precisely because it is norma-
tively constituted.
While Butler admits that recent (for them) theory has started to take this
issue on board to abandon any straightforward appeal to an a priori stable
identity, Butler complains that these tend not to go far enough because they
are orientated around obtaining political recognition for a subject that is
in control of the process. This does not engage with the processes through
which such a subject is created.14 To correct this, Butler notes that their
gender theory takes aim at three dominant strands within (feminist think-
ing) on sexuality. First, the essentialist problem where sexuality is tied to
and thought from a priori stable forms of identity. Second, a heteronorma-
tive problem, where gender has often been restricted to a straightforward
masculine/feminine division; one that has “often [had] homophobic con-
sequences”.15 Third, the logic of patriarchy, wherein sexuality is reduced
to or thought from a heterosexual relation/framework structured from a
privileging of the masculine position. This can be either explicit or implicit
entailing a far subtler dependence upon a privileged foundational point.
For example, Butler argues that the heteronormativity that has tended to
mark feminist theory is a consequence of a continuing form of phallogo-
centrism, in so far as such thinking has tended to affirm a binary sexual dif-
ference that implicitly takes heteronormative relations to be foundational
for all other forms and, in so doing, continues to depend upon the logic
of hierarchy sustaining phallogocentrism. Alternatively, if feminist theory
depends upon a stable ontological (feminine) identity, it simply repeats
the same logic of hierarchy and the reduction of difference to unity found
in phallogocentrism. Furthermore, merely inverting the privileged term
does not undermine the logic shaping that relation. For this reason, Butler
explains that feminist thought has to re-evaluate its conceptual apparatus

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 Butler and Performativity / 191

“to understand how the category of ‘woman,’ the subject of feminism, is

produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which
emancipation is sought”.16
From this, Butler, somewhat paradoxically, rejects the notion that the
question of “sexuality” can and should be orientated around “sexuality”.
Instead, Butler follows Gayle Rubin17 in distinguishing between sex and
gender, to claim that the latter is determinate for the former. Whereas sex
refers to biology or embedded sexual attributes, gender refers to the socially
constructed norms and values delineating what each sex entails and the
appropriate norms of each. That gender is premised on open-ended con-
struction and is determinate for sex means that if taken “to its logical limit,
the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed
bodies and culturally constructed genders”.18 The great benefit of introduc-
ing the culturally constructed notion of gender into the conceptual matrix
is that it opens up the ways in which sexuality can be exhibited: “If gender
is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot
be said to follow from a sex in any one way.”19 Indeed, “[a]ssuming for the
moment the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction
of ‘men’ will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that ‘women’ will
interpret only female bodies . . . [T]here is also no reason to assume that
genders ought also to remain as two”.20 After all,

[w]hen the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent

of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence
that man and masculine might just as easily signify as female body as a male
one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.21

The problem that arises at this point relates to the relationship between sex
and gender. So far it might be thought that sex is a biological pre-given and
gender a cultural construct, with the former grounding the later. Butler’s
innovation is to question the innateness of biological determinations:

Can we refer to a ‘given’ sex or a ‘given’ gender without first inquiring into how
sex and/or gender is given, through what means? And what is ‘sex’ anyway?
Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist
critic to assess the scientific discourses which purport to establish such ‘facts’
for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or his-
tories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy
that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? Are the osten-
sibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses
in the service of other political and social interests?22

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Butler’s argument is that “biology”, including what it entails, is not an a

priori given, but a historical conceptual construct: “If the immutable char-
acter of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally
constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with
the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be
no distinction at all.”23 As such, sex is not something fixed and determining,
but a category that is both created and capable of resignification. Whereas
Irigaray maintains a biological sexual difference that is realised and given
meaning culturally, Butler argues that the former is itself a consequence of
(socially-performative) discourse and so concludes that it makes “no sense
. . . to define gender as the cultural interpretation of sex, if sex itself is a
gendered category”.24 For this reason, “[g]ender ought not to be conceived
merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pregiven sex (a juridical
conception); gender must also designate the very apparatus of production
whereby the sexes themselves are produced”.25 As such, “gender is not to
culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by
which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘predis-
cursive,’ prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts”.26
With this, Butler reaffirms their disagreement with Irigaray by implicitly
claiming that Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference as a biological given dis-
tinct from culture does not, as Irigaray maintains it does, describe “sex” per
se, but is a consequence of a particular culturally inscribed form of thinking
about sex. Indeed, on a related note, Butler claims that Irigaray’s distinction
between “pre-discursivity” (= biological sexual difference) and “discursiv-
ity” (= cultural production) fails to recognise that the “production of sex as
the prediscursive ought to be understood as the effect of the apparatus of
cultural construction designated by gender”.27
That sex is constructed by gender, which is open-ended, means that gen-
der is not foreclosed within a predetermining schema; its forms of expres-
sion are open. While it may take a heteronormative form, this outcome is
not predetermined; it is a consequence of a particular heteronormative form
of construction that, crucially, cannot, despite its own claims to the con-
trary, be considered definitive. The afoundationality inherent in the notion
of power underpinning Butler’s description of the normalising process of
cultural construction means that gender structures, meanings, and relations
result from the changing configurations of norms and power relations con-
stitutive of each cultural production. These are in constant movement, as
are, therefore, their effects, including gender and, by extension, sex.
However, it is important to clarify that in maintaining that sex is a conse-
quence of gender construction, Butler does not claim that gender somehow
overcomes or over-codes an already existing body: “‘the body’ is itself a

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 Butler and Performativity / 193

construction, as are the myriad ‘bodies’ that constitute the domain of gen-
dered subjects. Bodies cannot be said to have a signifiable existence prior to
the mark of their gender.”28 Rather than a straightforward hierarchal binary
model, wherein either (biological) sex grounds (culturally constructed)
gender or vice versa, Butler collapses both into “gender”, before arguing
that if the notion of “sex” is retained, it does so as a consequence of a par-
ticular configuration of “gender” not as “something” necessarily opposed to
or foundational for gender.
It is for this reason that Geoff Boucher misses the radicality of Butler’s
position when he complains that Butler works with a particularly reduction-
ist conception of “sex” that conflates “‘sexuality’ in the sense of sexual pref-
erence towards a particular gender, and ‘sexuality’ in the biological sense of
the structure of the reproductive organs”.29 His argument is that, although
Butler’s affirmation of gender may apply to the former, it simply ignores
the latter, which Boucher holds to exist independently to gender. As I have
argued, however, Butler’s point is far subtler, in so far as they maintain
that (1) sexuality as orientation is a consequence of gender construction
(= performativity), wherein each individual learns, accepts, and comports
itself in accordance with the social norms that define what that particular
society holds to be appropriate for each sexual identity, and (2) “biology”
is not simply an a priori pre-discursive foundation for gender; what biology
is and its place in relation to knowledge is a social construct. For Boucher
to think of biology and, by extension, sexuality in the manner that he does
reveals not a “truth” about sexuality per se, but the normative schema that
marks Boucher’s conception of sexuality. The issue then, for Butler, would
be to ask Boucher for the justification for his claim that we can say anything
about the content of the pre-discursive form of discourse; a question that
can only be responded to discursively and from the perspective of a cultur-
ally specific symbolic system, thereby recuperating Boucher’s affirmation of
a “pre”-discursive biological form of sexuality into symbolic construction
(= gender). For this reason, Boucher’s critique simply misses the points that
Butler is making about the constructed “nature” of gender, the symbolic
“nature” of our epistemic categories, and the body–signification/nature–
culture/materiality–language relations.
The key aspect of Butler’s proposal is that gender construction is not a
one-time process after which “gender” is fixed, but a constant one, with the
consequence that gender never coalesces into a fixed thing:

Gender is a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred, never fully

what it is at any given juncture in time. An open coalition, then, will affirm
identities that are alternately instituted and relinquished according to the

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purposes at hand; it will be an open assemblage that permits of multiple

convergences and divergences without obedience to a normative telos of
definitional closure.30

If gender ever appears or is affirmed to entail a closed, fixed identity, it is

only because it has been constructed and affirmed in that configuration.
Crucially, however, the construction does not need to take a particular
form. With this, we see that the roles traditionally assigned to the genders
are disrupted, undermined, and open-ended: masculinity is not necessarily
singular or tied to the phallus,31 while the lack of any a priori identity means
that “femininity” is not a “thing” to be correctly conceived, but a “category
[that] serve[s] as a permanently available site of contested meanings”.32 It
must also be remembered that the creation of any form of gender identity is
problematic, according to Butler, because it is necessarily premised on (an)
exclusion(s), in so far as it affirms one form of gender over others without
being able to justify that privileging because of the afoundationalism inher-
ent in the process of gender construction.

The Performativity of Gender

The question of how gender is constructed ties into another issue motivat-
ing Butler’s thinking; namely, that of agency. Traditionally, modern West-
ern philosophy has premised individual action on a foundational subject
who is understood to intentionally and freely choose or will his or her
activities and self. Butler, however, rejects this conception of the subject to
instead claim that the subject is an effect of social processes and norms.33
Rather than being something fixed and determinate, gender is brought forth
by the norms of society. The result is a conception of gendered subjectivity
as socially embedded, rather than socially unencumbered; founded, rather
than foundational; and constituted, rather than constituting. It also ensures
that gender construction is an inherently normative process.
Importantly, Butler clarifies that “normativity” has, at least, two senses, in
so far as it can be used “to describe the mundane violence performed by cer-
tain kinds of gender ideals”34 or it can pertain “to ethical justification, how it
is established, and what concrete consequences proceed thereform”.35 In other
words, the normative process entails both a certain privileging of a particu-
lar normative schema over others and some attempt to provide a rationale to
justify that schema. Rather than a priori, both aspects are constructions from
within the premises of the affirmed normative schema. From this, each schema
produces the forms and norms through which gender can be expressed as well
as the punishments for violating the approved norms. In so doing and

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 Butler and Performativity / 195

[t]o the extent the gender norms (ideal dimorphism, heterosexual comple-
mentarity of bodies, ideals and rule of proper and improper masculinity and
femininity, many of which are underwritten by racial codes of purity and
taboos against miscegenation) establish what will and will not be intelligibly
human, what will and will not be considered to be ‘real,’ they establish the
ontological field in which bodies may be given legitimate expression.36

Ontological categories are not then fixed, determined, or a priori, but result
a posteriori from the social norms created from and through social inter-
actions. Ontology, for Butler, does not then describe fixed substances; it
describes an ongoing, open-ended process through which bodies become
without, strictly speaking, becoming anything determinate. This is not a
one-time movement, but a continuous process that occurs without fixed
foundation and takes place through the social norms and processes of nor-
malisation inherent in social existence.
Crucially, a social norm is “not the same as a rule, and it is not the same
as a law”.37 Whereas rules and laws are predetermined and formal, “[a] norm
operates within social practices as the implicit standard of normalization”.38
These norms are not created by the subject, but pre-exist the subject’s appear-
ance; indeed, the subject is born into and created from the norms supporting
it. As such,

[w]e come into the world on the condition that the social world is already
there, laying the ground for us. This implies that I cannot persist without
norms of recognition that support my persistence: the sense of possibility
pertaining to me must first be imagined from somewhere else before I can
begin to imagine myself.39

The subject is not then self-constituting; it is a consequence of the norms

governing and creating social practices through which “it” expresses itself.
Furthermore, the subject only becomes a subject by virtue of being recognised
socially; a process that requires acceptance of and conformity to the accepted
norms. For this reason, the subject almost instantly is subjected to a nor-
malisation process that brings it into the paradigm delineating the acceptable
forms of behaviour, appearance, and thought of its society. It is through this
process that the “subject” becomes subjugated into a gendered subject who is
subject to the “norms, ideas and ideals [that] hold sway over embodied life
[to] provide coercive criteria for normal ‘men’ and ‘women’”.40
Language plays a fundamental role in both the instantiation and trans-
mission of social norms/practices. There is not a linear process to this,
where, for example, first come norms then language or vice versa; rather,

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language and norms are co-constituting. In turn, this co-constitution founds

the subject by conceiving of “it” in a particular way to bring the subject forth
in a way that is socially acceptable, while what is considered to be socially
acceptable depends upon and changes with and through subjective actions.
Butler makes this point by appealing to Althusser’s notion of “interpella-
tion”41 – the process through which a subject is created by responding to
being hailed in a particular way – to show how it works in relation to the
creation of gender. Butler’s point is that the subject is not gendered and
then goes out to the world; such a view risks re-instantiating the founda-
tional subject. The gendered subject is created through the use of language,
which, in turn, reflects and re-enforces social norms.
To show this, Butler points to “the medical interpellation which (the
recent example of the sonogram not withstanding) shifts an infant from an
‘it’ to a ‘she’ or a ‘he,’ and in that naming, the girl is ‘girled,’ brought into the
domain of language and kinship through the interpellation of gender”.42
This is not a one-time event; “th[e] founding interpellation is reiterated by
various authorities and throughout various intervals of time to reinforce or
contest naturalized effect. The naming is at once the setting of a boundary,
and also the repeated inculcation of a norm.”43 The gender naming does
not simply produce a label, but attributes an entire set of norms to dictate
activities and practices that must be continually enacted to remain viable.
As such, Butler explains that “[t]o the extent that the naming of the ‘girl’ is
transitive, that is, initiates the process by which a certain ‘girling’ is com-
pelled, the term or, rather, its symbolic power, governs the formation of a
corporeally enacted femininity that never fully approximates the norm”.44
Importantly, there is always a “gap” between the norm-demand and its
realisation through bodily practices. This ensures that the “girl” is never “girly”
enough, in so far as she can never fully live up to the normative ideal even
though she remains under constant pressure to do so. Butler’s conclusion is
that “[f]emininity is . . . not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation
of a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of
discipline, regulation, punishment”.45 Through a complex and ongoing net-
work of social practices, a particular normative framework is constructed and
“imposed” onto the subject to ensure that “it” acts in a particular way.
Again, however, rather than pre-existing or transcending this social field,
the subject is both immersed in the social field and, indeed, constructed
immanently from and through it: “th[e] citation of the gender norm is nec-
essary in order to qualify as a ‘one,’ to become viable as a ‘one,’ where sub-
ject-formation is dependent on the prior operation of legitimating social
norms”.46 For this reason, “[t]he sign, understood as a gender imperative
– ’girl!’ – reads less as an assignment than as a command and, as such,
produces its own insubordinations”.47 Because the “imposition” constructs

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 Butler and Performativity / 197

the subject, the limitations inherent in it – in so far as the subject is chan-

nelled towards one ideal at the expense of alternatives – are also, somewhat
paradoxically, the conditions through which the subject can bend, alter, or
undermine those same norms to create possibilities and opportunities for
itself. As Butler puts it, “by being called a name, one is also, paradoxically,
given a certain possibility for social existence, initiated into a temporal life
of language that exceeds prior purposes that animate that call”.48
Importantly, social norms are not simply external to and imposed onto
subjects in a linear process. The norm–subject relation is far more compli-
cated and dialectically entwined. While the subject is an effect of social norms,
social norms themselves only exist because they are adopted and re-enacted
by the subjects they create. Gender norms are not then determinate for the
subject constructed nor are they “a set of free-floating attributes”.49 “[G]ender
is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-
exist the deed”.50 Instead the subject is brought to existence through those
norms and, indeed, in the same “act” of being brought forth also perpetuates
those norms through the actions perpetuated from them. So, to reiterate, gen-
der is not the consequence of and does not entail the representation of a prior
identity; “[t]here is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender”,51
“identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said
to be its results”.52 Instead of being representational, gender is expressive, but
rather than expressing a predetermined form of identity it is a non-foreclosed,
immanent expression of the social norms that create the subject but depend
for their expression on the subject’s reiteration of them. As such, gender con-
struction entails “acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, [that are]
performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise pur-
port to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal
signs and other discursive means”.53
The construction that gives rise to gender is then of a particular form;
rather than “construction” in the sense of a social imposition onto a passive
body, “performativity” points to the notion that “the gendered body . . .
has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its
reality”.54 Gender is performatively constituted through the practical doing
of the social norms that bring the subject to exist and only through the way
it practices the social norms does the subject come to exist. For this reason,
Joris Vlieghe explains that

[t]he existence of a social order and the destruction of different identities

and hierarchal positions within that order are thus wholly dependent upon
the constant repetition or even better re-enactment of specific roles and their
consolidated meanings: performing those roles again and again, a social
agent gets reproduced.55

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There is no predetermined roadmap for how this will play out; “nothing
determines me in advance – I am not formed once and for all but continually
and repeatedly. I am still being formed as I form myself in the here and now.
And my own self-formative activity . . . becomes part of that ongoing forma-
tive process. I am never simply formed, nor I am ever fully self-forming.”56
With this, Butler rejects any notion of a fixed foundation to social
norms and subjective identity: social norms create the subject but only exist
because they are performatively reiterated by the subjects they create; in
turn, subjects are grounded in social norms, but, because norms are a con-
sequence of the actions and practices of all other subjects constitutive of
and supporting social norms, the subject is also constituted through and
as a process of ongoing social becoming. Rather than stability and order,
there is only ever, at both the social and subjective levels, flux and the con-
tinuous construction–destruction of norms and identities. Indeed, this ties
into Butler’s preference for the pronouns “they/them” instead of “she/her”,
which, generally speaking, (1) supports Butler’s insistence regarding the
constituting role that language plays in “constructing” material reality, (2)
highlights the multidimensionality of gender, (3) undercuts the traditional
heteronormative gender binary opposition, and (4) performs a remaking
of the norms that define both the parameters of gender assignation and the
forms of gender that are considered to be socially acceptable.
However, while the notion of “performativity” is fundamental to But-
ler’s gender theory, they latterly came to admit that “[i]t is difficult to
say precisely what ‘performativity’ is not only because my own views on
what ‘performativity’ might mean have changed over time, most often in
response to excellent criticisms, but because so many others have taken it
up and give it their own formulations”.57 Nevertheless, in the 2010 essay
“Performative Agency”, Butler identifies four aspects to it. First, “performa-
tivity seeks to counter a certain kind of positivism according to which we
might begin with already delimited understandings of what gender, the
state, and the economy are”.58 With this, Butler rejects the notion of a static
predetermined identity, a position that depends upon and re-enforces
their anti-essentialism. Second, “performativity works, when it works, to
counter a certain metaphysical presumption about culturally constructed
categories, and to draw our attention to the diverse mechanism of con-
struction”.59 Third, “performativity starts to describe a set of processes that
produce ontological effects, that is, that work to bring into being certain
kinds of realities or, fourthly, that lead to certain kinds of socially binding
consequences”.60
Crucially, these normalising procedures condition but do not determine
gender expression. Subjects “come into the world on the condition that

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 Butler and Performativity / 199

the social world is already there, laying the groundwork for us”,61 but the
norms through which the subject comes to be also need to be re-instanti-
ated through the practical actions of the subjects created from them, which,
as noted, are conditioned but not determined by previous instantiations of
those norms. However, contra Lois McNay,62 reiteration is never simply a
mechanical reproduction of the same. Although “gender is a kind of doing,
an incessant activity performed, in part, without one’s knowing and with-
out one’s willing, it is not for that reason automatic or mechanical. On the
contrary, it is the practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint.”63
The subject can always practise its constituting gender norms in a multitude
of different ways that are constantly open to revision.
Furthermore, because performativity is practice-based, it is intimately
tied up with and dependent upon the body; indeed, Butler calls gender “the
repeated stylization of the body [through] a set of repeated acts within a
highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appear-
ance of substance, of a natural sort of being”.64 The body is not however
preformed as if there were something divorced from it doing the perform-
ing, nor is there anything like “a pure body”65 devoid of signification and
social norms; the body is always a consequence of the performative gender
practices learnt and perpetuated as the subject is formed by and negotiates
the social norms constitutive of the social body.
With this, Butler points to a particular conception of subjective inten-
tional agency that rejects voluntarism, wherein the foundational sub-
ject simply chooses and wills its activity and ends. The subject is always
embedded within and an effect of social norms, but it is not determined
by those norms. Instead, Butler points to a specific conception of power
to explain that agency is always possible but only from “within” the con-
tours that define the expression of power relations.66 Rather than simply
being impositional on a pre-existing subject, Butler follows Foucault in
holding that power is constitutive of reality, an ongoing becoming, and
fundamentally creative.67 There is no such thing as escaping from power
altogether, nor is power something possessed. Power is constituted by
productive relations that express a world including subjects. The key
point, however, is that the expression of power (through social norms
for example) happens “to” subjects and, at the same time, depends upon
being reiterated by those “same” subjects. Social norms need to be reiter-
ated by those subjects and are kept alive when subjects act in accordance
with them. It is in the momentary change that takes place from being
subjected by power to acting through power that Butler locates agency.
At the moment of reiteration, the subject acts as a relay for the expres-
sion of power relations and so can “choose” how to perpetuate them; a

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“choice” that has the potential to push them in different directions.68 For
this reason, Butler explains that

[p]erformativity describes th[e] relation of being implicated in that which

one opposes, this turning of power against itself to produce alternative
modalities of power, to establish a kind of political constestation that is not
a ‘pure’ opposition, a ‘transcendence’ of contemporary relations of power,
but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure.69

The Question of the Body

Butler’s gender theory therefore decentres the subject from the founda-
tional status it has long had within Western philosophy to embed “it”
within constantly changing networks of social-symbolic relations. Hold-
ing that sexuality is a consequence of the socio-culturally constructed per-
formative practices that generate and sustain social norms undercuts any
notion of substantive essentialism and any foreclosing of sexuality within
predetermined schemas. In so doing, Butler challenges the dependence on
and appeal to restrictive logical parameters that limit sexuality to certain
normative schemas at the expense of others. Instead, focusing on gen-
der opens up the parameters through which sexuality can be thought and
expressed. Given the lack of foundation to justify a particular series of
norms, Butler actively resists the temptation to affirm one form of sexual
identity or normative schema; doing so would simply affirm a unitary
sexual identity and so repeat the error to be overcome. The aim is to
remove obstacles to sexual (gender) expression so that individuals are
liberated from the violence and restrictions that have traditionally accom-
panied sexual norms.70
However, while the influence of Butler’s gender theory has been substan-
tial, there is one issue that has continued to plague its reception, in so far as
it has long been concluded that tying sexuality to the cultural production of
gender norms creates a free-floating form of sexual identity that distorts or
simply annihilates the material body by reducing it to an idealistic symbolic
creation. Susan Bordo, for example, objects that in Butler’s gender theory
“language swallows everything up”,71 Lois McNay complains that it “tends
to valorize the action of resignification per se”,72 and Seyla Benhabib73 and
Patricia Clough74 conclude that it is simply unable to adequately account
for the material body. Even when it is accepted that Butler does not affirm
linguistic idealism, Butler’s account of materiality is still rejected or found
to be too language-orientated: Vicki Kirby, for example, charges that Butler
offers an analysis of the materiality of textuality and not a “materiality of

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 Butler and Performativity / 201

matter”,75 which leads Veronica Vasterling to conclude that it “has negative

consequences for a feminist and queer theory of the body”.76
These conclusions are premised on two main assumptions. First, there
is an idealism/materialism distinction underpinning Butler’s schema, with
language tied to the former and the body to the latter. And, second, But-
ler’s gender theory is premised on a simple act of symbolic resignification,
with the consequence that Butler’s critics conclude that Butler affirms a
“mere” idealistic analysis that ignores or, worse, rejects, the importance of
materiality. In what follows, however, I defend Butler against these charges
by first showing that Butler does not reduce performativity to a linguistic
activity; performativity is a social practice with a linguistic component and
is therefore premised on the actions and interactions of socially-induced
bodies. I then argue that the charge that Butler operates through a binary
opposition attributes to Butler’s thinking a position that Butler explicitly
rejects. Rather than simply accepting and operating through a linguistic/
materialism opposition, Butler works to show that the two are entwined;
a conclusion that means that any linguistic alteration has material signifi-
cance and vice versa.
To reiterate then, according to Butler, the body is not predefined by a
natural sex/gender; the body is the site where and through gender perfor-
mativity immanently takes place and, indeed, is that which is shaped and
reshaped by such gender performance. Gender signifies an entire way of
being; one that is never fixed or determined but always reconstructed in
each act. Butler calls it “a corporeal style”77 and explains that “[g]ender is the
repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid
regulatory frame that congeals over time to produce the appearance of sub-
stance, of a natural sort of being”.78 Importantly, while “there are individual
bodies that enact these significations by becoming stylized into gendered
modes, this ‘action’ is a public action [with] temporal and collective dimen-
sions”.79 This social aspect regulates the ways in which gender identities and
performance can be expressed within a particular milieu.
However, as noted, rather than an individual who acts within a soci-
ety or a society that determines individual habits, Butler’s notion of the
individual–society relation is a complex one wherein each is entwined and
conditions, without determining, the other. There is no straightforward
opposition between them nor is the relationship structured from a foun-
dational logic where one simply grounds the other. Given the complexity
of the multiple “parts” (social, symbolic, psychic, and so on) coalescing
through it, Butler explains that the body is never singular; rather, “‘the body’
is itself a construction, as are the myriad ‘bodies’ that constitute the domain
of gendered subjects. Bodies cannot be said to have a signifiable existence

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prior to the mark of their gender.”80 As such, the question becomes: “To
what extent does the body come into being in and through the mark(s)
of gender?”81
Butler’s initial response in Gender Trouble was, as noted, often taken
to be problematic because it seems to fold the body into the symbolic
construction inherent in gender. After all, the notion of “sex” and, with
it, considerations of biology, seem to disappear from the equation to be
replaced with or collapsed into gender (re-)significations. Such a con-
clusion is however based on the notion that Butler’s analysis operates
through a binary (sex/gender, essence/constructivist) opposition that sim-
ply inverts the privileged term so that the latter options ground the former.
In contrast, Butler maintains that “performativity” cannot be constrained
within a binary opposition; thinking of gender/sex, culture/nature in
terms of a binary opposition is itself the result of a symbolic construc-
tion that constrains the debate within those terms and that logic. Butler’s
notion of performativity undermines this presupposition by showing
that each term and the relation between them is constructed through its
entwinement with the other.
To clarify their position, Butler returns to the question of performativity
in Bodies that Matter to insist that if we are to think the body as constructed
then such action “demands a rethinking of the meaning of construction
itself”.82 In so doing, Butler more closely examines the “nature” of perfor-
mativity to show the ways in which performativity is nexal, operating at
the intersection of the psyche, the social, and the symbolic. This, in turn,
requires renewed focus on the question of embodiment to identify how it
both “constructs” and constrains performativity.
There are, at least, two key issues to this. First, Butler rejects the notion
that materiality describes an inert substance or “a site or surface”.83 For this
reason, the claim that Butler starts from the notion of a passive body is
simply mistaken.84 Materiality, and hence embodiment, is/are never passive
according to Butler; it always entails “a process of materialization that stabilizes
over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter”.85
This stabilisation process is never completed. Rather than a passive “thing”,
materiality refers to a process; a verb not a noun.
Second, materialisation always has to be thought through its imma-
nent relationship to regulatory powers that shape and alter its expression:
“[embodiment] is part of a regulatory practice that produces the bodies
it governs, that is, whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of pro-
ductive power; the power to produce – demarcate, circulate, differenti-
ate – the bodies it controls”.86 Returning to the notion of “sex” in Gender
Trouble, Butler explains that “‘sex’ is an ideal construct which is forcibly

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 Butler and Performativity / 203

materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a

body, but a process whose regulatory norms materialize ‘sex’ and achieve
this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms.”87
Importantly, not only do “bodies never quite comply with the norms by
which their materialization is impelled”,88 but it is precisely because they
do not, and indeed materialisation must be continuously reiterated, that
the body multiplies and changes and alternative possibilities for material
expression constantly open up.
This brings forth a number of revisions in Butler’s gender theory. First, it
demands “the recasting of the matter of bodies as the effect of a dynamic of
power, such that the matter of bodies will be indissociable from the regula-
tory norms that govern their materialization and the signification of those
material effects”.89 Second, performativity must be understood “not as the
act by which a subject brings into being what she/he names, but, rather,
as that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it
regulates and constrains”.90 Third, “the construal of ‘sex’ [must] no longer
[be thought] as a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artifi-
cially imposed, but as a cultural norm which governs the materialization
of bodies”.91 Fourth, there must be “a rethinking of the process by which
a bodily norm is assumed, appropriated, taken on as not, strictly speaking,
undergone by a subject, but rather that the subject, the speaking ‘I,’ is formed
by virtue of having gone through such a process of assuming a sex”.92 And,
finally, this process must be linked to “the question of identification, and . . .
the discursive means by which the heterosexual imperative enables certain
sexed identifications and forecloses and/or disavows other identifications”.93
It is here that Butler’s use of Althusser’s notion of “interpellation”94 once more
enters the scene to reaffirm Butler’s point that signification “physically” cre-
ates the one being signified. Specifically, and as noted, Butler identifies the
ways in which newborn babies are gendered by being designated as “boy”
or “girl”, with this shifting the “‘it’ to a “she’ or a ‘he,’ and [where] in that
naming, the girl is ‘girled,’ brought into the domain of language and kin-
ship through the interpellation of gender”.95 Through this, signification (the
name) becomes material (it literally creates the girl with all the expectations
and norms that this entails for that signifying regime), while matter gains
signification and comes to matter (the “it” becomes a “girl” with all the
significance that entails for that particular socio-symbolic system).
According to Butler, therefore, the material–signification relation-
ship has onto-epistemic importance: ontologically, signification and matter
become what they are through each other; neither pre-exists the relation,
which means that, second, epistemologically, what a thing is depends, in a
very strong sense, on how it is signified. Butler warns, however, that this

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does not reduce matter to signification: “To claim that discourse is forma-
tive is not to claim that it originates, causes, or exhaustively composes that
which it concedes; rather it is to claim that there is no reference to a pure
body which is not at the same time a further formation of the body.”96
Instead of operating through a binary opposition between a material body
and an immaterial signifier, body and signifier are entwined. As Butler
explains in the 1995 essay “Contingent Foundations”, “the options for
theory are not exhausted by presuming materiality, on the one hand, and
negating materiality, on the other”.97 Deconstructing the binary opposition
between materiality and signification shows the performative entwinement
of both and “does not freeze, banish, render useless, or deplete of meaning
the usage of the term [bodies]; on the contrary, it provides the conditions
to mobilize the signifier in the service of an alternative production”.98 Cru-
cially, however, Butler clarifies that “[t]his is not to say that the materiality
of bodies is simply and only a linguistic effect which is reducible to a set
of signifiers. Such a distinction overlooks the materiality of the signifier
itself”99 and “also fails to understand materiality as that which is bound up
with signification from the start”.100
Whereas Dorothea Olkowski finds this circularity “frustrating”101 and
demands an analytic that will “unravel these terms”,102 Butler’s point is that
the foundationalism that such a demand depends upon ignores the rela-
tionality through which meaning and by extension “things” are generated:
materiality cannot be thought devoid of signification, while signification, in
literally “constructing” being, is inherently material. Neither term can be,
strictly speaking, divorced from or collapsed into the other to affirm a foun-
dational materiality or signification. Although different, materiality and sig-
nification have to be thought through their constitutive entwinement. This
is difficult and is why Butler confesses that “I am not a very good materialist.
Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about lan-
guage.”103 While it might be thought that this confirms the charge that Butler
is a linguistic idealist, Butler quickly clarifies that “[t]his is not because I
think the body is reducible to language; it is not”.104 Such a conclusion arises
from fallaciously thinking of the relationship in terms of a binary opposition
that fails to appreciate the entwinement of matter and signification wherein
“[l]anguage emerges from the body, constituting an emission of sorts. The
body is that upon which language falters, and the body carries its own signs,
its own signifiers, in ways that remain largely unconscious.”105 While signifi-
cation is material and materiality is revealed through signification, they are
not two parts that join to form a whole. Rather, Butler insists that “it must
be possible to claim that the body is not known or identifiable apart from
the linguistic coordinates that establish the boundaries of the body – without

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 Butler and Performativity / 205

thereby claiming that the body is nothing other than the language by which
it is known”.106 What this looks like is necessarily left open, namely because
“it” will take different forms, but Butler’s conclusion is that “[a]lthough the
body depends on language to be known, the body also exceeds every pos-
sible linguistic effort of capture”.107
The problem, of course, is that, on Butler’s telling, this “pre-discursive
body” can never be known – an action that requires signification – and
so, strictly speaking, cannot be posited as that which is distinct from dis-
cursivity. After all, it is only by passing into language that “a certain social
existence of the body first becomes possible”.108 Whereas this appears to
posit two bodies – one “pre”-discursive and another that is socio-discur-
sive – Butler is quick to point out that this thought of “a body that has not
yet been given social definition [is] an impossible scene”109 for it asks us to
signify something that cannot be signified. Nevertheless, Butler maintains
that this pre-discursive body must be posited to avoid the charge of (1)
linguistic idealism and/or (2) foundationalism: the materiality of the sig-
nifier points to an excessive material “sphere” other than signification, but
yet this “other” cannot be symbolised to ground signification; “it” is purely
other. Yet, as Butler notes, this pure otherness is immediately undermined
by its positing, which returns “it” to signification: “To posit a materiality
outside of language is still to posit that materiality, and the materiality
so posited will retain that positing as its constitutive condition.”110 Again,
while this may be thought to affirm the primacy of signification, signifi-
cation is, as she previous noted, always conditioned by a material excess
that, paradoxically, cannot be signified but yet in being posited is always
tied (without being reduced) to signification. What might be thought to
be a relatively simple choice between affirming signification or affirming
materiality proves to be far more complex: the simple affirmation of either
option actually reveals its paradoxical entwinement with the “other” to, in
so doing, unmask the often unappreciated complexity of the materiality–
signification relationship.

Concluding Remarks
With this, Butler’s gender theory marks an important movement in contem-
porary critical interrogations into sexuality that alters the terms of the debate
away from “sexuality” per se – that is, sexuality as a pre-existing “thing” to
be studied – to a discussion of the ways in which sexuality is assembled
socially, symbolically, and psychically through the performative construc-
tion of gender. Indeed, Butler’s thinking is something of the “hinge” upon
which contemporary engagements with the constructed nature of sexuality

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are premised; that is, Butler’s gender theory is either affirmed or the ground
from which alternatives are developed.
This is fundamentally because Butler goes further than the other think-
ers that I have engaged with in undermining the foreclosure of sexuality
within predetermined schemas. By arguing that sexuality is a consequence
of (gender) cultural performativity, Butler rejects any appeal to an essential
pre-given biological form of sexuality, claiming that such a description does
not capture a pre-existing reality to be accurately represented but unjustifi-
ably imposes one constructed model of sexuality as the only one. With this,
Butler also rejects representational models of becoming – where ontological
becoming is conditioned by and constrained within a prior ahistoric model
– to instead affirm a model of immanent expressive becoming. As such,
there is no prior existing form of sexuality that grounds individual action or
being and must be accurately represented symbolically. Instead, sexuality
is held to be nothing other than a symbolic construction, in so far as what
sexuality is depends upon how it is constructed socially and performatively.
Any claim to stable and static essential sexual characteristics is premised
on a “false” ontology that fails to recognise that there is no pre-existing
reality, only the construction of an ever-changing reality that is taken to be
“reality”. While this leads to the psychoanalytic question of why that par-
ticular symbolic construction is valued over others, Butler’s more general
point is that, as symbolic constructions, there are no a priori categories or
schemas through which this has to take place. Sexuality is never necessarily
foreclosed within predetermining categories.
With this, Butler, second, argues that sexuality is a normative social-
symbolic construct rather than a biological pre-given one. Because sym-
bolic systems are open-ended, the norms generated by them cannot ever be
closed, determinate, or fixed. They are and must be constantly re-enforced
through the actions and interactions of the subjects they create. The moment
of reiteration is the moment when those norms can be altered; a process
that can be explicit or subtle. As a consequence, individuals never relate to
and perform gender norms in exactly the same way. Such norms are always
capable of being subverted and altered and, crucially, that possibility is inte-
gral to the functioning of gender norms themselves. For Butler, this ensures
that sexuality is not a predefined form of being, but a process in which we
are taught what is and is not socially acceptable. The afoundationality of
that normalisation process calls into question any definitive response,
all the while reminding us that alternative normalisation possibilities are
also available.
By claiming that the onto-genetic field is indeterminate, Butler, third,
not only rejects any foreclosing of sexuality within predetermined schemas,

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 Butler and Performativity / 207

but, in so doing, also undermines the logic of patriarchy that has long dom-
inated Western thinking on the topic. Because sexuality is performatively
constructed without a priori foundations, not only do the sexual positions
have to be created but there is no reason why (1) the masculine should be
valued over the feminine, thereby undermining any a priori affirmation of
patriarchy, or, crucially, (2) why sexuality and sexual relations need to be
limited to a masculine/feminine binary opposition. With this, Butler intro-
duces a conceptual innovation to the historical debate, in so far as, while
the other thinkers I have engaged with have called into question aspects of
the essentialist-patriarchal model of sexuality but have tended to continue
to affirm one aspect while doing so, Butler not only explicitly rejects both
the logics of essentialism and patriarchy, but also demonstrates that there
is a “third” problem that accompanies this critique but which has been
almost completely ignored by the philosophical tradition: the question of
heteronormativity, which occurs when sexuality is reduced to a masculine/
feminine division that is taken to be the only appropriate and legitimate
form of sexual relation. Whereas the other critical commentators we have
examined never discuss this explicitly, instead appearing to take it for
granted that sexuality is principally structured around a heteronormative
matrix, Butler points out that, if sexuality is a form of gender construction
without a priori forms that foreclose “it”, then there is no reason to think
that sexuality must be structured around the masculine/feminine division
or that this division should be privileged over others.
This is important because it explicitly questions the privileging of heter-
onormativity to accept the validity of alternative forms of sexuality, and, in
so doing, calls attention to the elasticity of gender expressions and, by exten-
sion, sexuality. However, it does not simply point to the validity of homo-
sexuality; doing so would risk reducing sexuality to hetero- and homosexual
forms. Butler empties the conceptual space from predeterminations to open
up the possibilities for gender/sexual expression to include intersex, trans*,
and, more generally, gender fluidity wherein individuals move throughout
and across sexual identities, which will become increasingly important as
thinking on sexuality moves towards queer theory and the abandonment of
any form of determinate (sexual) identity.
These developments do however depend upon a certain critical appro-
priation of and distancing from Butler’s thinking, particularly regarding the
relationship between symbolic construction and materiality. As noted, a
number of critics charged Butler’s thinking with linguistic reductionism that
was unable to take into consideration the materiality of embodiment.111 I
defended Butler against this charge by showing Butler is are aware of this
criticism and explicitly rejects it by rethinking the way in which materiality

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and signification work together to create “the body” – the body can only be
known through signification, but yet cannot be held to be reducible to sig-
nification; there is always an excessive unknowable aspect to this material-
ity–signification construction – but Butler’s point does lead to something of
an admitted paradox, in so far as the claim that the body cannot be reduced
to signification is itself a statement from a particular system of significa-
tion and so returns us to the fundamental importance of signification. In
other words, Butler’s affirmation of a pre-discursive material excess to evade
the charge of linguistic idealism results, somewhat paradoxically, in the
recuperation of this excess into the symbolic realm in a way that seems to
reaffirm the foundationality of the symbolic linguistic realm.
Butler engages with this paradox and indeed resolves to leave it open to
force us to think it in all its contradictions, but others have not been so keen
on such a strategy, instead claiming that the recuperation of the material
excess into the symbolic reveals Butler’s continuing privileging of the lin-
guistic over the material. I have argued that this is only so if Butler’s think-
ing on the materiality–symbolic relation is thought from a foundationalist
logic of binary opposition so that each aspect is held to be distinct from the
other with one grounding the relation – both positions which are explicitly
rejected by Butler – but the perceived failure of Butler’s gender theory to
adequately account for the material excess that escapes every symbolic con-
struction contributed to the renewed focus on materiality that has marked
the new millennium.
For Butler, this risks re-instantiating the binary materiality/signification
logic of oppositions to be overcome, but for representatives of this “new
materialism”112 – a term that groups together a heterogeneous group of
thinkers113 – focusing on “materiality” and thinking it in terms of emer-
gent, non-binary processes (1) shows the fallacy inherent in any appeals to
static forms of identity, and (2) undermines the anthropocentrism inherent
in Butler’s gender theory, wherein norms affirming a fixed sexual identity
are only overcome through an act of human symbolic construction. Indeed,
whereas Butler’s gender theory seems to accept that some form of gender
identity is inevitable and even largely unproblematic as long as we also
recognise that such identity is never fixed or determinate, proponents of the
materialist turn are guided by the stronger claim that no form of identity is
acceptable because it has no basis in reality given that materiality is defined
by an ongoing process of emergent non-binary becoming. They agree with
Butler that there is no foundational identity or schema to constrain gender,
but argue that this is not because individual action deconstructs a symbolic
system that holds this to be the case; it is because of the emergent, non-
binary processes inherent in matter’s ontological constitution, a position

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 Butler and Performativity / 209

that rejects the existence, at any stage, of a clear-cut singular sexual or gen-
der identity. The following chapter takes this up through the agential real-
ism of Karen Barad; a development that moves critical thinking on sexuality
from gender performativity to queer materialities.

Notes
1. See, for example, Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
2. In an important endnote in the 1991 essay “A Bridge between Two Irreducible
to Each Other” (in Why Different?: A Culture of Two Subjects, edited by Luce
Irigaray and Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Camille Collins (New York: Semiotext(e),
2000), pp. 57–62), Irigaray explains that “I often use the word ‘sex’ for the sexed
identity. This doesn’t designate the sexual per se, in particular genitality, rather
the woman being and the man being. The word ‘gender’ is often understood as
already codified by language and culture; it thus runs the risk of perpetuating
the existing hierarchy between men and women” (p. 59n14).
3. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Second
edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999).
4. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1993).
5. As explained in the Introduction, Butler identifies as “they/their” rather than
“she/her”. This (1) ties into Butler’s insistence on the important role that
language plays in “constructing” material reality, (2) highlights the multidi-
mensionality of gender, (3) undercuts the traditional heteronormative gender
binary opposition, and (4) performs a remaking of the norms that define
gender expression.
6. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London:
Verso, 2006), pp. 19–49.
7. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Life is Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), p. 10.
8. This issue has been somewhat controversial within the literature. For example,
Bonnie Honnig (Antigone Interrupted [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013], pp. 43–46) and Catherine Mills (“Normative Violence, Vulnerability,
and Responsibility”, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 18,
n. 2, 2007, pp. 133–156), have insisted on a fundamental rupture between
Butler’s early work on gender and later work on ethics. In contrast, Emma Ingala
(“From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions of the Political”, in
Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Gavin Rae and
Emma Ingala [Abingdon: Routledge, 2018], pp. 35–54) and also Butler (Giving
an Account of Oneself [New York: Fordham University Press, 2005], p. 3) reject
such a division.
9. Seyla Benhabib, “Subjectivity, Historiography, and Politics”, in Seyla Benhabib,
Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, Feminist Contentions: A Philo-
sophical Exchange (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995), pp. 107–126 (p. 109); Susan

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Bordo, Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1993), p. 291; Patricia Ticineto Clough, “Intro-
duction”, in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, edited by Patricia Ticineto
Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 1–33
(p. 8); Lois McNay, “Subject, Psyche, and Agency: The Work of Judith Butler”,
Theory, Culture, and Society, vol. 16, n. 2, 1999, pp. 175–193; Vicki Kirby, “When
All That is Solid Melts into Language: Judith Butler and the Question of
Matter”, International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, vol. 7, n. 4, 2002,
pp. 265–280 (p. 269); Veronica Vasterling, “Butler’s Sophisticated Constructivism:
A Critical Assessment”, Hypatia, vol. 14, n. 3, 1999, pp. 17–38 (p. 19).
10. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 2.
11. Ibid., p. 2.
12. Ibid., p. 2.
13. Ibid., p. 2.
14. Ibid., p. 2.
15. Ibid., p. viii.
16. Ibid., p. 4.
17. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexuality”, in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Feminist Sexuality, edited by Carol
S. Vance (Abingdon: Routledge, 1984), pp. 267–319 (p. 308).
18. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 9.
19. Ibid., p. 9.
20. Ibid., p. 9.
21. Ibid., p. 9.
22. Ibid., p. 9.
23. Ibid., pp. 9–10.
24. Ibid., p. 10.
25. Ibid., p. 10.
26. Ibid., p. 10.
27. Ibid., p. 10.
28. Ibid., p. 12.
29. Geoff Boucher, “Judith Butler’s Postmodern Existentialism: A Critical Analysis”,
Philosophy Today, vol. 48, n. 4, 2004, pp. 355–369 (p. 358).
30. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 22.
31. Ibid., p. 18.
32. Ibid., p. 21.
33. Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations”, in Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler,
Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange
(Abingdon: Routledge, 1995), pp. 35–58 (p. 36).
34. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. xx.
35. Ibid., p. xxi.
36. Ibid., p. xxv.
37. Judith Butler, “Gender Regulations”, in Undoing Gender (Abingdon: Routledge,
2004), pp. 40–56 (p. 41).
38. Ibid., p. 41.

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 Butler and Performativity / 211

39. Judith Butler, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, in Undoing
Gender (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), pp. 17–39 (p. 32).
40. Judith Butler, “The Question of Social Transformation”, in Undoing Gender
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), pp. 204–231 (p. 206).
41. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Toward an
Investigation)”, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), pp. 85–126 (p. 118).
42. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. xvii.
43. Ibid., p. xvii.
44. Ibid., p. 177.
45. Ibid., p. 177.
46. Ibid., p. 177.
47. Ibid., p. 181.
48. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Abingdon: Rout-
ledge, 1997), p. 2.
49. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 34.
50. Ibid., p. 34.
51. Ibid., p. 34.
52. Ibid., p. 34.
53. Ibid., p. 185.
54. Ibid., p. 185.
55. Joris Vlieghe, “Foucault, Butler, and Corporeal Experience: Taking Social
Critique beyond Phenomenology and Judgement”, Philosophy and Social Criticism,
vol. 40, n. 10, 2014, pp. 1019–1035 (p. 1022).
56. Judith Butler, “Introduction”, in Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2015), pp. 1–16 (p. 6).
57. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. xv.
58. Judith Butler, “Performative Agency”, Journal of Cultural Economy, vol. 3, n. 2,
2010, pp. 147–161 (p. 147).
59. Ibid., p. 147.
60. Ibid., p. 147.
61. Butler, “Beside Oneself”, p. 32.
62. McNay, “Subject, Psyche, and Agency”, p. 102.
63. Judith Butler, “Introduction: Acting in Concert”, in Undoing Gender (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 1–16 (p. 1).
64. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 45.
65. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. xix.
66. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1997), pp. 1–18.
67. Michel Foucault, A History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New
York: Vintage, 1990), pp. 92–102.
68. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 167. For a critical discussion of Butler’s account of
agency, see Gavin Rae, Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth-Century
Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), chapter 5.
69. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 184.

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70. For a discussion of Butler’s views on the violence–normativity relation, see

Emma Ingala, “Judith Butler: From a Normative Violence to an Ethics of
Non-Violence”, in The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics,
edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 191–208.
71. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, p. 291.
72. McNay, “Subject, Psyche, and Agency”, p. 187.
73. Benhabib, “Subjectivity, Historiography, and Politics”, p. 109.
74. Clough, “Introduction”, p. 8.
75. Kirby, “When All That is Solid Melts into Language”, p. 269.
76. Vasterling, “Butler’s Sophisticated Constructivism”, p. 19.
77. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 190.
78. Ibid., p. 45.
79. Ibid., p. 191.
80. Ibid., p. 12.
81. Ibid., p. 12.
82. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. x.
83. Ibid., p. xviii.
84. Dorothea Olkowski, “Materiality and Language: Butler’s Interrogation of the
History of Philosophy”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 23, n. 1, 1997, pp.
37–53.
85. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. xviii.
86. Ibid., p. xii.
87. Ibid., p. xii.
88. Ibid., p. xii.
89. Ibid., p. xii.
90. Ibid., p. xii.
91. Ibid., p. xii.
92. Ibid., p. xii–xiii.
93. Ibid., p. xiii.
94. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Toward an Inves-
tigation)”, p. 118. Butler further discusses this concept in The Psychic Life of
Power, pp. 106–131.
95. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. xvii.
96. Ibid., p. xix.
97. Butler, “Contingent Foundations”, p. 51.
98. Ibid., pp. 51–52.
99. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 6.
100. Ibid., p. 6.
101. Olkowski, “Materiality and Language”, p. 39.
102. Ibid., p. 39.
103. Judith Butler, “The End of Sexual Difference”, in Undoing Gender (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 174–203 (p. 198).
104. Ibid., p. 198.
105. Ibid., p. 198.

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 Butler and Performativity / 213

106. Judith Butler, “How Can I Deny that these Hands and this Body are Mine?”, in
Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), pp. 17–35
(p. 20).
107. Ibid., pp. 20–21.
108. Butler, Excitable Speech, p. 5.
109. Ibid., p. 5.
110. Butler, Bodies that Matter, p. 37.
111. This is a charge that has long plagued symbolic accounts of sexuality,
having been previously levelled against Lacan. See, for example: Eve Tavor
Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent (Urbana, IL: University of Illi-
nois Press, 1989), p. 20; Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master,
trans. Douglas Brick (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 195;
Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, The Title of the Letter: A Read-
ing of Lacan, trans. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1992), p. 62; Jacques Derrida, “For the Love of
Lacan”, in Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault,
and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 39–69
(p. 60). In contrast, recent scholarship has affirmed the materiality of Lacan’s
thinking, with this pitching those, such as Alain Badiou (Theory of the Subject,
trans. Bruno Bosteels [London: Continuum, 2009], pp. 133, 188) and Slavoj
Žižek (The Fragile Absolute or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
[London: Verso, 2000], p. 92), who insist on a division between an “early”
idealist Lacan (orientated around the affirmation of the primary importance of
the symbolic) and a latter “materialist” one where the “real” comes to the fore,
against others, including Adrian Johnston (Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transfor-
mations: The Cadence of Change [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
2009], pp. 122–123) and Tom Eyers (“Lacanian Materialism and The Question
Of The Real”, Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy,
vol. 7, no. 1, 2011, pp. 155–166), who argue against that division and con-
clude that his thought was always materialist.
112. For a discussion of “new materialism” and its relationship to sexuality, see
Myra J. Hird, “Feminist Matters: New Materialist Considerations of Sexual Dif-
ference”, Feminist Theory, vol. 5, n. 2, 2004, pp. 223–232.
113. For a discussion of this heterogeneity, see Diana Coole and Samantha Frost
(eds), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2010).

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 C HAPTER 8

Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory

Although it is hard to overestimate the impact that Butler’s gender theory

has had on discussions of sexuality, it was almost immediately subjected
to significant and ongoing critique. As noted in the previous chapter, this
was in part to do with Butler’s treatment of the body. Underestimating the
subtlety of Butler’s position on the materiality–signification relation led a
number of commentators to insist that Butler simply affirms signification
over materiality; a position that, so it was maintained, had to be rectified
through a privileging of material processes. While I defended Butler against
these criticisms, the affirmation of the fundamental importance of material-
ity “over” signification was part of a wider theoretical trend at the turn of
the new millennium.
A number of interlinked reasons can be identified to help account for
this materialist turn. First, there was a growing aversion to the so-called
“linguistic turn” that had long been acknowledged to be fundamental to
twentieth-century philosophy.1 Although it is most often associated with
the development of “analytic” philosophy, the turn to language was also
fundamental to “continental” philosophy, in particular the work of Jacques
Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Jürgen Habermas, and, of course, Jacques Lacan
and Judith Butler. Although it is questionable whether the turn to language
within these thinkers does actually entail a commitment to idealism, there
was a general sense that focusing on language was to the detriment of mate-
riality and, as such, needed to be corrected.
This feeds tangentially into and brings to the fore an issue that, while
often subterranean, marks twentieth-century thinking on sexuality and pits
those, such as Lacan and Butler, who were taken to explicitly affirm the
importance of symbolic categories to the designation of “sexuality”, against
others, including Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, and Irigaray, who were taken

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 215

to focus on the primacy of material embodiment. Again, while it is ques-

tionable whether the so-called symbolic account of sexuality downplays or
ignores materiality to the extent charged, the perception that it did was suf-
ficient to stimulate the debate and, indeed, points to something of a fault
line through late twentieth-century thinking on the topic.
Second, commentators increasingly came to worry that symbolic
accounts of sexuality were but a historically contingent issue, consequent
of a much deeper and broader problem within Western philosophy itself.
With this, the parameters of the diagnosis were widened away from local
debates regarding how sexuality could and should be thought materially
to the question of how materiality has been treated and designated histori-
cally. From this, the symbolic turn’s supposed degradation of the material
body was understood to be but the latest manifestation of Western phi-
losophy’s abandonment of the body. Elizabeth Grosz, for example, charges
Western philosophy with “a profound somatophobia”,2 Elizabeth Wilson
complains about the “antibiologism”3 inherent in contemporary feminist
discussions of the body, which itself emanates from a profound “biopho-
bia”,4 and Somer Brodribb ties this “anti-matter”5 position to the logic of
patriarchy to conclude that continuing to repeat this “anti-physis approach
is to repeat patriarchal ideology”.6 Brodribb’s position is dependent on a
number of theoretical assumptions relating to the nature of patriarchy and,
indeed, the issue of whether simply turning to “materiality” alone is suf-
ficient to undermine phallogocentrism that, as noted, have proven to be
problematic, but her basic point criticises the coordinates that are held to
have been dominant in Western philosophy and warns that while feminist
thinking may aim to overcome patriarchy, the opponent is a tricky one. It is,
despite best intentions, all too easy to implicitly repeat the logic sustaining
that to be overcome. To correct this anti-materialist bias requires not simply
a reaffirmation of materiality over idealist or linguistic premises, but a fun-
damental re-engagement with the Western philosophical tradition, includ-
ing its logic and categories, as a precursor to reinvigorating “it” through a
renewed focus and thinking of a reconceived conception of materiality.
Third, these developments were tied to and accompanied by a profound
rejection of the status of “poststructuralism” within Anglo-American aca-
demic philosophy. Whereas those figures who came to be associated with
“poststructuralism” had radically disrupted the French philosophical scene
in the 1960s and 1970s and, indeed, the Anglo-American one in the 1980s,
by the middle of the 1990s there was a growing strand of thinking, at least
in those predisposed to so-called continental philosophy, that held that
“poststructuralism” was the problem to be overcome. This was generally
because of a tendency to reduce poststructuralist thought to a linguistic

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foundationalism or idealism, which was often supported by repetition of

Jacques Derrida’s (mistranslated and misunderstood) claim that “[t]here
is nothing outside of the text”.7 Although Derrida was often taken to be the
focus of critique, namely because of the role that Derridean deconstruction
played in introducing “poststructuralist” thinking to American academia,
it is a serious mistake to reduce “poststructuralism” to Derrida’s thinking,
reduce Derrida’s thinking to one statement, and, indeed, conclude that his
statement means that everything is reducible to (the immateriality of) lan-
guage.8 Nevertheless, such a hermeneutical strategy fed into and supported
the critique of the linguistic turn that was gradually taking hold in the name
of a renewed materialism and the rejection of poststructuralist thought that
was often held to be necessary to permit this.9
Somewhat ironically, however, those who insisted on the need to move
beyond poststructuralist thought to affirm and renew a privileging for mate-
rialism were aided, often implicitly, by developments within “poststructur-
alist” thought itself; namely, but not exclusively, by the growing popularity
of the differential ontology of Gilles Deleuze at the turn of the new millen-
nium within Anglo-American academia, and, in particular, the emphasis it
places on the fundamental importance of anonymous, open-ended becom-
ings thought from pre-personal differential relations.10 The gradual diffu-
sion of the logic underpinning this position brought to the fore the notion
that bodies are manifestations of the ongoing differential relations subtend-
ing them. Rather than focus on the body or hold that individuals are self-
founding, the emphasis moved to engaging with the material (ontological)
processes that generate individual bodies. In turn, this depended upon and
contributed to (1) a growing tendency to see matter in non-anthropocentric,
inherently dynamic, emergent, expressive, and autopoietic terms, and (2)
the incorporation of scientific insights into philosophical discussions as a
means of adequately describing these processes.11
These historical modifications, though not definitive, help to account
for the genesis of the materialist turn that has marked contemporary theory
since around the turn of the new millennium. The rejection of linguistic
idealism, the focus on the primary importance of matter, the rethinking of
matter in terms of dynamic, pre-personal, emergent processes, the critique
of (Butler’s) poststructuralist thought, and the appeal to scientific insights
– namely those of quantum physics – finds its clearest and most sophisti-
cated expression in the thought of Karen Barad.12 The guiding contention of
Barad’s analysis is that “[l]anguage has been granted too much power. The
linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural turn:
it seems that at every turn lately every ‘thing’ – even materiality – is turned
into a matter of language or some other form of cultural representation.”13

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 217

From this, Barad focuses on Butler’s performative gender theory to conclude

that, although it recognises that matter is an ongoing process of becoming,
Butler places too much emphasis on language, does not sufficiently out-
line the becoming of materiality, and is anthropocentric, in so far as Butler
focuses on humans and is unable to consider how matter itself becomes
regardless of human intention.14
In contrast, Barad takes over the emphasis that Butler places on perfor-
mativity, but reinscribes it in terms of (1) practices rather than, as Barad
maintains that Butler does, citational iterability, and (2) the non-intentional
becoming of matter rather than intentional human endeavours.15 Barad
subsequently turns away from Butler to science and technology studies and
utilises the quantum theory of Niels Bohr to offer an account of the “entan-
glements”16 that result from and constitute the autopoietic processes that
materialise matter “in-itself”. Instead of discrete, monadic entities existing
in relation to one another, Barad develops the notion of “intra-action”17 to
argue that there is no clear-cut boundary between entities; each is intimately
and ontologically bound up with others, impacting and shaping its becom-
ing. This ensures that there is no foundational point driving the becoming
of matter, nor do humans have a privileged role to play in this ongoing
endeavour. Matter is defined through a continuous, open-ended, random
process of entwined emergence, which Barad terms “agential realism”:18 the
former because matter is constantly changing; the latter because matter is
mind-independent.
Although principally an ontology, referring to the fundamental struc-
tures of Being, Barad’s agential realism has important implications for the
questioning of human sexuality. Affirming the continuous entanglement
of matter undermines any possibility for clear-cut distinctions wherein
attributes are taken to delineate discrete entities. There is only a fundamen-
tal blurring of conceptual categories that makes it impossible to attribute
an identity, however ephemeral, to an entity. Rather than “masculine” or
“feminine”, there is only ever a continuous hybrid becoming, specific to
each entity that cannot be grouped under universal or fixed terms. The
result is a queer conception of sexuality that mirrors and is an effect of the
queerness of matter itself.19 Whereas Butler’s gender theory also aims to
undermine the notion of a determinate gender identity, there is a sense in
which Butler’s thinking – in part because of its Hegelian background20 –
permits the claim that adopting a gender identity is acceptable and/or nec-
essary as long as it is not taken to be definitive. In contrast, when we move
from Butler’s gender theory to Barad’s queer theory, all vestiges of identity
are ontologically undermined to instead “leave” a continuous autopoietic
material process of differential becoming.

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With this, I argue that Barad’s agential realism takes to its logical lim-
its the questioning of the premises supporting the essentialist-patriarchal-
heteronormative model of sexuality. Not only is there no fixed essence, but
the binary division that sustains patriarchy is rejected, while the fluidity of
matter means that heterosexuality is not the only or, indeed, the primary
form of sexual expression. While this appears to support the conclusion that
it is with Barad’s agential realism that contemporary thinking on sexuality
finally overcomes any foreclosing of sexual expression within predefined
categories and, in so doing, fully opens it up to individual, ongoing forms
of expression, by way of conclusion I identity a number of problems within
Barad’s account that undermine its explanatory force and, in so doing,
reopen the question of sexuality.

Situating the Debate

Barad’s agential realism is orientated from and against the conceptual and
philosophical coordinates that they maintain have intertwined to structure
Western thinking. The first is “Cartesian”,21 which Barad uses as a catch-all
term for a logic of binary oppositions. This logic is tied epistemologically
to “representationalism”,22 which describes “the belief in the ontological
distinction between representations and that which they purport to repre-
sent; in particular, that which is represented is held to be independent of
all practices of representing”.23 Representationalism, in turn, is dependent
upon a mind-independent world composed of individuated entities. Barad
calls this “individualism”24 and explains that, on this model, “beings exist
as individuals with inherent attributes, anterior to their representation”.25
Although Barad does not make this move, I argued that these premises
underpin the essentialist-patriarchal(-heteronormative) model of sexual-
ity, in so far as it is premised on the notions that the sexes are divided in
two, each of which is defined by inherent (essential) attributes, which do
not change, and must be accurately represented to be known. Therefore,
although Barad rarely mentions “sexuality” per se, their critique of represen-
tationalism also criticises the logical schema supporting the model that has
historically dominated discussions of the topic. Indeed, this critique forms
the basis for the move beyond human sexuality to queer materialities.
Barad is, however, aware that Cartesian representationalism has already
been the subject of philosophical critique, most notably from poststructur-
alist thinkers. Although Barad rarely explicitly mentions who they have in
mind with this nomenclature, instead tending to talk problematically about
“poststructuralism” as if it were a unified school of thought with a definitive
programme, when Barad does identify a poststructuralist figure it is Butler’s

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 219

gender theory that acts, in many respects, as the lodestone for Barad’s think-
ing: it is the one that Barad moves towards to subsequently depart from to
develop their own position.
Barad recognises that “Butler does not deny the materiality of the
body whatsoever”26 and, indeed, brings to our attention that “[m]atter,
like meaning is not an individually articulated or static entity”27 nor is
“[m]atter . . . immutable or passive”.28 Indeed, Butler is praised for remind-
ing us that “[m]atter is always already an ongoing historicity”.29 However,
despite these positives, Barad concludes that Butler continues to give priority
to the symbolic realm when thinking materiality, with the consequence that
Butler is charged with privileging discourse over materiality. This charge has
strong and weak versions. The former states that “Butler’s theory ultimately
reinscribes matter as a passive product of discursive practices rather than
as an active agent participating in the very process of materialisation”.30
On this telling, Butler is unable to account for the activity inherent in the
processes that generate materiality because Butler reduces materiality to dis-
cursive practices and so is guilty of linguistic foundationalism.
However, no sooner has Barad made this charge than they backtrack on it:
“I want to carefully distinguish my critique from a host of accusations against
Butler that incorrectly accuse her [sic] of idealism, linguistic monism, or a
neglect or even erasure of ‘real flesh-and-blood bodies.’”31 To do so, Barad
offers a weaker critique of Butler’s treatment of materiality, which insists
that while Butler “does provide us with an insightful and powerful analysis
of some discursive dimensions of the materialisation of real flesh-and-blood
bodies”,32 Butler’s “analysis of materialization . . . leaves out critical compo-
nents”.33 The problems inherent in Butler’s account are held by Barad to be
the consequence of Butler’s (1) reliance on Foucault’s notion of power, which
Barad understands to be exclusively focused on the ways in which social
norms structure discourse,34 and (2) failure “to recognize matter’s dyna-
mism”.35 Regarding the former, Barad claims that focusing on social norms
is simply too indeterminate: “[s]urely it is the case . . . that there are ‘natural,’
not merely “social,’ forces that matter”.36 In turn, the latter is held to be a con-
sequence of Butler’s focus on Foucault’s analysis of power and Barad’s claim
that Butler thinks materiality from symbolic discourse.
In the previous chapter, I questioned whether Butler’s thinking on materi-
ality is actually premised on such a materiality (= passive)/symbolic (= active)
opposition; after all, while Butler (and Lacan) maintain that any knowledge
about materiality must pass through and so be shaped by discursive/symbolic
structures, with the consequence that what is meant by “materiality” is an
effect of those structures, they both reject the notion that this reduces mate-
riality to the symbolic to instead claim that they are entwined, albeit with

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 220 / Questioning Sexuality

this entwinement always marked by a posited material excess that escapes

symbolisation. Nevertheless, Barad bases their critique on the notion that
Butler utilises a binary materiality/discursive opposition, before concluding
that this re-instantiates a latent Cartesianism that needs to be corrected by
holding that the two are actually entwined. This does not reduce either to the
other because materiality exists regardless of discourse, although discourse is
necessary to reveal the ongoing processes inherent in materialisation.
However, Butler would be able to respond that, although Barad appears
to insist on the entanglement of materiality and discourse, Barad actu-
ally starts from a (theoretical) presupposition regarding the structure and
“nature” of materiality, including its relationship to discourse, to subse-
quently not only use this presupposition to judge alternative theories but
also look for and adopt a particular discourse that corresponds to and
affirms Barad’s prior assumption. In other words, rather than engage with
the complicated ways in which materiality and discourse are co-implicated
to show how the latter limits knowledge of the former, Barad’s realist posi-
tion simply adopts a particular conception of materiality as a first principle
and subsequently looks to construct arguments to support that presupposi-
tion and its relationship to a particular notion of discourse that preserves
the “independence” of materiality. This is why Barad appeals to our “best”37
scientific, social, and philosophical theories, without ever explaining why
they attain that status: it is simply assumed because they confirm Barad’s
prior assumption about the nature of materiality. As a consequence, a But-
lerian critique would be that Barad ends up in the highly problematic situ-
ation of claiming to offer an analysis of the processes of materialisation
that structure and give rise to matter, all the while actually constructing
a conception of materiality as a dynamic process from a particular sym-
bolic discourse; namely, Niels Bohr’s quantum physics.38 Not only does this
unjustifiably privilege the epistemic validity of one discursive system over
others, but it also means that the disclosure of materiality depends upon
the parameters of that discursive system; a dependency that reduces materi-
ality to the (abstraction, on Barad’s terms) of that discourse.
In turn, Barad’s response would be to push back against what they take
to be the fundamental, but latent, anthropocentrism inherent in Butler’s
thinking. Although Butler decentres the subject from the foundational-
ism role inherent in Western post-Cartesian thinking, Barad claims that
Butler continues to orientate the analysis around human being and so
fails to realise that human being is not the centre of existence or indeed
integral to it.39 To correct this, Barad takes over Bohr’s claim regarding the
role that the observer plays in the interpretation and generation of data,
but, based on both a metaphysical realist position and a rejection of the

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 221

anthropocentrism inherent in his account, claims that this does not reduce
knowledge to human being. Instead, Barad maintains that ontology and
epistemology are entwined, but cannot be reduced to either aspect, mean-
ing that while the nature of materiality is only known through human
cognition, it cannot be reduced to human knowledge. However, while
this decentres human being from the foundational role given to it by
Cartesian thought, Barad insists that this does not mean that agential real-
ism is anti-humanist. This conclusion simply re-instantiates a humanist/
anti-humanist binary opposition and so, by extension, the binary logic of
Cartesianism. Instead, Barad insists on the need for a “posthumanist”40
account that does not operate through a nature/culture division nor does
it “presume that man is the measure of all things”.41
Butler also decentres the subject from its long-held foundational role
but insists that human knowledge is symbolically grounded, with the con-
sequence that the limitations of the symbolic feed through into the limita-
tions of our knowledge of materiality. In contrast, Barad’s posthumanist
account “tak[es] issue with [all notions of] human exceptionalism while
[continuing to be] accountable for the role we play in the differential con-
stitution and differentional positioning of the human among other crea-
tures (both living and nonliving)”.42 The human is an effect of pre-personal
processes of materialisation and so cannot be the focus of study; a position
that has dramatic implications for the question of agency, which is no lon-
ger tied to human being exclusively, but is thought in terms of the move-
ment inherent in the ongoing materialisation of matter. According to Barad,
this “makes evident a much larger space of possibilities for change”.43
For Butler and symbolic accounts more generally, however, this risks
incoherence because, on the one hand, Barad’s anti-anthropocentric posi-
tion makes human action a determined effect of pre-personal material pro-
cesses, but, on the other hand, their own theory necessarily emanates from
a human focal point, with the consequence that, in a particular sense, it is
anthropocentric; an issue that brings to mind Tim Hayward’s criticism that
supposedly non-anthropocentric positions are often premised on a number
of conceptual slippages. Specifically, Hayward insists that those who try to
overcome anthropocentrism often fail to appreciate that the analysis must
always be based on the human perspective and so is premised on a certain
form of anthropocentrism. Hayward does, however, recognise that it does
not follow that the resultant analysis has to privilege the human perspec-
tive. Instead, he insists that those who argue against human exceptionalism
or anthropocentrism must continue to offer an analysis that is anthropocen-
tric because it is necessarily premised on and undertaken from the human
perspective, but do not have to fall foul of speciesism that hierarchises or

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 222 / Questioning Sexuality

discriminates between species or human chauvinism that affirms the human

over other species; indeed, we might also add over other forms of material-
ity more generally.44
While these distinctions arguably help to bridge the gulf that appears
to exist between (Barad’s reading of) Butler’s thinking and the problems
thrown up by Barad’s agential realist critique of anthropocentrism, Barad’s
metaphysical realism means that they appear to reject the notion that a
remnant of any form of anthropocentrism must remain; the existence of a
world beyond human being is taken for granted and needs to and, indeed,
can be explained. Indeed, Barad’s anti-anthropocentrism and claim that dis-
course is tied up with materiality means that any knowledge of materiality
actually expresses what materiality “really” is; it is not an anthropocentric
construct. Butler’s symbolic account would however question how knowl-
edge of that is possible: how can a human being (Barad) question and
respond to that which Barad claims exists beyond human cognition – i.e.
non-human beings and non-discursive materiality – without reducing this
to either the human perspective or the parameters of a discursive system?
Again, for Barad’s realist account, there simply is a material world and
knowledge of it is possible as long as the discursive system accurately
expresses the dynamic becoming inherent in materiality. For Butler, how-
ever, this means that any knowledge that Barad “gains” about materiality is
still tied, in some way, to human being. This is not to say that the human
being is central or foundational to knowledge – Butler also rejects this – but
that the epistemic role of human cognition cannot be evaded or down-
played. Somewhat confusingly, Barad would not necessarily have a prob-
lem with this; as a material being, humans express the agency inherent in all
materiality and so have a role to play in the (discursive) expression of mate-
riality, although, as we will see, Barad is quiet on what precisely that role is.
As a consequence, Barad allows that the human contributes to the expres-
sion of materiality without identifying how this takes place. In contrast,
for Butler, human cognition is symbolically structured and so is dependent
upon the limitations inherent in every symbolic system. As such, it is not
possible to claim to have captured “the” nature of materiality; all that can
be claimed is that we understand materiality based on the parameters of a
particular symbolic system. For Barad, however, this reduces materiality to
discourse. To avoid that, Barad simply affirms that discourse does not pre-
vent the revelation of materiality because the two are intertwined: one can-
not be revealed without the other; or, put differently, studying one reveals
the other. The key is to find a discursive system that is capable of doing jus-
tice to the dynamic expressionism of the process that give rise to materiality.
This does not reduce materiality to discourse, but reveals materiality as it is.

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 223

Butler, however, could respond that such a position is where the coor-
dinates of Barad’s position problematically clash, in so far as Barad claims
that materiality and discourse are entwined, while also claiming that
discourse can reveal the “nature” of materiality despite the latter always
exceeding the former. On a Butlerian telling, Barad is, despite their protes-
tations to the contrary, either guilty of offering a discursive analysis dressed
up as a materialist one, or simply assuming that they can know about
materiality independently of discourse without explaining how this is pos-
sible; a position that problematically bypasses the role of human cognition
in the generation of knowledge and re-enforces the charge that Barad is
guilty of offering a discursive analysis dressed up as a non-discursive mate-
rialist one. Barad’s response would presumably be that this charge is sim-
ply incapable of recognising that materiality and knowledge of it are not
fundamentally discursive or anthropocentric; they are based on ongoing
processes of emergent materialisation. The discussion therefore returns to
and revolves around the relationship between materiality and discursivity,
including what is meant by each.
Although this attempt to bring Barad and Butler together does not aim
or claim to be definitive, it does bring to the fore the question of whether
Barad’s treatment of Butler is sufficiently nuanced to do justice to the
subtleties and “depth” of Butler’s position, especially on the question of
materiality and its relationship to discursivity. This is important because of
the ambiguity in Barad’s position regarding Butler’s thinking: it is unclear
whether agential realism is premised on the strong critique that holds that
Butler reduces materiality to discourse and so ends up in linguistic ideal-
ism or whether it is premised on the weak version that maintains that But-
ler does not sufficiently account for the processes of materialisation. The
former leads to the conclusion that Barad aims to depart from Butler’s
thinking to correct its perceived idealism; the latter that it merely aims to
complement Butler’s thinking with one that more fully brings to light the
processes of materialisation that are pointed to but not fully explicated in
Butler’s gender theory. This ambiguity means that it is not entirely clear
what the specific target of Barad’s critique is, which in turn generates dif-
ficulties regarding the question of whether Barad’s agential realism resolves
problematic issues identified therein.
Nevertheless, bringing Barad and Butler together, however briefly, does
bring to light some of the ways in which symbolic and realist accounts
(of sexuality) are dependent on fundamentally distinct ontological, epis-
temological, and metaphysical premises. In turn, those premises lead to
heterogeneous conclusions regarding the issues generated from them. The
disagreement between Butler’s gender theory and Barad’s theory of queer

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 224 / Questioning Sexuality

materialities is not then a superficial one; it depends upon the responses

given to a number of subtle but fundamental disagreements regarding the
nature of reality, the nature of being, the role of human being in the world
and knowledge generation specifically, and the relationship between thought
and being. For Barad, however, the fundamental issue that unlocks all others
is the relationship between materiality and discursivity; a topic that requires
that the focus be on the former aspect to respond to the questions of “how
discourse comes to matter . . . [and] how matter comes to matter”.45

Iterative Performativity, Infra-action, and Agency

To do so, Barad affirms a new ontology of “entanglements”.46 Rather than
starting with pre-existing, predefined individuated entities with definitive
characteristics and attributes that subsequently come into contact with one
another, materiality is held to be entangled, with no clear-cut divisions, and
where each part is intimately bound to the others. As Barad puts it, “[t]o be
entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining
of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence.
Existence is not an individual affair”.47 This not only undercuts the central
premise of the individualism that Barad diagnoses as lying historically at
the foundation of Western thought, but, in so doing, rejects the premises of
representationalism and Cartesian binarism.
To develop and defend this, Barad focuses on the quantum physics of Niels
Bohr because “he . . . call[s] into question an entire tradition in the history of
Western metaphysics: the belief that the world is populated with individual
things with their own independent sets of determinate properties”.48 Indeed,
Barad goes on to claim that Bohr’s quantum theory is important because it
is “inherently less androcentric, less Eurocentric, more feminine, more post-
modern, and generally less regressive than the masculinist and imperializing
tendencies found in Newtonian physics”.49 The reasoning behind this state-
ment is never made explicit, but Barad seems to base the assessment on a
number of conceptual conflations in which Newtonian physics is premised
on a similar ontology and metaphysics to that which underpins Cartesian
representationalism.50 In turn, Cartesian representationalism is, as we have
seen, premised on an essentialist ontology and a logic of binary oppositions
that can turn into hierarchies that have supported all sorts of exclusions,
including patriarchy and heteronormativity. To counter this, Bohr is under-
stood to reject two central premises of Newtonian physics: (1) “the world
is composed of individual objects with individually determined boundar-
ies”,51 and (2) “measurements involve continuous determinable interactions
such that the values of the properties obtained can be properly assigned to
the premeasurement properties of objects as separate from the agencies of

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 225

observation”.52 In combination, Bohr rejects the ways in which Newtonian

physics is premised on “representationalism (the independently determi-
nate existence of words and things), the metaphysics of individualism (that
the world is composed of individual entities with determinate boundaries
and properties), and the intrinsic separability of knower and known”.53
Barad does, however, note that while they will draw on Bohr’s thinking,
they will not aim to explicate what he says, but will “use Bohr’s writings for
thinking about these issues”54 and will select the appropriate parts based on
a judgement about “what makes sense for developing a coherent account”.55
Barad’s appropriation of Bohr’s quantum theory does not then pretend to be
wholly consistent with his writings. Instead, Barad develops their argument
from a particular reading of Bohr’s theory – one shorn of “his unexamined
humanist commitments”56 – in combination with insights from “current
scholarship in science studies, the philosophy of science, physics, and vari-
ous interdisciplinary approaches that might be collectively be called ‘criti-
cal social theories’ (e.g. feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory,
postcolonial theory, (post-)Marxist theory, and poststructuralist theory)”.57
Through this heterogeneous combination, Barad engages with the question
“what does ‘material’ mean?”58
The guiding premise is that materiality is not a static pre-existent thing,
but a continuous autopoietic, immanent, and emergent process of becom-
ing. Importantly, this “[m]attering is simultaneously a matter of substance
and significance, most evidently perhaps when it is the nature of matter that
is in question, when the smallest parts of matter are found to be capable of
exploding deeply entrenched ideas and large cities”.59 Rather than a distinc-
tion between substance and significance, Barad binds them relationally to
make each dependent upon the other. Getting a handle on this requires a
discussion of the emergent processes that generate matter, the discursive prac-
tices contributing to this, and the relation between materiality and discourse.
To start, Barad dispels several misconceptions that result from the his-
torical dominance of the Cartesian representationalist model. This is neces-
sary because the Cartesian model has led to materiality being associated
with passive substance, while relationality is understood in terms of a rela-
tion between two preformed opposing entities, with language tacked on top
and used to represent each one. Instead, Barad claims that

Material conditions matter, not because they ‘support’ particular discourses

that are the actual generative factors in the formation of bodies but rather
because matter comes to matter through the iterative intra-activity of the
world in its becoming. The point is not merely that there are important
material factors in addition to discursive ones; rather, the issue is the con-
joined material-discursive nature of constraints, conditions, and practices.60

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 226 / Questioning Sexuality

With this, Barad distinguishes their position from (what is taken to be)
Butler’s over-reliance of a symbolic model, wherein gender performativity is
structured from and around the construction of linguistic and social norms.
As noted, for Barad, this is simply too linguistically reductionist, in so far
as it does not consider or explain either the nature of materiality or the
relationship between materiality and linguistic construction, and, indeed,
appears to implicitly slip into a materiality/language (Cartesian) opposi-
tion with the former grounded in the latter. Overcoming this requires, on
Barad’s telling, that both aspects are thought to be entangled and engaged
in an emergent process of ongoing becoming, but where, somewhat par-
adoxically, the emphasis is on the material aspect. Thus, as we will see,
discourse is not a linguistic or ideational activity; it is reconfigured as a
material practice that contributes to the movement and alteration of the
(components of the) material world.
To do so, Barad reiterates that it is necessary to reject and move beyond
the notion that entities are individuated. While their individuation might
seem to be obvious – “At first glance, the outside boundary of the body may
seem evident, indeed incontrovertible. A coffee mug ends at its outside sur-
face just as surely as people end at their skins”61 – Barad appeals to physics
to explain that “edges or boundaries are not determinate either ontologically
or visually”.62 The problem is that the inner/outside division, while appear-
ing to be obvious, is actually dependent upon a particular ontology of vision
and epistemology based on a particular form of empiricism that have long
been questioned and rejected: “[w]hen it comes to the ‘interface’ between a
coffee mug and a hand, it is not that there are x number of atoms that belong
to a hand and y number of atoms that belong to the coffee mug”.63 Barad
further explains that vision is also not constructed around clear-cut boundar-
ies: “it is a well-recognized fact of physical objects that if one looks closely
at an ‘edge,’ what one sees is not a sharp boundary between light and dark
but rather a series of light and dark bands – that is, a diffraction pattern”.64
Rather than being definitive and predetermined, perceiving of objects in
terms of clear-cut boundaries is, like all perception, “a result of the repetition
of (culturally and historically) specific bodily performance”.65
Initially, this may be thought to give rise to the claim that, because per-
ception is socio-culturally derived, what is perceived is also fundamentally
socio-cultural. Barad, however, rejects this. Falling back on a metaphysi-
cal realist position, Barad maintains that regardless of how it is perceived,
materiality never actually conforms to clear-cut boundaries but is always
entwined and entangled. As a consequence, there is a form of “objectivity”
inherent in Barad’s analysis, in so far as materiality, regardless of perception,
takes on certain emergent characteristics. It is not however entirely clear how

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 227

this feeds into the claim that materiality and discursivity are entangled, for
it appears to mean that, regardless of what the discourse says, materiality
simply always takes on certain characteristics.
Nevertheless, Barad warns that although matter is differentiated and
differentiating, materiality is fundamentally univocal: “there is no need
to postulate different materialities (i.e., materialities that are inherently of
different kinds)”.66 All that exists is, by definition, material, with the con-
sequence that each thing, whether physical or not, shares the same funda-
mental ontological character. It is for this reason that each thing can interact
with, shape, and form all the others; for this to happen requires that each
thing be composed of the “same” fundamental ontological character, which
is obviously not to say that each thing is the same. With this, Barad claims
to have overcome one of the fundamental problems that marks Butler’s
account; namely, how the discursive and materiality relate to one another.
On Barad’s telling, they are able to do so because they are expressions of the
“same” fundamental ontological “stuff”: matter.
Crucially, however, matter is only ever defined by a continuous process
of materialisation. To explain this process in accordance with the rejection
of ontological monadism and affirmation of ontological entanglement,
Barad distinguishes between “interaction, which assumes that there are sep-
arate individual agencies that precede their interaction”,67 and “intra-action
[which] recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge
through, their intra-action”.68 The notion of intra-action is fundamental
to Barad’s agential realism and responds “to the question of the making
of differences, of ‘individuals,’ rather than assuming their independent or
prior existence”.69 Through it, Barad is also able to explain that materialities
come to be what they are through particular forms of relationality wherein
they are also tied to and emerge through others, who, in turn, only emerge
through their relationality. There is no foundation to this relationality,
with the consequence that the existence of both positions in the relation is
dependent upon and changes with the relation sustaining them.
With the notion of intra-action, Barad proposes a particular relational
ontology, wherein it is not just the meaning but the being of materiality
that is relationally generated. If it were just the meaning of the entities that
was relational, they would pre-exist the relation but gain meaning from
each other. However, Barad claims that “[i]t is not enough to simply assert
that identity is a relation, if the relation in question is between or among
entities that are understood to precede their relation”.70 Barad’s more radi-
cal proposal – albeit one that was also made by Lacan – is that both the
being and the meaning of materiality is relational: the sheer existence of
each materiality emanates relationally from another. As a consequence,

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materiality is not static but is dependent on constant dynamic processes of

materialisation.
Importantly, Barad claims that relations are not composed of symmetri-
cal aspects. If they were, there would be a fixed, ordered, and predictable
becoming. Instead, materialisation is inherently random, disjointed, and
unpreditable. There is no way to identify how matter will be materialised
or where it will lead to. For this to occur requires an asymmetric rela-
tion that, in turn, is dependent upon a random, unpredictable, but ever
possible “spark” that generates the process of materialisation. To explain
this, Barad once more turns to quantum theory and its notion of a quan-
tum which describes a “bit of a hitch, a tiny disjuncture in the underlying
continuum”.71 With this random jerk, the

tiny disjuncture, existing in neither space nor time, torques the very nature of
the relation between continuity and discontinuity to such a degree that the
nature of change changes from a rolling unravelling stasis into a dynamism
that operates at an entirely different level of ‘existence,’ where ‘existence’ is
not simply a manifold of being that evolves in space and time, but an itera-
tive becoming of spacetimemattering.72

Rather than being static or ordered, “[t]he world is an open process of mat-
tering through which mattering itself acquires meaning and form through
the realization of different agential possibilities”.73 This process generates
“[t]emporality and spatiality”74 while “[r]elations of exteriority, connectivity,
and exclusion are reconfigured”.75 Indeed, Barad claims that “[t]he changing
topologies of the world entail an ongoing reworking of the notion of dynam-
ics itself”.76 In other words, nothing pre-exists the materialisation process;
all becomes what it is through these processes and, indeed, continues to
become based on the vagaries of that becoming, itself expressed through and
from the peculiarities of the quantum. As such, “the world’s radical aliveness
comes to light in an entirely nontraditional way that reworks the nature of
both relationality and aliveness (vitality, dynamism, agency)”.77
One of the ways in which the world comes alive and expresses itself
is through discourse. To counter the linguistic turn, Barad distinguishes
between “language”, which is reduced to ideas or words, and “discourse”
which describes material practices: “Discursive practices are not speech acts,
linguistic representations, or even linguistic performances, bearing some
unspecified relationship to material practices”.78 Discursive practices express
and emanate from the intra-actions inherent in the processes of materiali-
sation. They are, as a consequence, “not ideational but . . . actual physical
arrangements”.79 Discursive production is then intra-actively constitutive of

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 229

the processes inherent in materialisation. It is not tied to or dependent on

individuals but is “an ongoing performance of the world in its differential
dance of intelligibility and unintelligibility”.80
Studying these discursive practices is, however, difficult. They constantly
change, are changed by the attempt to understand them, and, indeed, are
the condition for intelligibility, thereby ensuring that their existence con-
ditions how they will be conceptualised. Nevertheless, Barad claims that
it is through specific agential intra-actions, called “apparatus”81 that the
“boundaries and properties of the ‘components’ of phenomena become
determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful”.82
Importantly, however, apparatus are not “inscription devices”83 that pre-
cede or over-code material intra-actions, nor are they “neutral probes of the
natural world or structures that deterministically impose some particular
outcome”.84 Apparatuses

are dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-

actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are
enacted. Apparatuses have no inherent ‘outside’ boundary. This indeter-
minacy of the ‘outside’ boundary represents the impossibility of closure –
the ongoing intra-activity in the iterative recon-figuring of the apparatus of
bodily production. Apparatuses are open-ended practices.85

More specifically, apparatuses are “material-discursive practices”86 that

“produce differences that matter [in so far] as they are boundary-making
practices that are formative of matter and meaning, productive of, and part
of, the phenomena produced”.87 This is because “apparatuses are material
configurations/dynamic reconfigurings of the world”88 and, indeed, “are
themselves . . . constituted and dynamically reconstituted as part of the on-
going intra-activity of the world”.89 They “are not located in the world but
are material configurations or reconfigurings of the world that re(con)fig-
ure spatiality and temporality as well as (the traditional notion of) dynam-
ics (i.e., they do not exist as static structure, nor do they merely unfold or
evolve in space and time)”.90
Apparatus achieve this through “agential cut[s]”91 which slice up the
originary “phenomenon of the inherent ontological (and semantic) inde-
terminacy”92 to create (the appearance of) distinct entities. They therefore
contrast forcibly with “the more familiar Cartesian cut which takes this
distinction for granted”.93 The “agential separability”94 effected is, however,
intra-active, with the consequence that the agential cut is not something
that transcends that intra-action; it is the condition through which the
ontological entanglement appears as and through discrete intra-active

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 230 / Questioning Sexuality

entities. It is, however, important to note that “the ‘distinct’ agencies are
only distinct in a relational, not an absolute, sense, that is, agencies are only
distinct in relation to their mutual entanglement; they don’t exist as individual
elements”.95 They can and are constantly remade based on the intra-actions
conditioning the agential cut.
Barad’s “quantum ontology”96 is then realist because, as we have
seen, materiality exists independently of the human mind and is agential
because matter is nothing other than an ongoing process of intra-active
becoming. However, whereas “agency” has historically been tied to the
notion of a foundational human subject who rationally and reflectively
intends or wills a particular action and/or end, Barad explains that agency
“is an enactment, not something that someone or something has”.97 So,
although Barad accepts that, as materialities, “human subjects do have a
role to play, indeed a constitutive role”98 in shaping and perpetuating the
intra-actions inherent in materialisation, Barad is also clear that “[a]gency
is not aligned with human intentionality or subjectivity. Nor does it merely
entail resignification or other specific kinds of moves within a social geom-
etry of antihumanism”.99 By moving the terms of the debate away from
the (intentional, willed) agency of human being, which is understood to
be an effect of the larger processes of agency inherent in materiality, Barad
aims to show that conceptual schemas that have long claimed to be based
on naturally determined parameters are premised on a number of incor-
rect assumptions that perpetuate significant conceptual exclusions that are
actually undermined by the ongoing agency inherent in the “natural” pro-
cesses they claim to affirm. Recognising this and properly understanding
the open-ended intra-actions inherent in materiality will, so Barad claims,
permit a range of issues that have long been foreclosed within predeter-
mined fixed categories to be opened, including the question of sexuality. It
is to this that we now turn.

Queer Theory
Barad’s agential realism offers then a radical critique of the ontological
essentialism, Cartesian dualism, and epistemic representationalism that
has long marked Western thought. Although Barad’s critique is primarily
pitched at the ontological level – and, as such, shares similarities with Hei-
degger’s thinking in this regard, although agential realism’s “flat” ontology
departs from the transcendence inherent in his ontological difference – it
has substantial implications for the ways in which the agency inherent
in the immanent processes that give rise to materialities find expression.
Given the topic and argument of this book, I will limit the discussion to its

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 231

consequences for (1) the essentialist-patriarchal(-heteronormative) model

of sexuality, and (2) the question of sexuality more generally.
The key to both issues is Barad’s notion of intra-action, which, it will
be remembered, rejects the notion that entities exist in individuated form
prior to coming into contact with one another. Instead, materialities are
ontologically entangled, coming to be what they are only through their
relationality and, indeed, the intra-action of the agential cut. With this,
Barad rejects the fundamental premise of “essentialism” by claiming not
only that objects do not have an individuated essence, but also that each
only is what it is through its ongoing entanglement with others. As this
relationality alters, in particular due to the irregularities inherent in the
quantums subtending materiality, so too will each aspect of it, including
the structure and “nature” of the relation itself. Intra-action also under-
mines the fundamental premises of the logic of patriarchy because, by
calling into question the notion that materialities are defined by clear-
cut boundaries, it rejects the straightforward masculine/feminine divi-
sion upon which patriarchy depends. The intra-active, ongoing emergent
“nature” of materiality means that there simply is no male/female oppo-
sition, with the consequence that it is not possible to privilege one over
the other. Because it purposefully undermines the privileging of the mas-
culine position inherent in the logic of patriarchy, Barad claims that “[a]
gential realism is a feminist intervention”.100
However, as Butler showed, undermining the premises supporting sexual
essentialism and patriarchy does not guarantee that sexuality will not con-
tinue to be foreclosed within certain structures. In particular, Butler identifies
a problematic heteronormativity that has also marked Western critical think-
ing on the topic. As such, the essentialist-patriarchal model is also intimately,
if not always explicitly, tied to the question of heteronormativity, with the
consequence that to prevent the foreclosure of sexuality within pre-established
boundaries, Barad needs to show that their agential realist account under-
mines sexual essentialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity.
Barad takes up this issue through the question of, what they call, “moral-
ism”,101 an issue that is tied to the notion of “human exceptionalism, and,
in particular, human superiority [that props] up the specific moral injunc-
tion against ‘unnatural’ human behaviors”.102 Barad’s point is that the latent
privileging of heteronormativity is premised on a particular conception of
“nature”, itself dependent upon an essentialist ontology and logic of binary
opposition. As Barad explains, however, “if the crime is against Nature her-
self – the whole of Nature, that is, if the act is so egregious as to go ‘against
all that is natural’ – then it must have been committed by some agent who is
outside of Nature, presumably a human agent, one cognizant of his sins”.103

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 232 / Questioning Sexuality

Two problems result. First, “if the act is against Nature, and the actor is not
of Nature, but outside it, then all acts committed by this actor must be . . .
‘unnatural’, by definition”.104 In other words, the problem becomes not the
act but the entire being of the individual committing it. That, however, sets
up a binary opposition between “good” and “bad” beings that runs counter
to the entangled nature of materiality.
Second, and at the same time, “if the moral injunction is against ‘unnatu-
ral’ human behaviors, including acting like a beast, then this is because one
is acting like nature – performing ‘natural’ acts”.105 The claim that non-hetero
forms of sexuality and sexual relations are somehow un-natural undermines
itself because it relies upon that which it rejects; namely the possibility that
humans (= civilisation), while being held to be ontologically distinct from
nature (= non-civilisation), are, in fact capable of acting in accordance with
“nature” through the “uncivilised” “bestial” actions of homosexuality. The
heteronormative critique is then premised on a paradoxical conception of
humanity as being both a natural being and somehow not being such a
being, with this ambiguity undermining the supposed “purity” that is taken
to define human being. As Barad puts it, “the (il)logic at work trips over the
very divide – the nature/culture divide – it seeks to secure. In fact, it is the law
itself – in fashioning some human acts as bestial in nature – that breeches
the sacred divide, opening up the possibility of humans engaging in nonhu-
man acts”.106 In other words, moralist heteronormativity undermines itself
immanently because it holds two contradictory positions: (1) the human,
as a natural being, commits natural acts, and (2) the human is fundamen-
tally other-than nature. The latter, however, disqualifies the former. Either
the moralist critique must go and non-heteronormative forms of sexuality
are accepted as natural or the human must be accepted as a natural being,
which brings forth the question of the “nature” of nature. While the moral-
ist position explicitly insists that nature is fixed and unidimensional, with
the consequence that only certain predeterminable actions are permitted
for humans – “the discourse on ‘crimes against nature’ always already takes
liberty in the confidence that Nature is herself a good Christian, or at least
traffics in a kind of purity that the human has been excluded from ever since
the Edenic fall of man”107 – Barad points out that an alternative ethics arises
once it is accepted that “nature” is not fundamentally singular or unchang-
ing, but, as Barad’s intra-active ontology points out, “is a commie, a pervert,
or a queer[.]”108
By claiming that nature is queer and that sexuality is inherently mate-
rial, Barad sets the scene for an important conceptual innovation with
regards to gender theory. Whereas Butler’s gender theory is held to be pre-
mised on a symbolic form of construction, with the consequence that it

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 233

usurps binary oppositions by simply constructing symbolic systems not

constrained by them, Barad’s focus on materiality leads to the claim that
Butler’s proposal is too superficial, in so far as it threatens to make “sexual-
ity” a non-material construction that depends upon the contingent inten-
tional actions of individuals. If, however, individuals do not intentionally
construct a non-binary symbolic system, there appears to be nothing in
Butler’s schema that permits a critique of that action. After all, it is the
symbolic system that generates the parameters of a critique and, given the
afoundationality of Butler’s symbolic account, there appears to be no way
to claim that one schema is “better” than another. There is, in other words,
no foundation from which to ground Butler’s critique of essential, patri-
archal, and heteronormativity. Bared aims to get round this problem by
grounding critique on the “bed-rock” of non-human material processes to
insist that, regardless of the discursive system in place or individual action,
nature never supports the premises of the essentialist-patriarchal-hetero-
normative schema. The quantum nature of materiality means that “there is
something inherently queer about the nature of matter”.109
By queer, Barad does not simply mean strange or out of the ordinary.
With quantum theory there is no such thing as “ordinary”; things are far
stranger to the extent that they cannot be referenced through “the ordinary”:

The point in referring to them as ‘queer’ is not to use an eye-catching term

when ‘odd’ or ‘strange’ would have sufficed, nor is it to make a case that these
critters engage in queer sexual practices (though some do, at least on some
countings), but rather to make the point that their very ‘species being,’ as it
were, makes explicit the queering of ‘identity’ and relationality.110

Appealing to “queer” is then part of Barad’s rejection of all forms of

identity: “What is needed . . . is a way of thinking about the nature of
differentiating that is not derivative of some fixed notion of identity
or even a fixed spacing.”111
To do so, Barad returns to quantum theory and its notion of “quantum
leaps”.112 These jerks in the continuum that subtend and generate material-
ity “are not simply strange because a particle moves discontinuously from
one place here now to another place there, but [because] the fundamental
notions of trajectory, movement, space, time, and causality are called into
question”.113 More specifically, “unlike any ordinary experience of jump-
ing or leaping, when an electron makes a ‘quantum leap’ it does so in a
discontinuous fashion (belying the very notion of a ‘leap’): in particular,
the electron is initially at one energy level and then it is at another without
having been anywhere in between!”114 But things are even stranger than this

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 234 / Questioning Sexuality

because, strictly speaking, a quantum leap is “not just any discontinuous

movement, but a particularly queer kind that troubles the very dichotomy
between discontinuity and continuity. Indeed, quantum dis/continuity
troubles the very notion of dichotomy – the cutting into two – itself (includ-
ing the notion of ‘itself’!).”115 In other words, at no stage of the process can
materialisation be said to conform to a straightforward linear movement
or, indeed, anything straightforward generally. Not only does this ensure
that “[q]ueer is a radical questioning of identity and binaries, and quantum
physics, like queerness, displaces a host of deeply-held foundational dual-
isms”,116 but it also undermines certain notions of intelligibility because it
is simply not possible to determine the trajectory of quantum leaps and, by
extension, the becoming of materiality.
For this reason, “[q]uantum entanglements are not the intertwining of
two (or more) states/entities/events, but a calling into question of the very
nature of two-ness, and ultimately of one-ness as well. Duality, unity, mul-
tiplicity, being are undone.”117 Rather than a static foundation, there is only
ever constant disruption that never takes on determinate form. Barad instead
uses the imaginary of “slime”118 because it points to a form of materialisa-
tion that constantly changes to take on different forms but in which the
form that takes cannot be predetermined. Of course, the forms this will take
cannot be predetermined or anticipated in advance because of the quantum
leaps at its “heart”, but the point is to try to conjure up an imaginary to per-
mit us to reconceive ontology away from the clear-cut boundaries that have
historically structured Western thinking. As a consequence, rather than start
from a determinate ground, one premised on pre-existing divisions, Barad
rhetorically asks us to consider what would happen “if the very ground,
the ‘foundation’ for judging right from wrong, is a flaming queen, a fag-
got, a lesbo, a tranny, or gender-queer?”119 Not only would the essentialist-
patriarchal(-heteronormative) model lose the coordinates that structure it,
but the options for sexual/gender/queer expression would be completely
opened, even in ways that we cannot currently conceive.
Although it is tempting to try to tame such queer madness, and, indeed,
the history of Western philosophy has generally tried to achieve this
through its affirmation of a fixed single sexual identity, Barad rejects such
an approach. Attempts to do so are counter-productive because they are
based on a strategy that cannot possibly win (you cannot after all go against
the processes of materialisation), with the consequence that the failure to
quarantine the queerness of nature risks turning it into something to be
anxious about or even feared. If that were to happen, we would be in the
queer position of being afraid of what we actually are.120 Instead of trying to
control or constrain the ways in which the queer becomings of nature are

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 235

expressed, Barad proposes that we remain open to their queerness. Only

this will ensure that we are able to account for all of the ways in which
materiality expresses itself and, in so doing, remain “true” to all the possible
configurations and practices that result.
We have then to abandon the idea that there are a priori or, indeed, uni-
versal categories or forms of sexuality: “The point is to make plain the undo-
ing of universality, the importance of the radical specificity of materiality as
iterative materialisation.”121 Because sexuality is held to be an expression
of the chaos that defines materiality, gender-queerness is always unique
and singular, but, at the same time, multiple, fluid, and changing in unex-
pected ways. There cannot be a single right form of sexuality nor can there
be “‘acts against nature’”;122 any form of sexuality that exists emanates from
the quantum leap of nature and so is “natural”. Indeed, Barad posits that
quantum theory allows us to think of nature as “an ongoing questioning
of itself – of what constitutes naturalness . . . In other words, nature itself
is an ongoing deconstructing of naturalness.”123 Given the constant and
wild experimentation inherent in and emanating from the intra-activity of
materiality, “perversity and monstrosity lie at the core of being – or rather,
it is threaded through them”,124 with the consequence that far from being
simple or straightforward,

[e]ach ‘individual’ always already includes all possible intra-actions with

‘itself’ through all possible virtual others, including those (and itself) that
are noncontemporaneous with itself . . . Indeterminacy is an un/doing of
identity that unsettles the very foundations of non/being.125

Sexuality is never simple or clearly defined; it is multidimensional,

fluid, and always radically singular in each moment. Instead of fighting
“nature” by clinging to clear-cut sexual categories or, indeed, identity in
general, Barad pushes us to embrace all the weird and wonderful (sexual)
possibilities opened up by this to appreciate and affirm the power and
differentiation inherent in the “[p]olymorphous perversity”126 of materi-
ally “queer/trans’formations”.127

Concluding Remarks
With this, Barad draws our attention to a number of important insights
regarding sexuality. First, sexuality has no determinate essence. Indeed, in a
sense, Barad “completes” the deconstruction of sexual essentialism started
by Freudian psychoanalysis by purposefully and fully aiming to remove any
and all foreclosings to the queer expressions of matter. Sexuality is never

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pure or clear-cut; it is queer, composed of multiple non-binary entangled

moving “parts” that constantly break out and are exhibited in distinct and
unknowable or unexplainable ways. Rather than these being intentionally
chosen by individuals, they are premised on the quantum becoming of
matter itself, and so are inherently and fundamentally material (= natural).
For this reason, queerness cannot be held to be the result of individual
choice; it is matter expressing itself through “individuals” based on the
quantum leaps inherent in materiality. In turn, sexuality is inherently fluid
and changing, meaning that it is not only more complex than traditionally
thought but also far more monstrous, expressing itself in distinct and sur-
prising forms and fashions.
Barad therefore rejects the notion that sexuality is substantive and essen-
tialist and claims that it is natural (= material) rather than (symbolically)
constructed. By also holding that nature is queer, “nature” is reconfigured
in terms of open-ended processes of quantum becoming rather than fixed
categories. Indeed, Barad’s notion of intra-action undermines the binary
divisions that support patriarchy, while the insistence that nature is queer
prevents any single form of sexuality from claiming a privileged status.
Heteronormativity is also undermined and, in its place, a completely inde-
terminate notion of sexuality is affirmed; one which is never constrained
within definitive or universal categories and which takes on new and unex-
pected, thoroughly individual, forms in each moment.
However, for all the insights provided, there is a strong sense in which
Barad achieves this only because their queer account of sexuality relies upon
or simply bypasses a number of problems inherent in or resulting from the
presuppositions supporting the agential realist position. While the agential
realist position is, no doubt, theoretically innovative, and, I would argue,
also practically important in so far as it calls into question any attempt to
foreclose sexual expression based on fixed (naturalist) premises, it is built
on a number of assumptions that undermine its (theoretical) validity or
that need to be developed to fully provide conceptual support for its impor-
tant practical implications.
In the first instance, Barad’s account is orientated from and against a
particularly reductionist reading of the history of Western philosophy as
evidenced, most obviously, by the insistence on the foundational impor-
tance of Cartesian representationalism, the problematic treatment of
“poststructuralism”, including its reduction to a (partial) reading of Judith
Butler’s gender theory, and the claim that agential realism offers a unique
materialist account that corrects the idealism constitutive of Western phi-
losophy. As Han Thomas Adriaenssen128 points out, the question and
indeed critique of representationalism long precedes Descartes, in so far as

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 237

it was a fundamental issue in the Middle Ages, with the consequence that
“representationalism” is far more diverse than Barad appears to appreciate.
While Barad might identify and counteract a particular form of “represen-
tationalism”, it is not clear that this overcomes all its historical variants.
Indeed, I have already noted that this tendency to appeal to reductionist
readings of the positions that Barad attacks is inherent in Barad’s treatment
of both poststructuralism and Butler’s thinking, but it is also found in Barad’s
treatment of “materialism”. As Elizabeth Grosz points out, materialism has a
long history in Western philosophy (and, indeed, post-Cartesian philosophy
specifically) – Grosz focuses on the Stoics, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and
Simondon – with the consequence that Western philosophy offers a variety
of different forms of materialism, many of which are explicitly orientated
against Cartesian representationalism.129 Barad does not engage with any
of these and so operates against a rather narrow conception of materialism
that subsequently permits them to make bold claims about the originality
of agential realism that might not stand if a more nuanced and subtle appre-
ciation of the history of materialism was offered. Of course, Barad might
respond that their theory is somehow different because it is grounded in
contemporary scientific theories, but Grosz points to the work of Raymond
Ruyer who also develops a materialist account from those premises (albeit
not Bohr’s quantum theory). A significant question mark remains therefore
over whether Barad depends upon and counter-acts something of a straw
(wo)man to claim for the agential realist account a unique position that
is not justified because Barad’s treatment of the question of materialism in
Western philosophy is so truncated and reductionist.
Although this does not necessarily invalidate Barad’s conclusions – it
is, after all, quite possible that if Barad were to go through all the variants
of materialism found within Western philosophy, the uniqueness of the
agential realist position would still be affirmed – there are also issues with
the theory itself. Specifically, while it is strong at showing that materiality
is queer and, as such, cannot and does not ever attain a fixed identity, it is
weak at explaining or even engaging with the issue of why, despite this, we
have historically thought in terms of essential sexual identities or hetero-
normative frameworks. If these simply do not exist at the ontological level
and all that exists is fundamentally an expression of the quantum processes
inherent in materiality, it is difficult to see how this has been possible. It
seems to demand that “something” be in some minimal way independent
of the processes generating materiality to act against them. This, however, is
precisely what Barad’s theory of intra-active entanglement explicitly rejects.
Barad therefore appears to construct their analysis against an opponent that
their theory explicitly rejects as being possible.

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 238 / Questioning Sexuality

The fundamental reason for this is, I want to suggest, that Barad appears
to commit a sort of naturalist fallacy where ethics and epistemology are
bound to and, in a sense, reduced to ontology, so that ethics and epistemo-
logical categories are expressions of the becomings of matter. There does
not seem to be a way to counteract the processes of materiality, nor, given
her critique of anthropocentrism, can human beings (or any other materi-
alities for that matter) actively or intentionally counteract those processes;
they are, after all, its effects. Sexual queerness is then an expression of mate-
riality (= nature) and so natural. This is liberating, in so far as it justifies
the existence of those sexualities and sexual practices/relations that have
long been discriminated against, but, at the same time, it collapses eth-
ics into ontology to claim that what is, as an expression of materiality, is
always “natural” and so justified. Again, this is perfectly in keeping with
Barad’s celebration of the monstrous and perverse queerness of nature, but
it does not answer and, indeed, seems to bypass the question of those forms
of sexual expression that cause unwanted pain or suffering. Barad might
respond that this is where their notion of responsibility comes in, but (1)
this collapses ethics into ontology to claim that ethics relates not to indi-
vidual action but material becomings;130 and (2) responsibility does not
describe the “response(ability)” to be given to the other but the (response)
ability to act, with this being a consequence of the specific material configu-
ration.131 By limiting the discussion to the question of whether individuals
can respond and failing to discuss what is the response necessitated by and
permitted by (response)ability, it is difficult to see how individual forms of
sexual expression can be sanctioned or prohibited and, at worst, appears to
provide ontological support for all forms of sexual activity no matter what
they entail or against whom they are perpetrated.
This is a direct consequence of Barad’s critique and rejection of anthro-
pocentrism and Barad’s theory of agency, which is synonymous with imper-
sonal material changes rather than intentional human endeavour. Although
accepting that humans have a role to play, Barad does not spell out what this
is and, indeed, appears to actively undermine it as a possibility because of the
“discontinuity” of the quantum leaps constitutive of materiality and the rejec-
tion of (human) intentionality, will, and choice. It seems then that humans
are simply at the mercy of pre-personal ontological forces beyond their con-
trol. While we are effects of those processes and contribute to their becoming,
we cannot influence them.
Ironically, this charge has long been made against poststructuralist thought
– that from which Barad often distinguishes their theory due to poststructur-
alism’s perceived linguistic reductionism – with proponents of a variety of
theoretical positions charging that its decentring of the foundational subject

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 239

leaves no way to account for intentional agency to affect political change.

I have elsewhere explored this issue to defend a number of poststructural-
ist thinkers against this charge by showing that rather than simply decon-
structing the foundational subject to make it an effect of pre-personal forces,
they also aim to reconstruct the constituted subject in a way that permits
intentional agency.132 However, in critiquing poststructuralist thought on this
score, Barad, somewhat ironically, falls into the trap that is often erroneously
thrown at poststructuralist thought; namely, that its decentring of the subject
leaves no possibility of intentional agency. Again, although Barad says that
we have a role to play, Barad is, at best, evasive regarding what humans can do
to shape material becoming and certainly does not explain the mechanisms
through which it takes place. Having rejected those mechanisms – will, inten-
tion, choice – that the Christian West has long relied on, Barad challenges us
to come up with alternatives, but Barad’s radical critique of anthropocentrism
seems to cut off the means to permit this.
For this reason, Gill Jagger’s claim that we can “operationalise” Barad’s
thinking “through intervening in the boundary-making process to reconfig-
ure the material-discursive apparatus of bodily production through which
phenomena such as sexed bodies are constituted”133 not only ignores Barad’s
claim that the agential cut that generates boundary-making processes is not
and cannot be grounded in human action, in so far as it constitutes the
condition for the expression of (relatively) distinct materialities, but also
implicitly depends upon and demands the type of intentional action that
is explicitly rejected by Barad’s critique of anthropocentric intentional will.
Interestingly, in a recent interview, Barad was asked to respond to this
issue – that is, the question of agency – through the mediation of the issue
of invention, to which, in the first instance, Barad responded by reaffirming
that it is absolutely not “an ‘I’ that is doing the thinking, because to assume
that would be to reinscribe the Cartesian notion of the thinking subject as
the human individual, closely aligned with representationalism”,134 before
going on to question the notion of the “new” because it risks downplaying
historical or transitional processes of becoming and is problematically tied
up with individualistic legal representations of ownership such as copy-
right and patents. However, rather than then go on to respond to the ques-
tion of what this means for the question of who/what invents and/or how
this occurs, Barad concludes that “these enactions are not merely enac-
tions by the human as such, as ‘the human’ is always already the product
of a constitutive discursive practice that needs to be accounted for in its
materialization”.135 For this reason, “the question is rather what thinking is.
Who/what is doing the thinking and with what and whom is thinking hap-
pening (because it never happens alone)?”136 However, although this may

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challenge long-held anthropocentric positions, especially those relating to

the “self” and “identity”, it not only seems to reduce agency to thought
but also does not get us very far in terms of responding to the issue of who
acts and how this is possible given the agential realist ontology. Despite
Barad’s insistence on the fundamental importance of material agency, the
agential realist critique of anthropocentrism and insistence that agency is
implicated at the level of matter itself empties out the possibility of inten-
tional agency to the extent that humans appear as mere effects of mate-
rial changes rather than being capable of purposeful action to affect those
processes of onto-genesis. We are, as a consequence, left in a somewhat
strange situation: on one level, we are inherently agential, in so far as we
are material beings that constantly change, but, on another level, we lack
(intentional) agency, with the consequence that we are passive effects of
the changes inherent in the processes of materialisation that constitute us.
In turn, this is tied to and reveals what is arguably the most problem-
atic aspects of Barad’s agential realist account: its treatment of the politi-
cal-juridical and ethical-normative dimensions of material expression and,
by extension, sexuality. There has obviously always been political intent
behind Barad’s agential realist theory, but this has tended to be implicit
rather than explicit. Barad has however tried to rectify this in a number of
recent works by tying quantum field theory, upon which the agential realist
account (of sexuality) depends, to the political domain through an analysis
of (1) the relation between quantum theory and the atomic bomb, which
is also tangentially tied to questions of colonialism and militarism,137 and
(2) quantum field theory’s notion of time upon which much Western
thought – including its conceptions of historical memory – depends.138
Importantly, these discussions are conducted at the ontological level in
so far as they are orientated to outlining the constitution of matter itself.
By linking politics to ontology in this manner, Barad is able to maintain
that politics is imbricated into the very fabric of matter to the extent that
“[m]atter is political all the way down”.139
The problem, however, is that although this intends to entangle the politi-
cal with the material, there is no discussion, however tentative, within Barad’s
analyses of what constitutes the “political”, nor, despite Barad’s claim that
“[s]pecificity is everything – and everything is specific”,140 is the political
dimension of matter explored in its actual specificity; that is, what the political
means for actual specific events or configurations, such as how it might apply
to the realm of sexuality, which would also require, amongst other aspects,
an analysis of the symbolic and juridical dimensions of sexual expression to
explore what is culturally, normatively, and legally permitted sexually and
how this is supported by or contradicts the agential realist ontology.

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Part of this lack of emphasis on the political is methodological, in so far

as Barad warns that we cannot approach the political dimension as if it were
distinct from physics or matter; that is, we cannot “assume each exists in
and answers questions about wholly separate epistemic and ontic domains,
and from this assumption analyze if and how physics has been infiltrated
by the political”.141 Instead,

it is necessary in thinking quantum physics and social-political theories

together to switch optics: rather than using one as a lens for examining
the other in their assumed separateness, to diffractively read their insights
through one another in order to understand them in their inseparability –
that is, to be able to trace the entanglements across all temporal and spatial
scales, or rather, more to the point to rethink the assumed natures of space
and time, and indeed, scale itself.142

This is an interesting point, in so far as it aims not to affirm or simply adopt

the position of quantum physics as the foundation for thinking through
the political, but insists on the entanglement of both; an endeavour that, as
Barad notes, means that it is necessary to “open up the notion of ‘the phys-
ics,’ as well as the political, to being reworked”.143 However, in the actual
implementation of this methodology, Barad’s theorising is far stronger at
reworking the former than the latter. Barad is honest enough to recognise
this, admitting that they are more comfortable working in the language of
quantum mechanics,144 but this does not lessen the problems that result,
in so far as it continuously leads Barad to implicitly downplay the political
dimension. For example, having noted that it is necessary to rework both
“physics” and “the political”, Barad immediately ignores the latter to explain
that it is “no small task: to work with and rework the physics”.145 There is no
mention of what it means to rework the political. Furthermore, Barad goes
on to explain that they offer a “political physics”;146 a formulation that, how-
ever inadvertent, betrays a continuing privileging of physics in which politics
is thought of as a dimension of physics. Even when Barad tries to rebalance
the relationship by reminding us that agential realism is developed from
“crucial insights from critical social and political theories, including femi-
nist, queer, postcolonial, decolonial, and critical race theories”,147 there is
a sense in which those insights are used in the service of the development
of the quantum ontology underpinning agential realism rather than actual
detailed engagements with the various theories or the politics permitted by
them. In sum, despite recognising the importance of the political dimen-
sion and insisting it is tied up with the ontological, Barad’s discussion of the
former always quickly returns to develop the onto-epistemological arena

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(tied to quantum theory) or shows how the political event or theory sup-
ports the onto-epistemological position underpinning agential realism. Not
only is the actual discussion of these supposedly political events underde-
veloped, but the quick movement back to the onto-epistemological focus of
agential realism means that, rather than entwined, there continues to be a
privileging of the ontological over the political.
When we turn to the ethical dimension of Barad’s agential realism, it
must be admitted that it is much stronger. This is perhaps not surprising
given that agential realism aims to be “ethico-ontoepistemology”.148 To develop
this, Barad has latterly drawn on and sought to extend Jacques Derrida’s
work on hospitality to show that the relationality underpinning the quan-
tum ontology of agential realism does not simply “operate” at the individ-
ual level but offers the possibility to reconceive of materiality in terms of “an
ongoing transmutation, an undoing of self, of identity, where the ‘other’ is
always already within”.149 Barad’s conclusion is that the relational ontology
of quantum theory is the moment wherein the question of justice arises,
which is understood not in terms of a definite thing to be realised, but as
“the lived possibility of difference/differencing without exclusion, a differ-
encing that undoes exclusions through the dynamism by which that which
is constitutively excluded becomes a constitutive part of the self, precisely
in an undoing of Self/Other (as well as the Self)”.150 Importantly, this does
not occur at the level of the individual or individual relations or questions
of moral comportment, but is a constitutive feature of matter itself. There is
a “yearning for justice that is written into the world, into the very nature of
matter itself, in an undoing of itself, of essence, of kind”.151
Barad warns however that tying matter to justice “is not [to] say that the
world is always already just by its very nature”;152 it simply means that mat-
ter always expresses

an invitation to a practice of radical hospitality – an opening up to all that is

possible in the thickness of the Now in rejecting practices of a-voidance, tak-
ing responsibility for injustices, activating and aligning with forces of justice,
and welcoming the other in an undoing of the colonizing notion of selfhood
rather than as a marker of not us, not me.153

In other words, “a force of justice is available with-in every moment, every place,
every bit of matter”.154 But this doesn’t mean that “justice” will or indeed can
ever be achieved: “Justice is always to-come, and always a matter of an incal-
culable number of entanglements. But just because it is infinite it doesn’t
mean that we don’t engage in it. We must engage with it, even knowing that
it is infinite and we will never arrive, finally.”155 While there is obviously

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 243

liberatory intent behind this, in so far as it always offers the possibility of a

more just world which we should strive to create, it also brings us back to the
troubling question of agency and the issue of “who” or “what” the “we” is
that Barad maintains is capable of interjecting into the quantum becoming
of matter to direct it towards a more just formation. As noted, Barad rejects
both anthropocentrism – which is tied to the idea that humans can con-
trol matter – and the notion of agency tied to an intentional ego. Instead,
“[a]gency is a matter of intraacting: it is an enactment”,156 with the conse-
quence that agency occurs at the level of matter itself.
Again, however, it is unclear what enacts the intra-action; that is, whether
it is possible to identify the impetus or spark that brings forth alterations
“in” matter. Barad tries to clarify the issue by linking it to questions of politi-
cal agency by claiming that

when people come together en mass to protest injustices, to articulate their

demands and desires for justice, this is political agency in its enactment, in its
multiply expressed desirings for being in connection and collectively reworking the
material condition of human and nonhuman lives as well as reworking the very
possibilities for change.157

Indeed, Barad gives the example of the tactics used by the Hong Kong pro-
democracy protestors of 2019–2020, wherein months into the protests,
and with an awareness that police violence was escalating, the protestors
“shifted to a form of creative resistance that belies the expected atomistic
engagement: rather than masses of people showing up at one given loca-
tion, like a particle (which occupies a given position), they started thinking
of movement in terms of being (like) water – that is, like waves rather than
particles”.158 This is a different kind of movement from the movement of
discrete individuals; it “is to be fluid, formless, and shapeless, to surge up
in one spot, quickly dissipate, only to reemerge with intensity elsewhere
a short time later – protest making and moving as waves diffracting. This
movement was not a form of chaos but rather a decentralized well-coordi-
nated effort.”159
Although Barad is trying to point to a different form of agency from
that which is premised on individual, monadic will, the example is prob-
lematic because it does not explain “how” the protestors were able to shift
their creative resistance, if indeed it was the protestors that did this. Barad’s
discussions of the agency of masses explains that a mass has coalesced for
a particular end and the possibilities that arise from that formation, but
again it does not explain how that occurred. It might be objected that this
is provided through Barad’s insistence on the performative entwinement

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of matter and activity, thereby indicating that material becoming occurs

through the material beings “composing” it, but that would require a far
more detailed explanation of the mechanisms in and through which indi-
viduals act than is provided by Barad’s discussion. Barad’s theory is stronger
at showing that matter itself structures agents, without demonstrating how
the performative acts of those agents subsequently impact upon the becom-
ing of matter.
Admittedly, Barad notes that developing the agential realist position
is a “continuing project of working to bring forward the radical possibili-
ties for living-being otherwise that are always already with-in quantum
physics (itself)”,160 but returning to the question of sexuality, we see that,
as it stands, Barad’s agential reason purposefully rejects or, at least, side-
steps the question of the ways in which (1) individuals intentionally con-
struct or contribute to their sexual expressions, and/or (2) individuals and
communities intentionally construct (exclusionary) normative ideals to
permit, constrain, or punish forms of sexuality, despite, as Barad’s queer
theory affirms, there being no “natural” basis for those prohibitions. In
other words, Barad’s ontological focus undercuts the notion that sexual-
ity is universal, fixed, determined, and binary, and, in so doing, opens up
sexuality to the queerness of matter. Because materiality is queer, so too
are its expressions, including sexuality. This ensures that the binary sexual
opposition that has dominated Western thought actually contradicts the
queerness of material reality. In contrast, non-binary forms of sexuality, so
long held to be contrary to nature, actually express the queerness of matter.
It is queer forms of sexuality and not binary forms that are natural. This
opens up sexual expression to queer forms, all the while grounding those
expressions in the reality of “matter” as opposed to the supposedly imma-
terial (social) constructions of the symbolic realm found in poststructural-
ist thought.
However, by collapsing material expressions, including individual sex-
uality, into pre-personal material becomings to show that sexuality never
actually is fixed or universal, Barad’s agential realism is unable to both ade-
quately explain how individuals can contribute to the realisation of their
sexuality and/or consider or explain how fixed (binary) conceptions of sexu-
ality have (and do) continue to dominant and structure the ethico-political-
juridical spheres of existence despite, as demonstrated by Barad’s agential
realist theory, them not having any basis in materiality. For example, Barad’s
theory seems unable to explain how there can exist laws that explicitly out-
law homosexuality and/or queer sexualities, when such sexualities are a pos-
sible expression of the queerness of materiality, or, put differently, when
such exclusions contradict the queerness of matter. Either those laws must

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 245

be an expression of material becoming, with the consequences that mat-

ter is not (always) so queer and it is not clear how Barad can criticise them
or it is possible that such laws exist but do so in a way that contradicts the
queerness of materiality despite being an expression of the queermess of
materiality. That either means that such laws are not grounded in the queer
structures of materiality, which contradicts the ontology underpinning the
agential realist position, or they are grounded in queer materiality but there
is some way in which it is possible that entities (in this case laws) may con-
tradict their own material grounding, which not only requires explanation
but also brings us back to the issue of “who” is the agent that affects such
a disjunction. In short, Barad’s queer theory is strong at undermining the
notions of fixed sexual identity and essentialism by showing that sexual-
ity is “grounded” in moving material becomings, but it does not explain
how, despite this, (certain) sexual identities are nevertheless adopted and
affirmed, both by individuals and societies, to foreclose – and indeed justify
that foreclosure – sexual expression in the first place.
Rectifying this would require a much clearer and extensive consideration
and explanation of (1) the socio-political-communitarian dimensions of
meaning-formation and sexual expression, including the way(s) in which
the intentional actions and interactions of “individual” material-beings
facilitate and contribute to this; (2) how socio-political-juridical struc-
tures affirm and support particular (binary) conceptions of sexuality to the
detriment of others despite this normative-juridical affirmation of certain
sexualities and sexual practices contradicting the queerness of materiality
that grounds them; (3) how exclusionary forms of sexuality, such as those
inherent in the essentialist-patriarchal-heteronormative model, can exist
despite contradicting the open material queerness that they both depend
upon and express; and (4) the relationship between material being and the
symbolic realm to explain how the latter can contradict the former despite,
on Barad’s telling, the material and symbolic being constitutively and inti-
mately entwined. Such an analysis would presumably require a far stronger
and more extensive discussion of the symbolic realm that recognises that
the symbolic, while entwined with the material, is not so entangled that
it cannot contradict the material conditions underpinning and sustaining
it. Barad is wary of providing such an account, despite claiming that the
symbolic is tied to materiality, because it would presumably risk reaffirm-
ing the importance of the symbolic “over” materiality; a position that Barad
associates with the poststructuralist linguistic reductionism that agential
realism aims to correct. However, without that discussion of the ways in
which the symbolic (itself tied to questions of ethics, politics, and law)
can depart from the conditions of material becoming that sustain it, to,

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in so doing, create conceptions of sexuality that do not accurately reflect

the queer becoming of matter, Barad’s agential realist account, for all its
insights and liberatory intent, is ultimately unable to explain how it is and
has been possible for the essential-patriarchal-heteronormative model of
sexuality, against which agential realism sets itself, to not only come into
existence in the first place, but to also be able to dominate discussions of
the topic for so long, and, indeed, to be held to be “natural”, despite, as
Barad points out, it actually having no material basis.
Barad’s agential realist account leaves us then in a problematic posi-
tion, in which we are given the conceptual tools to rethink sexuality in
terms of the absolute openness of material queerness, without being able
to explain how the alternative, exclusionary forms of sexuality can actu-
ally exist in the first place. Without that explanation, the agential real-
ist account (1) risks its own redundancy, in so far as it claims to fight
an opponent – in the form of exclusionary models of sexuality – that it
is unclear can actually exist based on the premises of agential realism;
namely, due to its grounding in the open-ended queer becoming of mat-
ter; and/or (2) inadvertently risks downplaying the dangers of such exclu-
sionary models of sexuality because the affirmation of non-intentional
queer material becoming appears to forestall both the need to and the
possibility of actively and intentionally combating them; all that “we”
must do is await their undermining through the agency of matter itself,
an undermining that is always taking place and/or has already taken place
because materiality is (always) queer. For all its promise, innovation, and
originality, Barad’s agential realist account returns us to and, in so doing,
reopens the question(ing) of sexuality. How to do so is taken up in the
conclusion.

Notes
1. See, for example, Michael Losonsky, Linguistic Turns in Modern Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
2. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 5.
3. Elizabeth A. Wilson, Neural Geographies: Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition
(Abingdon: Routledge, 1998), p. 14.
4. Sarah Ahmed, “Some Preliminary Remarks on the Founding Gestures of
the ‘New Materialism’”, European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 15, n. 1, 2008,
pp. 23–39 (p. 28).
5. Somer Brodribb, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism (New
York: New York University Press, 1992), p. 24.
6. Ibid., p. 133.

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 247

7. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology: Corrected Edition, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 158.
This a mistranslation of “il n’y a pas de hors-texte”: “there is no outside-text”.
8. For a recent critical discussion of Derrida’s materialism, see Clayton Crockett,
Derrida after the End of Writing: Political Theology and New Materialism (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2017).
9. For a discussion of (1) what has come to be known as “new materialism”, see
the essays collected in Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (eds), New Materialisms:
Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and
(2) how theory moved beyond poststructuralism, see Rosi Braidotti (ed.), After
Poststructuralism: Transformations and Transitions (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).
10. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994). For a critical discussion of Deleuze’s ontology, see Gavin
Rae, Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
11. See, for example, the essays collected in Sarah Ellenzweig and John H. Zammito
(eds), The New Politics of Materialism: History, Philosophy, Science (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2017).
12. In personal correspondence with the author, Karen Barad expressed a desire
to use the pronouns they/their (instead of she/her) to describe themselves.
Regardless of the personal reasons for such a choice, conceptually speaking, it
(1) supports the theoretical claim of agential realism that sexuality is multiple
and fluid, and (2) undercuts the theoretical assumptions of the essential-patri-
archal-heteronormative model. For these reasons, I use those pronouns when
referring to Barad.
13. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007),
p. 132.
14. Ibid., pp. 34–35.
15. Ibid., p. 133.
16. Ibid., p. ix.
17. Ibid., p. 33.
18. Ibid., p. 26.
19. Karen Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, vol. 1–2,
2012, pp. 25–53; Karen Barad, “Transmaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Reality and
Queer Political Imaginings”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 21,
n. 2–3, 2015, pp. 387–422.
20. Butler traces the Hegelian influences shaping twentieth-century French think-
ing in Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1999). For Hegel, identity and difference are
dialectically entwined: identity is never singular but is always composed of and
dependent upon an ongoing process of differential becoming, whereas differ-
ence always takes on an identity to the extent that even “non-identity” takes on
the identity of “lacking” identity. Hegel’s entire oeuvre can be read as explicating
this point, but the most developed formal discussion of the identity–difference

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relationship is found in chapter 2A of Book Two: The Doctrine of Essence in The

Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), pp. 356–365. For a discussion of (1) how the identity–difference
relation plays out throughout Hegel’s thinking generally but especially in rela-
tion to the question of human being, see Gavin Rae, Realizing Freedom: Hegel,
Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011); and (2) the forms of identity that can continue to adhere to ontolo-
gies that are affirmative of pure difference, see Gavin Rae, “Traces of Identity in
Deleuze’s Differential Ontology”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
vol. 22, n. 1, 2014, pp. 86–105.
21. Barad, Meeting the University Halfway, p. 48.
22. Ibid., p. 48.
23. Ibid., p. 46.
24. Ibid., p. 46.
25. Ibid., p. 46.
26. Ibid., p. 61.
27. Ibid., p. 150.
28. Ibid., p. 151.
29. Ibid., p. 151.
30. Ibid., p. 151.
31. Ibid., p. 192.
32. Ibid., p. 192.
33. Ibid., p. 192.
34. Ibid., p. 64.
35. Ibid., p. 64.
36. Ibid., p. 66.
37. Ibid., p. 30.
38. Ibid., p. 23.
39. Ibid., p. 34.
40. Ibid., p. 136.
41. Ibid., p. 136. The notion of “posthumanism” is heterogeneous (for a good over-
view, see Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? [Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota
University Press, 2010]), but I have elsewhere argued that posthumanist theory
is premised around a critique of anthropocentrism that can be traced back to an
implicit and often unacknowledged dependence on the critique of metaphys-
ics inherent in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. See Gavin Rae, “Heidegger’s
Influence on Posthumanism: The Destruction of Metaphysics, Technology, and
the Overcoming of Anthropocentrism”, History of Human Sciences, vol. 27, n. 1,
2014, pp. 51–69.
42. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 136. For a general overview of the prob-
lem of anthropocentrism, see Gavin Rae, “Anthropocentrism”, in Encyclopaedia of
Global Bioethics, edited by Henk ten Have (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), pp. 1–12.
43. Ibid., p. 35. Ironically, Butler has frequently been charged with being unable to
account for human agency because Butler is held to reduce agency to determined

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 249

effects of pre-personal structures and processes. Whereas Butler has developed a

sophisticated account of human agency to counter this criticism, Barad revels in
the charge and, indeed, doubles-down on it by explicitly claiming that agency is
inherently and fundamentally non-human. Butler’s most sophisticated account
of agency is found in The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). For a critical discussion of Butler’s theory
of agency, see Gavin Rae, Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth-Century
Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), chapter 5.
44. Tim Hayward, “Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem”, Environmental
Ethics, vol. 6, n. 1, 1997, pp. 9–63 (pp. 52–55).
45. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 192.
46. Ibid., p. ix.
47. Ibid., p. ix.
48. Ibid., p. 19.
49. Ibid., p. 67.
50. Ibid., p. 106.
51. Ibid., p. 107.
52. Ibid., p. 107.
53. Ibid., p. 107.
54. Ibid., p. 69.
55. Ibid., p. 69.
56. Ibid., p. 27.
57. Ibid., p. 26.
58. Ibid., p. 22.
59. Ibid., p. 3.
60. Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How
Matter Comes to Matter”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28,
n. 3, 2003, pp. 801–831 (p. 823).
61. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 155.
62. Ibid., p. 156.
63. Ibid., p. 156.
64. Ibid., p. 156.
65. Ibid., p. 155.
66. Ibid., p. 211.
67. Ibid., p. 33.
68. Ibid., p. 33.
69. Karen Barad and Adam Kleinman, “Intra-actions”, Mousse, vol. 34, summer,
2012, pp. 76–81 (p. 77).
70. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 33.
71. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 233.
72. Ibid., p. 234.
73. Ibid., p. 141.
74. Ibid., p. 141.
75. Ibid., p. 141.

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76. Ibid., p. 141.

77. Ibid., p. 33.
78. Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity”, p. 820.
79. Ibid., p. 820.
80. Ibid., p. 820.
81. Ibid., p. 816.
82. Ibid., p. 815.
83. Ibid., p. 816.
84. Ibid., p. 816.
85. Ibid., p. 816.
86. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 146.
87. Ibid., p. 146.
88. Ibid., p. 146.
89. Ibid., p. 146.
90. Ibid., p. 146.
91. Ibid., p. 140.
92. Ibid., p. 140.
93. Ibid., p. 140.
94. Ibid., p. 140.
95. Ibid., p. 33.
96. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 45.
97. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 214.
98. Ibid., p. 172.
99. Ibid., p. 235.
100. Karen Barad, “Agential Realism: Feminist Interventions in Understanding
Scientific Practices”, in Science Studies Reader, edited by Mario Biagioli (Abingdon:
Routledge, 1999), pp. 1–11 (p. 7).
101. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 28.
102. Ibid., p. 28.
103. Ibid., p. 28.
104. Ibid., p. 28.
105. Ibid., p. 29.
106. Ibid., p. 29.
107. Ibid., p. 29.
108. Ibid., p. 29.
109. Ibid., p. 39.
110. Ibid., p. 33.
111. Ibid., p. 32.
112. Karen Barad, Malou Juelskjær, and Nete Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entangle-
ments: An Interview with Karen Barad”, Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, vol. 1–2, 2012,
pp. 10–24 (p. 19).
113. Ibid., p. 19.
114. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 39.
115. Karen Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inher-
itance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come”, Derrida

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 Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory / 251

Today, vol. 3, n. 2, 2010, pp. 240–268 (p. 246). Indeed, what Barad finds so
remarkable “about quantum physics is how astonishingly queer it is – it is so
queer that it queers queer, keeping it in motion . . . Not only specific binaries
are destabilized, but even the cuts are iteratively cross-cut” (Barad, Juelskjær,
Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements”, p. 19).
116. Barad, Juelskjær, Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements”, p. 18.
117. Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inherit-
ance”, p. 246.
118. Barad and Kleinman, “Intra-actions”, p. 80.
119. Ibid., p. 80.
120. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 45.
121. Barad, “Transmaterialities”, p. 413.
122. Barad, “Nature’s Queer Performativity”, p. 47.
123. Ibid., p. 412.
124. Ibid., p. 401.
125. Ibid., p. 401.
126. Ibid., p. 399.
127. Ibid., p. 399.
128. Han Thomas Adriaenssen, Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to
Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
129. Elizabeth Grosz, The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of Materialism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
130. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p. 393.
131. Barad and Kleinman, “Intra-actions”, p. 81.
132. Rae, Poststructuralist Agency.
133. Gill Jagger, “The New Materialism and Sexual Difference”, Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society, vol. 40, n. 2, 2015, pp. 321–342 (p. 338).
134. Karen Barad and Daniela Gandorfer, “Political Desirings: Yearnings for Mattering
(,) Differently”, Theory & Event, vol. 24, n. 1, 2021, pp. 14–66 (p. 29).
135. Ibid., p. 29.
136. Ibid., p. 28.
137. Karen Barad, “No Small Mattter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothing-
ness, and Strange Topologies of Spacetimemattering”, in Arts of Living on a
Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Tsing,
Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Swanson (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota
University Press, 2017), pp. 103–120; Karen Barad, “After the End of the World:
Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of
Justice”, Theory & Event, vol. 22, n. 3, 2019, pp. 524–550.
138. Karen Barad, “Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness: Re-turning,
Re-membering, and Facing the Incalculable Atomic Bomb”, New Formations,
n. 92, September 2017, pp. 56–86.
139. Barad and Gandorfer, “Political Desirings”, p. 29.
140. Ibid., p. 28.
141. Ibid., p. 21.
142. Ibid., p. 22.

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143. Ibid., pp. 22–23.

144. Ibid., p. 34.
145. Ibid., p. 23.
146. Ibid., p. 23.
147. Ibid., p. 23.
148. Ibid., p. 39.
149. Barad, “After the End of the World”, p. 543. Derrida outlines his thinking
on hospitality across a variety of works, but the most succinct discussion is
found in Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond,
trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). For
an extended discussion of Derrida’s thinking on hospitality, see Judith Still,
Derrida and Hospitality: Theory and Practice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010).
150. Barad and Gandorfer, “Political Desirings”, p. 46.
151. Ibid., p. 46.
152. Barad, “After the End of the World”, p. 544.
153. Ibid., p. 545.
154. Ibid., p. 544.
155. Barad and Gandorfer, “Political Desirings”, p. 33.
156. Ibid., p. 59.
157. Ibid., p. 59.
158. Ibid., p. 54.
159. Ibid., pp. 54–55.
160. Barad, “After the End of the World”, p. 540.

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 Conclusion: Sexuality as Constellation

The preceding chapters have been guided by the contention that the history
of Western philosophical thinking on the question of sexuality has been
marked by one dominant logic, termed here the “essentialist-patriarchal”
model, which morphed into the essentialist-patriarchal-heteronormative
model. Although it has been expressed in different ways, thinkers from
Ancient Greece, early Christianity through to modern philosophy, German
Idealism, and the nineteenth century tended to foreclose the nature and
meaning of sexuality (including sexual relations) within the coordinates
of this model. Western thinking has then tended to be premised on a
binary division between “men” and “women”, both of which are desig-
nated as such because they are held to “possess” a number of definitive
and mutually exclusive essential ontological characteristics which, in
turn, have been accompanied by a privileging of the masculine position
over the feminine and heterosexual relations over alternatives. The place,
status, and possibilities for each sex and, indeed, sexual relations gener-
ally have then tended to be heavily prescribed and foreclosed within pre-
established boundaries.
This model was the subject of substantial critique within twentieth-
century thought, as thinkers from distinct methodologies and traditions
questioned its insistence that the meaning of sexuality is fixed or prede-
termined. Although this did not generate agreement, what it did demon-
strate was that the question of sexuality depends upon a whole assortment
of ontological, metaphysical, epistemological questions, the responses to
which generate distinct conceptions of sexuality and, indeed, juridical-
political-moral frameworks that support and re-enforce them. For example,
with regards to the essentialist-patriarchal model, it tends to justify itself
through appeal to theological scripture, a particular version of nature and

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what is natural, understood in ahistoric, determinate terms, and/or the

assumptions driving specific juridical-political-ethical frameworks regard-
ing the division of social space or how the sexes should act that, in turn,
are tied to questions of language, history, and cultures. What appears to be
a relatively simplistic model is then actually revealed to be a complex and
heterogeneous one.
Rather than simply abandon the premises of the essentialist-patriar-
chal model to affirm an alternative from the perspective of formal logic or
abstract system-building, proponents of, amongst others, psychoanalytic,
phenomenological, and feminist theories purposefully insisted on the need
to undertake a historically informed analysis that recognises and takes seri-
ously the way(s) in which “sexuality” has been previously thought. The basic
premise driving these endeavours is that altering the dominant conceptual
apparatus cannot occur in abstraction from history but must pass through it
to twist open alternative pathways. As such, the critical perspectives engaged
with in the previous chapters have tied their analyses to the concrete history
of the topic as this has been defined by the dominant logic structuring the
debate historically, at least as this has been thought within Western society,
to highlight the exclusions that have marked it. The result has been a fertile
and ongoing, if, at times, subterranean but also increasingly radical, engage-
ment with the historically dominant essentialist-patriarchal model of sexu-
ality specifically and question of sexuality more generally.
Starting at the dawn of the twentieth century, Freudian psychoanalytic
theory aimed to move the discussion of “sexuality” away from the essen-
tialist ontologies of substance historically dominant, to a developmental
model of sexuality based on psychic mechanisms. Not only does Freud go
on to insist on the important role that sexuality plays at all stages of human
being – it does not simply adhere to adulthood – he also goes to great
lengths to explain and demonstrate that the form this takes alters through-
out an individual’s life. As a consequence, sexuality is held to be an inherent
aspect of human being and one that is far more complex than the essential-
patriarchal model recognises, in so far as it is historic, indeterminate, and
dependent on an ongoing developmental process that is always subtended
by an originary bisexuality.
Despite the importance of Freud’s critique of ontological essentialism, his
rethinking of sexuality is however marked by two problems: not only does
it continue to depend upon a logic of patriarchy, but, importantly, sexual
expression is foreclosed within binary structures, both in terms of the origi-
nary bisexuality from which individual sexuality develops and the binary
heteronormative nature of what he considered to be “healthy” individuals.
In contrast, Martin Heidegger engaged with the ontological understanding

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 Conclusion / 255

subtending Freud’s thinking to move the terms of the debate from the psy-
chic to the ontological level to “ground” sexuality in the response given to
the question of the meaning of Being. By tying the question of Being to
time, Heidegger insisted, pace Freud, that sexuality is not structured from an
originary bisexuality; it is orientated from an originary ontological indeter-
minacy that, through a process of autopoietic differentiation, is expressed
in multiple factical forms that continue to find expression through a pro-
cess of open-ended becoming. However, while this undermines the binary
logic subtending patriarchy, Heidegger focuses on placing the question
of sexuality in relation to the question of the meaning of Being, rather
than in developing any ontic, or empirical, conception of sexuality per se.
Although we can extrapolate from his ontological analysis, the ontic level
was not his concern, with the consequence that his thinking is particularly
weak regarding it.
This changed as Husserlian-inspired phenomenology was transported
from Germany to France in the 1930s and 1940s, with the material embod-
ied basis of sexuality coming to the fore. Indeed, for the next fifty years or
so, the question of sexuality and, in particular, the rejection of the essen-
tialist-patriarchal model of sexuality occupied much French thinking as it
grappled with whether sexuality is structured from the material body or
symbolic structures; a debate that took us from phenomenology to femi-
nist theory by way of poststructuralism and a particular return to Freudian
psychoanalysis. Although this reveals the ways in which the questioning of
the essentialist-patriarchal model traverses distinct theoretical perspectives,
the significant interest in the question of sexuality in France from the mid-
1940s onwards, but not Germany after Heidegger – despite the consider-
able attention to the issue in the German-speaking world up to the start of
Nazism – also points to the culturally grounded nature of any questioning
of sexuality. This became further evident with the movement to gender the-
ory and queer theory later in the century, which moved from thinkers based
in France to those located in America (albeit who were influenced by much
French thinking) and gave rise to a distinct conceptual apparatus through
which to engage with the problem.
While a variety of French phenomenologists took up the question of sex-
uality, often in direct confrontation with Heidegger, I argued that the most
sophisticated response was provided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his early
work on the sexed body. Merleau-Ponty agrees with Heidegger on the need
to adopt Husserl’s phenomenological reduction to bracket presuppositions
regarding sexuality, but they differ in terms of how to implement this. Mer-
leau-Ponty insists, contra Heidegger, that the analysis must be conducted
from, through, and with specific focus on the human body rather than from

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a prior ontological analysis that brackets the question of (bodily) facticity.

This brings to the fore the fundamental, but not foundational, role that sexu-
ality plays in embodied experience, as a precursor to insisting on the ambigu-
ous nature of sexuality: although part of human embodied being, “sexuality”
does not have a separate existence but is bound up with the entire existence
of each body. The consequences of this are debated, but its main contribu-
tion is to highlight and set in motion a conceptual bond between sexuality
and the lived body that reverberates throughout subsequent thought.
To this point, Freud, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty were shown to hold
a common problematisation of the ontological essentialism inherent in
Western thinking on sexuality, but left untouched the patriarchal aspect.
This changed with Simone de Beauvoir, who purposefully and explicitly
engages with the question of essentialism but focuses more on the role that
“woman” plays in Western thought. In so doing, she outlines the problem
of patriarchy and, based on her insistence that sexuality is a cultural con-
struct, proposed a forceful critique of it. While it appears that Beauvoir’s cri-
tique continues to insist on a binary heteronormative opposition between
“man” and “woman”, to examine the cultural status of the latter, I argued
that her notion of ambiguity and comments on the biology–culture rela-
tionship not only complicate that assessment but also led her thinking to
be an important point of reference for future analyses. Indeed, it became
a subterranean point of reference for the symbolic/material division that
would structure subsequent debates.
This division came to the fore with the structuralist eclipse of phenom-
enology that took place in 1950s France, a movement that gave rise to sev-
eral conceptual innovations. Jacques Lacan’s return to Freud reinvigorated
psychoanalytic thinking by insisting on the fundamental importance of the
differential relations subtending symbolic meaning. This not only made
“sexuality” a relational concept, thereby continuing the rejection of onto-
logical essentialism inherent in Freudian and phenomenologically inspired
accounts, but also brought to the fore the centrality of the problem of lan-
guage. Lacan, at least in his writings and teachings throughout the 1950s,
did, however, continue to think the sexual positions from a predetermined
anchor point – the phallus – to foreclose sexual expression within fixed
boundaries. Although ultimately ambiguous regarding the role and func-
tion of the phallus – a position that, on one reading, binds his thinking on
sexuality to Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir who also emphasise the ambigu-
ous “nature” of the phenomena – it appears to either systematically down-
grade the feminine position to secondary status or dissolve the problem
of sexuality within the question of the structure of the symbolic and, spe-
cifically, whether the symbolic requires a foundational anchor point. As a

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 Conclusion / 257

consequence, and although it rejects ontological essentialism and, indeed,

insists on the symbolic construction of sexuality, to appear to remove any
and all foreclosings, Lacan, nevertheless, once again confines sexuality
within a patriarchal logic.
Lacan’s work in the 1950s was influential, not only in psychoanalytic
theory, but also in relation to the development of poststructuralist thinking
on sexuality generally. This, however, brought forth another set of concep-
tual alterations to structure the debate – some of which drew on Lacan’s
later work on the real – the most important of which was the rejection of
the notion that the symbolic system is anchored in and by a point of ref-
erence. By undercutting the logical foundationalism that was understood
to support (Lacan’s dependence on) the logic of patriarchy, the idea was
to remove all ways in which one sexual position could be privileged over
another. Indeed, by recuperating the overtly materialist positions proposed
by Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray went further by claiming that,
contra Lacan, symbolic systems are grounded in the material differences
between the sexes. So, having worked to disarm the logic of patriarchy from
within its own premises and, in so doing, demonstrating the historically
grounded nature of her critique, Irigaray supplemented this with a recon-
figuration of the sexes based on the unique differences inherent in the natu-
ral rhythms of each. In so doing, she moved the discussion away from the
symbolic sphere to the natural, material one, while also reconfiguring this
in terms of processes and flows rather than substances as has traditionally
been the case. Her thinking is then an important corrective to Lacan’s sym-
bolic account that also brings to the fore the fault line running through
the two approaches. However, as noted, Irigaray is somewhat unique in
relation to the thinkers discussed because while they tend to undermine
ontological essentialism without questioning the logic of patriarchy, she
combats the latter by depending on a particular ontological essentialism,
albeit one thought in terms of flows and rhythms rather than fixed sub-
stances. Although this reveals the heterogeneity inherent in the notion of
“essence”, it also means that, for all her conceptual innovation, Irigaray
continues to think within the essentialist logic – that she also shows is far
more heterogeneous than often appreciated – governing the essentialist-
patriarchal model of sexuality.
Importantly, Irigaray’s structuring of sexual difference around a binary
masculine/feminine division brought to the fore the issue of heteronorma-
tivity; that is, the way in which the Western tradition has foreclosed sexuality
within a masculine/feminine structure and/or taken this structure as the
model for all others. This was often ignored or simply uncritically accepted
by those who otherwise criticised the essentialist-patriarchal model, but

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the importance of heteronormativity to the essentialist-patriarchal model

extends our understanding of the exclusions and foreclosings inherent in
that model and, by extension, the parameters against which any critique of
it must pass. If the foreclosure inherent in the essentialist-patriarchal model
is to be overcome, the heteronormativity that has also accompanied it – but
which has long been ignored – must also be overcome. Doing so required
a specific conceptual innovation borne of a geographical alteration from
France to America and a linguistic one from French to English.
In particular, Judith Butler insists that it depends upon a particular
conceptual alteration away from a direct engagement with the nature of
“sexuality” per se, to that of gender, which is held to support and generate
the former. By claiming that gender is based on an ongoing performative
construction, Butler reiterates Lacan’s symbolic orientation while criticising
Lacan’s continuing phallogocentrism. Instead of insisting that the construc-
tion of gender is structured from the symbolic phallus, Butler maintains
that it is based on an open-ended performative construction through and
from the iteration of discursive practices and social norms. Importantly,
this does not conform to nor is it predefined by a prior model; gender per-
formativity is afoundational and constructed through its doing, with the
consequence that its expression is always open.
However, although I argued that Butler explicitly rejects ontological
essentialism, the logic of patriarchy, and binary sexual oppositions, and
goes on to provide a subtle response to the question of embodiment and
materiality, Butler’s supposed reliance on social-linguistic performativity
brought forth the charge – often based on a reductionist reading – that
they give too much weight to socio-linguistic processes to the detriment of
material ones. As such, it was held to fall into abstraction. From this prem-
ise, Karen Barad insists on the need to ground gender construction, not
in symbolic performativity, but on the processes of materialisation under-
stood through Niels Bohr’s quantum theory. By showing that materiality is
nothing other than a constant queer becoming, in so far as it lacks any iden-
tity and moves through random intra-active material jerks, Barad not only
rejects the scaffolding supporting any form of ontological essentialism and,
indeed, any form of identity, sexually or otherwise, but also calls into ques-
tion the West’s conceptual dependence on logical and materially clear-cut
boundaries by insisting on their entangled status. This, in turn, undermines
the logic that supports the logic of patriarchy – there simply are no such
things as “masculinity” and “femininity” – by pointing to the hybrid and
ever-changing nature of sexual expression and, by extension, any privileging
of heteronormativity, or, indeed, distinct forms of normativity.
For Barad, each queer form of sexual expression is natural, in so far as it
is an expression of the processes inherent in the materialisation of matter,

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 Conclusion / 259

and, importantly, is inherently individual and single. This is not, however,

to say that individuals have a single form of sexuality or even that individu-
als choose their queerness; it makes the stronger claim that because “indi-
viduals” are effects of differentiating material processes, they are composed
of multiple and queer “sexualities” that are subject to constant change and
alteration. It is not possible then to make universal or general(isable) state-
ments about sexuality; it is always queer, expressing itself in distinct and
unpredictable ways based on the quantum leaps constituting the mate-
rial processes subtending “it”. Rather than constraining or foreclosing this
within predetermined parameters, Barad insists that the queerness of matter
must be respected and adhered to, with the consequence that they push us
to accept and celebrate the multidimensionality and queerness of sexuality,
including our own.
Although this moves us a long way from the fixed predetermined onto-
logical certainties of the essentialist-patriarchal model and, indeed, Freud’s
initial attempt to break it down by positing an originary ontological bisexu-
ality, the celebration of radical indeterminacy and unpredictability inher-
ent in Barad’s quantum queer theory does contain one glaring problem:
it deconstructs all foreclosings of sexuality to show that they cannot be
supported materially but has nothing to say on why, nevertheless, Western
thought has (been able to) insist(ed) on such foreclosings. I argued that
this was a consequence of Barad’s privileging of the ontological level to the
relative lack of any engagement with the normative, political, and juridi-
cal dimensions of sexuality that would explain how exclusionary forms of
sexuality and sexual expression can be created and sustained despite contra-
dicting their own queer material grounding. Barad’s queer theory rejects the
foreclosure of sexual expression and, indeed, the attempt to describe sexual
expression through any form of identity – a position that, paradoxically,
undermines the importance of “sexuality”; after all, there is, strictly speak-
ing, no such “thing” to focus on – to, in so doing, open it up to forms of
expression that have long been rejected or excluded. But it achieves this by
simply bypassing a number of associated issues or proposing solutions that
conflict with a number of its other aspects. For all its deconstructive power,
it is therefore marked by lacunae that undermine its explanatory force.
Of course, it could be objected that this is perfectly in keeping with and,
indeed, a direct consequence of Barad’s insistence on the queer nature of
sexual expression; it is so indeterminate, changing, singular, and unpredict-
able, that it must contain such lacunae. I do not necessarily want to deny
that conclusion nor do I want to simply re-instantiate a unitary normative
framework to engage with sexuality. One of the great benefits of the move
to gender and beyond that to queer is that it removes all foreclosings of
sexuality to remind us of its material indeterminancy, fluidity, and indeed

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inherent singularity. However, although I have much sympathy for this

approach, it is also problematic because it threatens to turn sexuality into
an effect of anonymous material processes that fails to recognise and so
is unable to take into consideration or engage with the collective political
and juridical dimensions that affirm socially acceptable forms of sexuality
and sexual expression. These are part of the socio-political-ethico-juridical
processes through which a collective defines itself, in so far as it outlines
the rules and norms by which individuals must live and express them-
selves in accordance with. Not only does Barad’s agential realism appear
to deny intentional agency to individuals but it also seems to be unable
to explain how the norms, rules, and juridical laws that are conditions of
social existence may actually, and potentially necessarily, foreclose sexuality
and sexual expression within restrictive (binary) parameters despite such
foreclosure contradicting its supposed grounding in and expression of the
open-ended queer becoming of matter.
Barad’s agential realism leaves us in this position because, despite insist-
ing that sexuality is an expression of multiple material entanglements,
which should therefore bring forth a rich engagement with distinct aspects
(social, normative, political, juridical, and so on) of sexuality and sexual
expression, there is an overwhelming tendency to affirm a fundamentally
ontological explanation for sexuality. As such, it tends to reduce sexual-
ity to an ontological phenomenon and, in so doing, continues to affirm a
singular approach to “it”. Ironically, such a position contains and threatens
to reaffirm many of the exclusions that it claims to want to undermine. By
grounding sexuality in ontology, Barad’s agential realism reminds us that
sexuality is open-ended, fluid, wholly singular, and queer, but is unable to
adequately explore the political, social, normative, and juridical dimensions
of sexuality and sexual expression that shape how sexuality is symbolically
created through social codes that delineate acceptable sexual expressions
and also, by extension, create sexual (binary) exclusions that contradict the
expressive queerness of matter itself. It is, in other words, caught between
celebrating and affirming the open-ended material queerness of sexuality,
while being unable to adequately explain how such processes have given
rise to the exclusionary social, political, normative, and/or juridical dis-
courses on sexuality that have historically dominated.

Moving Forward
The question arising at this point refers to where we go from here. How
to respect and stay “true” to the fundamental lesson that has arisen from
the historical trajectory charted throughout the previous chapters regarding

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 Conclusion / 261

the absolutely indeterminate, open-ended, singular, expressive becoming

of sexuality, all the while recognising the important role that sexuality plays
in existence and doing so in a way that does not simply reduce it to one
dimension? If there is no fixed foundation to ground sexuality – one of
the reasons for the substantial debate that has arisen around “it” – and
the issue is, as we have seen, fundamentally multidimensional, constantly
moving across different parts which are themselves in constant movement,
how are we to engage with the question of sexuality? Indeed, from the pre-
vious chapters, it appears that we are caught in something of an antinomy
between, on the one hand, insisting that the problem of sexuality is a real
one and promising that while previous attempts to capture “it” have been
flawed, if we only continue to engage with it and indeed continue to empty
it of any determinations we will eventually find the correct answer, one not
based on prior exclusions; or, on the other hand, insisting that the long
history of failed attempts to get a handle on the issue point to the conclu-
sion that it is a problem without solution or, put differently, a “false” prob-
lem – whether because of its inherent complexity or because it simply does
not exist as a “thing” to be conceptualised – that must forever evade our
conceptual grasp. The optimism of the first option depends upon the pos-
sibility that a single answer – even one which claims that sexuality is non-
determined – can be given to the question, while the latter option simply
abandons the topic, thereby ignoring the fact that the concept exists and so
presumably delineates “something” and, indeed, has played a fundamental
role in shaping Western thinking and culture.
Although it might be tempting to impale ourselves on the horns of this
dilemma, my suggestion – one in keeping with the critique of binary opposi-
tions outlined in previous chapters – is that there is another, far more satis-
factory, option that navigates through the Charybdis of foundationalism and
the Scylla of abandonment by respecting the afoundationalism, heterogene-
ity, and complexity that the previous chapters have revealed to surround the
problem of sexuality, all the while continuing to treat sexuality as a “real”
problem to be engaged. In the first instance, however, this requires a bit of
a detour through methodological issues as to how to engage with the ques-
tion of what it is that we engage with when we talk of “sexuality”. That is, it
requires that we first turn away from a direct study of sexuality to focus on the
question of how to think about sexuality.
Despite their heterogeneity and the differences between them, what unites
the various figures discussed throughout the previous chapters is an implicit
assumption that “sexuality” is something identifiable that can be studied and
conceptualised. Even those claiming that it is open-ended make a definitive
claim about sexuality that applies univocally across all its manifestations.

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This is not to say that all have agreed on the fundamental characteristic of
sexuality, but all have agreed that there is a fundamental principle or charac-
teristic that allows us to grasp what sexuality is: bisexuality for Freud, inde-
terminacy for Heidegger, body for Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir, the symbolic
for Lacan, natural rhythms according to Irigaray, and gender performativity
or queer materiality for Butler and Barad respectively. Although these all aim
to explicitly undercut the notion that sexuality is fixed, their solutions con-
tinue to implicitly operate around a particular conceptual lodestone that has
the unintended consequence of shepherding the analysis into a particular
conceptual corral. In other words, the attempt to affirm openness and het-
erogeneity is undermined by the insistence that, regardless of the manifesta-
tion, sexuality is undermined by a particular universality: it is fundamentally
queer, or performative, or ontologically neutral, or bisexual, and so on. This
generates substantial philosophical discussion, but my argument is that it
continues to be based on a misguided assumption as to what the concept
“sexuality” is, tries to do, and by extension what we can say about “it”. This
approach can, at best, provide certain insights into aspects of a particular con-
figuration of sexuality, but it remains partial because it continues to insist that
there is always only one way to approach the issue.
Instead of continuing to try to identify what “sexuality” fundamentally
is, as if it could be reduced to a universal feature, my suggestion is that we
re-problematise the issue away from the assumption that sexuality delineates
a uni-versal phenomenon or characteristic defined by a singular approach and,
by extension, response, towards one in which “sexuality” is best understood
as the concept that collects and so acts as the entry point into a heterogeneous
and continuously changing field of distinct vectors, dimensions, concepts, and
questions. To start to outline what I have in mind and what this might look
like, I take off from an unusual source: the early critical theory of Walter Ben-
jamin. Although not a figure normally associated with questions of sexuality,
if only because Benjamin does not directly discuss this issue, in his famous
“Epistemo-Critical Forward” to his Origin of German Trauspiel,1 Benjamin does
engage with the question of presentation or representation (Darstellung) in
philosophy – that is, how philosophy is to properly present or represent an
issue – to offer us a highly original analysis of concepts as constellations that I
will suggest can be used to rethink how we approach the question of sexuality.
It is to this, admittedly, highly abstract analysis that I now briefly turn, before
returning to tie it to the question(ing) of sexuality.

Benjamin and Ideas as Constellations

For Benjamin, philosophy is unique in that its mode of presentation is an
issue for it. Other disciplines tend not worry about how to present their

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findings because there tends to be a predefined way to do so. Scientific pre-

sentation, for example, is premised on and orientated around and from the
question of closure, in so far as it aims to present a doctrine outlining the
truth of the issue and does so based on the closed and restricted relation-
ship between the premises of its argument and the conclusion generated; a
procedure that is also conducted in a sterile, formal, or technical language
that aims to avoid any recognition of the complexities and ambiguities of
language. Indeed, mathematics explicitly formulates its arguments in tech-
nical terms and formal mathematical symbols to avoid the ambiguities of
language and, in so doing, supposedly be more precise.2 In contrast, phi-
losophy is both dependent upon “historical codification”3 and is intimately
connected to the question of language. It is therefore always problematised
and opened up. Benjamin’s conclusion is that this is because philosophy
and science have different ends: whereas the presentation of science is ori-
entated around didactic requirements – with the consequence that it aims
to remove ambiguity from the equation – “method in philosophical proj-
ects is not just absorbed in their didactic implementation”.4 Philosophical
projects do not just aim to present the objective dimension of information
about a phenomenon, but are guided by and aim to express “an esoteric
dimension [that] inheres in them, a dimension they are incapable of shed-
ding, forbidden to disown – and which, were they ever to boast of it, would
condemn them”.5 While scientific forms of presentation aim to offer a sys-
tematic analysis of an issue, the system is premised on simply combining
elements that present themselves to thought. Scientific doctrine constantly
expands itself to bring into the fold “more” bodies and aspects, but it does
so in the vain attempt to grasp or identify a “truth” that lies through these
external connections. In contrast, Benjamin relies upon a particular ontol-
ogy to insist that objects cannot be reduced to that which appears or pres-
ents itself. There is another “hidden” or implicit dimension to objects that
evades conceptual (scientific) thought, but which is fundamental to reveal-
ing the “truth” of the object. By avoiding this esoteric dimension, scientific
enquiry can provide us with knowledge of the object, but never its truth.
Philosophical thought, on the contrary, aims to capture the esoteric “spirit”
or dimension that inheres throughout each phenomenon so as to describe
its truth, but, by definition, must struggle to do so conceptually. For this
reason, philosophy is forced to pay attention to its method of presentation.
Historically, this esoteric dimension has linked philosophy to theologi-
cal analysis and the mode of presentation occurring through a “‘tractatus,’
[which] contains a reference, however latent, to those objects of theology
without which truth cannot be thought”.6 While the tractatus may have
presented a formal doctrine, it was premised on the idea that the funda-
mental spirit defining the issue, its esoteric dimension, cannot be captured

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objectively nor can it be presented through a process of formal logic deduc-

tion. These texts aim to capture an exuberance that cannot be expressed
formally or conceptually, but is that on which such formal conceptuality
depends. As such, their tone may be doctrinal, but “in their inmost disposi-
tion they are denied the conclusiveness of instruction that could maintain
itself, like doctrine, on its own authority”.7 This is not presented like a
mathematical proof that aims to prove a particular point because the text
is not informative, it is “educative”.8 It aims to change how we think about
something. For this reason, the mode of presentation is not incidental or
predetermined, but is specific to the material, how it is understood, and
how the reader is to receive the underlying message. In turn, this feeds
into the issue of how to think; it must be thought about in such a way
that its presentation permits the underlying esoteric message to appear.
Rather than appearing directly as if the issue were clearly delineated and
fully transparent, this dimension appears indirectly. As such, the attempt
to educate is premised on and requires a particular mode of presentation:
“Method is indirection. Presentation as indirection, as the roundabout way
– this, then, is the methodological character of the tractatus.”9 Philosophi-
cal presentation renounces “the unbroken course of intention”10 and “con-
stantly begins anew”.11 It does not unfold through a continuous process,
but is constituted by an “intermittent rhythm”.12 In other words, philo-
sophical enquiry does not proceed mechanically to produce a deduced or
straightforward direct description of a phenomenon. It is orientated by
and around a continuous struggle to grasp and express the phenomenon;
a struggle that arises from its endeavour to educate and not simply inform.
Rather than a linear movement of progress, philosophical presentation is
defined by a stop-start rhythm as it tries to grapple with and express the
esoteric dimension that escapes conceptuality.
The obvious difficulty here is that the conceptuality of writing struggles
to grasp what is non-conceptual. Speaking overcomes this, in so far as the
“speaker makes use of voice and facial expressions to underscore individual
sentences – even where they cannot stand on their own – and fuses them into
an often fluctuating and vague train of thought”.13 Written presentation does
not have that luxury, however. Instead, it struggles to capture and express
that which does not lend itself to conceptuality. For Benjamin, this ensures
that there is a particular rhythm to philosophical presentation; it cannot be
formal or informative, but nor does it have as its goal the desire to “enthrall
or excite enthusiasm”.14 Philosophical presentation is orientated, not around
entertainment or information, but “reflection”.15 It aims to bring the reader
to a point where he/she is brought to reflect on the issue, an activity that
again reopens it. This is very distinct from scientific presentation which aims

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to close thought by capturing the correct answer. By aiming to capture the

esoteric dimension and returning to it in different ways and directions, philo-
sophical presentation aims to educate us in how to reflect.
For this reason, philosophy is not concerned with objective phenomena
per se, but “has ideas as its object”.16 This does not mean that philosophy
is divorced from material reality; for Benjamin, materiality and ideality are
intimately connected. It simply means that philosophical presentation is
concerned with the “presentation of ideas”.17 Even when a philosopher
claims to be discussing material being or becoming, the discussion is always
concerned with an idea of material being or becoming. Those that aim to
discuss pure materiality, divorced from an ideational component, either fail
to recognise their dependence on ideas or reduce philosophy to a scientific
form of informational exchange. In either case, however, the stimulus for
educative reflection inherent philosophical presentation is absent.
With this, Benjamin introduces an important distinction between “Truth,
actualized in the round dance of presented ideas”,18 and “knowledge”.19
“Knowledge is a having”,20 and “[i]ts object is determined by the very fact
that it must be held within consciousness – even if it be transcendental con-
sciousness”.21 The object is possessed by knowledge and through such pos-
session it is possible to know it and inform about it. There is a distinct gap
between knowledge and its object, which permits the former to take posses-
sion of the latter. This proceeds through questioning. However, although
this may provide us with information about the object under investigation,
it is, on Benjamin’s telling, unable to ascertain its “truth”22 because truth is
not revealed through questioning. The details behind this claim are rather
abstract and technical, but the basic point is that, according to Benjamin,
knowledge “is oriented to the particular, but not in an unmediated way to
its unity”.23 In other words, knowledge orientates itself towards a particular
(example) and aims to study that in its particularity. Rather than focus on
the wholeness or unity of the object, which would require an engagement
with questions of history, language, socio-cultural embeddedness, and so
on, and how they intra-relate that would, strictly speaking, extend beyond
the parameters of the physical object being studied, knowledge seeks to
understand the particular object as it appears in that particular moment and
form, which it takes to be the “entire” object. Although he cannot discount
the possibility that there exists such a thing as the “unity of knowledge”24 –
that is, that continuous questioning will eventually allow us to know all
aspects of the phenomenon – Benjamin claims that this would not actu-
ally reveal the “truth” of the object because it would simply be premised
on the interconnection of “distinct pieces of knowledge and, to an extent,
on their alignment and balancing”25 which would fail to grasp its esoteric

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truth. Even if it were possible to collect information about all aspects of the
object, such a process would be formal and mechanical and so unlikely to
ever reveal the “organic” totality.
While (thought as) knowledge is orientated towards disclosure and infor-
mation about the object, (thought as) truth is a very different beast. Truth is
orientated, not to the particularities of a thing (its dimensions, qualities, fea-
tures, and so on), but to the thing itself; or, as Benjamin calls it, its esoteric
dimension. Whereas knowledge focuses on a particular object and seeks to
understand that object in its particularity, “truth in its essence is determined as
a unity in a thoroughly unmediated and direct manner”.26 Its direct access to
that unity allows truth to comprehend what the thing is immediately. Crucially,
however, in distinction to knowledge, “[w]hat is peculiar to this determina-
tion as something direct is that it cannot be ascertained through question-
ing”.27 The reasoning behind this claim is, again, highly abstract, but Benjamin
claims that while knowledge exists at a distance from being – it is this that
permits thought as knowledge to question its object – truth is intimately con-
nected to being; it is the immediate comprehension of what the thing is (the
“eureka” moment if you will). Importantly, Benjamin maintains that as a
moment of comprehension, truth is tied to and occurs through ideas. When
we comprehend something, we obtain an instant idea of what the thing actu-
ally is. For this reason, whereas the relationship between knowledge and being
is mediated by concepts and questioning, truth has an unmediated relation
to being. With truth, thought and being correspond; there is no gap between
them. Because of this, ideas are different to concepts and so truth (tied to
the comprehension of ideas) cannot be ascertained conceptually or by exten-
sion through questioning – “[T]ruth is beyond all questioning”28 – which, for
Benjamin, depends upon a distance from Being to permit a questioning of
Being. But if this is so, how do we ascertain the truth?
Benjamin responds that we need to distinguish between concepts that
“arise out of the spontaneity of understanding”29 and ideas which “are
given to contemplation”.30 Knowledge is tied to concepts that are orien-
tated around the understanding. Truth, however, is not orientated around
concepts or the understanding, but is tied to ideas that are comprehended.
With this, Benjamin sets up an important distinction between ideas and
concepts, in which “[i]deas are something given in advance”.31 Prior to
conceptually analysing an object to obtain knowledge about it, there is an
idea, or comprehension, about what the object is. That comprehension
establishes the parameters for the conceptual investigation. How ideas are
comprehended and then conceptualised forms the basis for the different
philosophical systems. For this reason, “Plato proposed . . . his theory of
ideas, Leibniz . . . his monadology, and Hegel . . . his dialectic”.32 They are

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distinguished, not at the level of concept, but at the level of the ideas that
they each try to impart conceptually.
Benjamin’s overall point is that truth is not primarily concerned with
concepts or a conceptual level of analysis that aims to inform about an
object; truth is concerned with the immediate comprehension of the idea
of the thing. That idea, in turn, creates the non-conceptual parameters that
delineate the framework through which the object is conceptualised. The
key, however, is that the idea does not emanate from the object of study;
the object of study is only ever the idea of the object or the comprehension of
that object, which provide(s) the horizon that makes possible conceptual
thought of it. Philosophical enquiry does not deal with objects per se, it deals
with the ideas, or comprehension, of objects. Orientated through reflection,
thought obtains an immediate comprehension of the truth, or idea, of the
object. The comprehension of the object – what the object is, how to think
about it, and so on – as manifested through the idea (of it), must however
be presented and is, philosophically, through conceptual analysis. How-
ever, the difference between the non-conceptuality of ideas and conceptual
thought means that the truth (i.e. idea) can never fully appear conceptually.
Ideas exist beyond concepts and so, in a sense, their expression requires
a contraction of the idea for it to be expressed conceptually. Conceptual
thought, however, is not satisfied with such a partial exposition; it aims
to gain knowledge of the idea and so wants to capture its truth. To do so,
it thinks that it can examine the idea from different perspectives and
directions so that the conceptual “presentation of an idea makes that idea
manifest as a configuration of concepts”.33
As noted, however, Benjamin rejects this: it would be a grave mistake
to think that by looking at an idea from a variety of different perspectives
thought can somehow simply combine them to understand the truth of the
object. This accumulative understanding of “truth” is flawed as it focuses
only on the relationship between its external components and does not
really understand or reveal the “esoteric” dimension of truth, which is
the domain of the ideas. Rather than lament the fact that ideas cannot be
reduced to a singular conceptual sense or meaning or adopt an accumula-
tive conception of truth, Benjamin affirms an alternative pathway, in which
the very nature of conceptuality itself is questioned and altered. Rather than
corresponding to or expressing a homogeneous meaning or concept, ideas
are “constellations”.34 More specifically, “ideas present themselves not
in themselves but solely in a correlation of the elements of things in the
concept – indeed, as the configuration of these elements”.35
To develop this, Benjamin offers the following analogy: “Ideas are to
things as constellations to stars.”36 Constellations of stars are constituted in

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such a way that patterns, while not necessarily existing, can be read into their
various positions or relations, thereby giving rise to the appearance of order
and meaning. How that order is generated depends upon how the stars are
configured in relation to one another and the capacity to see or imagine
the connections in such a way that a figure arises. That figure, of course,
never strictly speaking exists, but is read through the relations between the
stars. Ideas are premised on the same logic. They are not actually anything,
but are recognised, if at all, only because their component parts (concepts)
are taken to form a particular identity or meaning. Change the perception
or the component parts and the idea disappears or takes on an alternative
ideational form. For this reason, ideas are “neither their concepts nor their
laws”37 nor “do [they] serve the knowledge of phenomena, and in no way
can the latter be the criterion determining the existence of ideas”.38 They are
what arises from the perception of the relations between the component
pieces. Indeed, the “meaning of phenomena for ideas is exhausted in their
conceptual elements”.39 What the phenomenon is depends upon how it
is presented, which depends upon how its components are held to relate
to one another. There is never simply one concept that can describe the
totality of the idea nor is there one way to bind the constellation together
because (1) conceptual thought is a contraction of ideas, and (2) ideas are
constellations of concepts. Indeed, strictly speaking, for Benjamin, there is
not an object that exists apart from the constellation; to study the constel-
lation’s parts is to study what the object is. Looking ahead, this means that
“sexuality” is only the term we use to describe a particular combination
of concepts.
Because ideas are transmitted through concepts, changing the con-
cept focused on or its relation to others also changes the idea that is to
be expressed. If I use the words (concepts) “God” or “light” to describe a
higher being (idea), the combination of the two does not bring us closer to
describing the same idea; describing the idea as “God” offers a very different
idea than if I use the word “light”. Put differently, using “God” or “light”
describes different ideas; they do not provide different perspectives on the
same idea, nor, strictly speaking, am I describing the “same” idea through
each. After all, not only are the concepts (“God” and “light”) different, but
they have different components, histories, contexts, senses, and so on, that
impact on how they are understood, which, in turn, shapes the idea that is
transmitted through them.
Furthermore, how the constellation is read – the parts that we focus on
and how they are conceptualised and joined – impacts on and shapes not
just how the idea is conceptualised but also what it actually is. To focus on
one part of the constellation means that the constellation takes shape from

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and around that point; what it is therefore is shaped from that privileging,
one that changes if another part of the constellation is emphasised. For this
reason, ideas are not uniform or undifferentiated, nor is the idea a mean-
ingful core surrounded by components that when properly constructed,
reconstruct or represent the definitive core or meaning of the idea. “The idea
can be described as the formation of the nexus in which the uniquely occur-
ring extreme stands with its like.”40 Rather than simple monads that can be
described by a single concept, ideas are fields in which “the phenomena are
simultaneously divided out and saved”.41 They “constitute an irreducible
multiplicity”.42 However, the nexus does not just exist as an empty “virtual
arrangement of phenomena”.43 It must be brought to existence and is by
being designated and singled out through a name. In the previous example,
the name “God” is the term for the nexus point through which a particular
constellation of concepts, intent on expressing an idea, is brought forth. It
is by being named that the idea comes to exist and exists as a constellation
of concepts. “God”, the concept, does not then name a being; it names the
nexus point of a constellation of concepts that aim to express a particular
idea. In the next section, I suggest that “sexuality” fulfils the same function.
It is to this that I now turn.

Sexuality as Constellation
Benjamin’s analysis of concept-constellations offers us a very different way
to think about sexuality than those approaches that are guided, however
implicitly, by the assumption that it is “something” that we can attempt
to gain knowledge about and/or which attempt to do so by reducing it to
a universal characteristic, determination, or approach. In the first instance,
his analysis reveals that discussions of sexuality refer not to a particular
concrete phenomenon, but to an idea about that phenomenon. For exam-
ple, the essentialist-heteronormative-patriarchal model does not describe
sexuality per se, but operates with an idea about what sexuality is – sex-
uality is necessarily defined by a male/female division, where each sex is
defined by unchanging essential characteristics, with the male privileged –
and then reads phenomena through that idea so that they are interpreted
in accordance with that idea. While the authors engaged with in the vari-
ous chapters are critical of the idea of sexuality supporting the essentialist-
heteronormative-patriarchal model, they too are guided by an idea about
sexuality that they then seek to outline conceptually.
The problem, however, is that, despite rejecting the fixidity inherent in the
essentialist-patriarchal-heteronormative model to open sexuality up to differ-
ent expressions, each of the authors engaged with in the preceding chapters

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continues to implicitly privilege one fundamental dimension, property, or

characteristic of sexuality. For Freud, all forms of sexuality are fundamen-
tally bisexuality; for Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, sexuality is fundamen-
tally ontologically neutral “before” being expressed ontically; for Beauvoir,
Lacan, and Irigaray, sexuality is always socio-historical, symbolic, or premised
on natural differences; while Butler and Barad hold that it is always either
a gender performativity or a queer materiality. Admittedly, the thinking of
Butler and Barad is far more open to different expressions than that of Freud
or even Irigaray, but in each instance the enquiry is implicitly guided by the
attempt to determine what sexuality is, which leads to the positing of a uni-
versal response that claims that, regardless of the actual sexual expression, it is
understandable or must be thought about in a singular way; one that accords
with the idea about sexuality that subtends the particular thinker’s analy-
sis (bisexuality in Freud, symbolic in Lacan, gender for Butler, and so on).
I am not necessarily disagreeing with their analyses or the general conceptual
movement that occurs across their theories, in which the restrictive param-
eters of the essentialist-patriarchal-heteronormative model of sexual expres-
sion are emptied out and opened up, but I am arguing that these approaches
continue to be problematically one-dimensional in so far as they continue to
implicitly claim that there is one characteristic or response to the question of
sexuality that expresses what “sexuality” fundamentally is across all its expres-
sions. By continuing to insist on one fundamental approach to the topic, they
reduce sexual expression to their particular privileged idea of sexuality, all the
while insisting on a universality to sexuality.
In contrast, Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellations points to the
“idea” that the concept “sexuality” describes, not a universal substance,
characteristic, or dimension, but a singular point of inflection that collects,
binds, and expresses a variety of different issues and questions and indeed
responses to them. Rather than a “thing” that corresponds to an actual
entity, “sexuality” is the empty lodestone, or the name, through which the
constellation of component parts constituting each worldview is revealed to
conceptual thought. In other words, “sexuality” describes a nexal function
through which the constellation of concepts that support and generate it
inflect to reveal themselves. Or, put differently, “sexuality” delineates not
a thing to be identified, but a horizonal field across which the constella-
tion of questions and concepts generating what we name as sexuality play
out. When we study or investigate “sexuality” we are not then studying a
substance, but in a sense are “using” the term “sexuality” to engage with a
conglomeration of different parts, including philosophical, juridical, social,
ethical, or political concepts and questions, which we can read as coalescing
into a worldview that we, for shorthand, call (name) “sexuality”.

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In terms of sexual expression, this means, rather radically, that there is

no such thing as “sexuality” per se. “Sexuality” is simply the name given to
describe a constellation of concepts, and, by extension, a particular notion
of “sexuality” is only ever the name given to that particular constellation.
“Sexuality” is not distinct from its constellation, but is the name for the
constellation. To study “sexuality” therefore is not to engage with “some-
thing” that exists apart from its constellating parts; to study “sexuality” is
only ever to study its constellating parts. Two consequences result. First,
“sexuality” is not distinct from its component parts but is the name for
the nexal point through which those constellating parts coalesce to express
themselves conceptually. Second, if the constellation is termed “sexuality”,
and the constellation is by definition composed of relations between differ-
ent parts which are themselves always changing, then no two constellations
and by extension no two forms of “sexuality” can ever be the same. Fur-
thermore, “a” constellation of sexuality is never static. Putting these points
together, we see that, in some instances, the constellation may manifest
itself bisexually, in others gender performatively, in others still in terms of
queerness, others heterosexuality, and so on, while it is equally possible
that the constellation may change over the course of a life so that sexual
expression changes however ephemerally, while in others it may not. The
point is that the meaning of each constellation depends upon how the con-
stellating parts are grouped together and understood, while, in any case,
each constellation and by extension expression of sexuality is an absolute
fluid multiplicity based on the particular constellation of components parts
that generate and sustain it in each moment.
While this indicates how Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellation
alters how we understand sexual expression, it also has implications for
how we investigate “it”. Rather than being able to maintain that “sexual-
ity” refers to a universal dimension of (human) existence or entails a sin-
gular meaning, Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellation indicates that
the notion, or name “sexuality”, arises from the attempt to give identity to
a constellation of concepts. The identity (which itself is premised on con-
ceptuality), however, always fails to express the idea it aims to expound.
Furthermore, when we engage with a concept, in this case “sexuality”, we
tend to do so by focusing on one constellating part; a focus that allows us
to get started but which should never be taken to be the end point. Not
only does this mean that we need to be wary as to how we read the constel-
lation – Which aspects do we focus on? Is there a privileged point through
which we outline it? and so on – so as to not reduce the constellation to
our understanding of it, but we should also be wary of reading a constella-
tion of “sexuality” through one lens. For example, it might be thought that

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the ongoing critique of the essentialist-patriarchal-heteronormative model

is premised on the affirmation of sexual equality, whether that is between
sexes or sexual practices and expressions. While this might be an aspect
of it, so that engaging with the question of “sexuality” through the lens
of equality may bring to light aspects of the former, doing so reduces the
constellation supporting “sexuality” to the question of equality and most
probably one form of equality, such as political or economic or social or
equality of identity, and forgets or rather ignores other dimensions that
may not be compatible with an equality focus. For example, we could say
that a notion of “sexuality” is dependent upon, at a minimum, responses
to a constellation of questions including those relating to (1) identity,
such as what is the self, how to understand sexual difference, questions of
consent and free will, desire; (2) law, such as what are socially acceptable
forms of sexual expression, sanctions for breaking those, which are in turn
tied to questions of power, right, and so on; (3) economics, to do with
distribution of resources and access to resources; (4) culture and history,
to do with the values of the society, symbolic structures, means of expres-
sion, and so on; (5) politics, regarding self-responsibility (age of consent),
reproductive rights, recognition (marriage); and (6) normativity, regarding
how we should act. Each one of these may touch on questions of “equal-
ity”, or, put differently, engaging with the question of sexual equality may
bring us to engage with each of these areas, but it does so from the lens
of “equality” to give us an understanding of “sexuality” from that constel-
lating point. If, however, we were to focus on the question of (sexual)
“identity” (for example), not only would we not necessarily have to reach
the question of equality – we would engage the question of “sexuality”
differently as we would be constructing and reading the constellation dif-
ferently – but it would generate a very different conception of “sexual-
ity”. For Benjamin, these cannot be accumulated to gradually build up our
understanding of “sexuality” per se. They only ever give us an understand-
ing of a constellation; that is, the constellation “sexuality” read through
the constellating point of “equality” provides us with a completely differ-
ent constellation and hence conception of “sexuality” than one based on
“identity”. Alterations to one of these complicated, multiple dimensions
and questions changes the structure and form of the constellation and by
extension the expression of sexuality generated.
Constellations are not then static so that we could enquire into their dif-
ferent aspects to gradually and accumulatively build up an understanding
of “sexuality” by individually examining each of their constellating parts. A
constellation is not a closed whole but an open-ended field wherein each
of its parts is linked to a multiplicity of others. Focusing on one dimension

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 Conclusion / 273

at a time ignores the ways in which that dimension itself is a constella-

tion and so constantly changes, which in turn alters all the constellations
it forms. Furthermore, we cannot gradually build up a complete picture of
a constellation nor think that each constellation provides insights into the
“same” thing, as if they were all orientated to the same phenomenon. We
do not just look at something called “sexuality” from a political or social or
economic direction and combine them all to better understand “sexuality”
as a socio-political-economic “thing”.
For this reason, sexuality as constellation contains important differences
from Patricia Hill Collins’s version of intersectionality.44 Collins’s analysis
is interesting and important because it engages with the ontological and
epistemological assumptions founding (her conception of) intersectional-
ity to, in so doing, start to engage with and outline its theoretical assump-
tions. Collins’s claim that relationality is fundamental for intersectionality
is of particular interest because relationality is also constitutive of sexuality
as constellation. This does however bring forth the question of the type of
relationality at play. In response, Collins distinguishes between “relation-
ality through addition, articulation, and co-formation”45 to initially claim
that “Relationality through co-formation lies at the heart of intersectional-
ity itself”,46 before ultimately concluding that each form of relationality is
a viable option for and so has a role to play in intersectional analyses.47
Collins appears therefore to leave us in a situation where intersectionality
is tied to vastly different forms of relationality. While this opens up the
possible ways in which intersectionally can function, it not only calls into
question its explanatory force – When, for example, is it legitimate to think
in terms of each form of relationality and indeed what legitimises that crite-
ria? – but also its coherency; after all, the forms of relationality that Collins
accepts are disjuntive not complementary. For these reasons, sexuality as
constellation departs from Collins’s position in fundamental ways.
First, while Collins accepts the importance and validity of relationality
as additive, sexuality as constellation is not additive. This difference is based
on an ontological disagreement. Collins’s notion of relationality as additive
depends upon a monadic conception of components wherein categories
(race, sex, gender, and so on) are added together to build up a more com-
plex understanding of the phenonema. This not only treats categories, such
as sex and race, as homogeneous, but it risks reintroducing a foundational
logic to the analysis which opens up the question as to the originary start-
ing point from which additional components are added: Is sex the founda-
tional position to which gender and class are subsequently added or is it
gender or some other category that founds the others? This not only risks, as
Collins recognises, returning the analysis to a singular foundational “master

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 274 / Questioning Sexuality

point”,48 but also reduces the additional points to contingent supplements

to that originary position. This implicit return to a foundational position
seems to contradict one of the core tenets of intersectionality, which I take
to be that entities cannot be engaged with in isolation. Collins responds to
this issue not by calling into question the logic of addition and its ground-
ing in ontological monadism, but by claiming that, rather than adding
all components together at once, it would be better to do so “over time
rather than than at one point in time”.49 Her point is that “Theoretically,
one can add together gender, race, and class in any order. But practically,
the sequence in which one adds a particular category to others matters.”50
This however seems to miss the point. The issue is not how you sequence
the categories; the problem is with the notion that the categories can in fact
be sequenced. Collins’s notion of relational addition is based on a logic of
purity which, in turn, is tied to an originary ontological monadism, wherein
the categories exist as (homogeneous) monads to be placed in (different)
sequence(s). In contrast, the constellation theory developed here rejects
that monadic logic; categories are not homogeneous, nor can they simply
be picked up and studied or added to others. Categories, such as sex, are not
singular monads but are effects of constellations of various “parts”, which
themselves are constellations. Pace Collins, sexuality cannot be understood
by simply adding various parts together to gradually build up an analysis;
sexuality as constellation is a singular, organic, and constantly changing
expression of intra-connected “parts”. Sex and class do not constitute sepa-
rate entities that combine to produce a more complex entity; sex and class,
themselves constellations, form a particular constellation that reveals a par-
ticular form of sexuality. Separating the parts to study them does not reveal
the constellation, it fundamentally changes it and them.
Indeed, Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellation teaches us that to
look at “sexuality” from a political or social or economic direction is to talk
of a fundamentally different “sexuality” each time: enquiries that engage
with the constellation “sexuality” through the political constellating point
offer a very different account of “sexuality” to those that construct the con-
stellation from a social or economic or juridical one. In turn, a social account
of “sexuality” focuses on different dimensions and orders the constellation
in a different way to generate a different nexus and hence “sexuality” than
does a juridical conception of “sexuality”. There may appear to be some
overlap between the privileged points so that a social conception of “sexual-
ity” will likely touch on juridical issues, but what the “juridical” means will
be different for each constellation. How the “social” perceives the “juridical”
will be different to how the “political” does. The way in which the constella-
tion is engaged alters the shape and hence meaning of the constellation and

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 Conclusion / 275

so leads to very different conceptions of “sexuality”. With this, the logic of

Benjamin’s position reveals the fundamental irreducibility of different con-
ceptions of “sexuality”; each is organised through and expresses a unique
constellation, even as they commonly name it “sexuality”. To examine the
constellation through a different lens of that constellation does not lead to
or elucidate the same subject or notion of sexuality; each lens into “the”
constellation reconstitutes the constellation and so brings forth a different
entity, in this case sexuality.
Second, the monadic premises supporting Collins’s position come to
the fore in her notion of relationality as co-formation. On first glance, this
might appear to undermine my claim that Collins depends on an originary
monadism; if parts are co-formed, they would appear to necessarily intersect
and so form one another mutually. The problem, however, lies in how Col-
lins understands co-formation. This is not based on co-constitution, where
the being of each category is conditioned by the other in the relation. It is
based on the idea that categories pre-exist their relationality as separate enti-
ties – as Collins puts it: “It’s meaningless to argue that race and gender co-
form one another without assuming that they are separate entities”51 – that
subsequently (can) come into contact with one another and, in so doing,
affect their (subsequent) formation. The co-forming that takes place is of a
purely external variety, which is presumably why Collins can also claim that
co-formation is consistent with addition. Returning to Barad’s distinction
between inter-action and intra-action, Collins’s position is premised on inter-
relationality, which depends upon pre-existing entities coming into relation
with one another. In turn, this ties into Collins’s affirmation of a holism
within which each monadic position exists and in which each is brought
into relation with one another. In so doing, Collins reveals that the ontology
underpinning her position is premised on the parts/whole division.52
In contrast, the constellation theory developed here is based on a notion
of relationality emanating from Barad’s notion of intra-action. As outlined
in Chapter 8, whereas inter-action “assumes that there are separate indi-
vidual agencies that precede their interaction . . . intra-action recognizes
that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their
intra-action”.53 Rather than existing as monadic entities that subsequently
inter-act with one another within an overarching holism, intra-action shows
how things come to be through their ongoing, open-ended ontologically
entangled becoming. Sexuality as constellation is not then premised on an
originary monadism or a logic of addition, nor is it defined by a parts/
whole division; it is premised on intra-relationality, which holds that far
from being something homogeneous and distinct from other aspects in a
way that allows them to subsequently be added together or put in relation,

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categories such as class, gender, race, and so on, are constantly changing
and, indeed, come to be through their open-ended ontological entangled
becoming. Based on Barad’s distinction between interaction and intraction,
Collins’s notion of inter-sectionality continues to implicitly insist that com-
ponent pieces pre-exist and so come into contact with one another. In con-
trast, sexuality as constellation follows Barad’s notion of intra-action to look
at the ways in which the components of each constellation are composed of
ontologically entangled becomings that become through one another not
simply in relation to one another. The various elements of the constellation
are not additive or externally related to one another; they intra-act to bring
forth the constellation. It is because of the particularity of each ontologi-
cal becoming that each constellation is unique and changing. In turn, it is
because of the particularlity of each ontological becoming that each form of
sexuality is unique and changing.
This goes a long way to explaining the heterogeneity of the critical engage-
ments outlined throughout this book: each thinker or perspective focuses on
one particular constellating point through which to conduct the enquiry,
with the consequence that they not only produce different conceptions of
“sexuality”, but when they do touch on the “same” issues their reliance on
a different conception or reading of the constellation produces fundamental
differences. Heidegger’s ontological account of “sexuality” is very different to
Barad’s ontological account. That they focus on the ontological dimension
whereas Freud focuses on the psychic dimension again produces different
constellations of “sexuality”, but, as we saw, even when Freud’s psychically-
orientated constellation touches on ontological issues, what “ontology”
means for him is very different to what it means for Heidegger because the
constellation supporting his notion of “ontology” is different, as is the role
that they give it in relation to their particular constellation of “sexuality”.
Benjamin’s conception of concepts-as-constellations allows us then to not only
explain or engage with the constellation “sexuality” but to also make sense of
the contestation and debate that has arisen around “it”: the various thinkers
discussed previously do not discuss the “same” “thing” – as if “sexuality” were a
singular point that they all passed – but different constellations which support
and are named “sexuality”. As we have seen, this means that what “sexuality”
designates for one thinker is not necessarily shared by others.
Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellation is radical and important
therefore not only because it offers a critique of those perspectives that
reduce a concept to a unitary dimension, response, or constellation, but
also because it provides us with a hermeneutic meta-tool to make sense of the
substantial historical debates that have taken place regarding the “topic”.
However, his account also has conceptual importance, in so far as reading

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 Conclusion / 277

the question of “sexuality” through his notion of concept-constellation

means, of necessity, that a questioning of each constellation of “sexuality”
must necessarily move beyond itself to shine a light on and bring us to
question its constellating points. If “sexuality” is nothing other than its con-
stellating points, focusing on how these dimensions shape and construct an
understanding of “sexuality” allows us to both understand that particular
constellation of “sexuality” and comprehend how the constellating points
themselves function to create meaning, life opportunities or exclusions, and
so on, in that particular constellation.
Returning to the previous example of “equality” and its relationship
to sexuality, Benjamin’s analysis insists that the tendency to focus on the
question of sexual equality would be problematically reductionist, in so
far as it reduces the constellation to one issue. However, by examining a
constellation of “sexuality” through the lens of “equality”, we can not only
say something about the particular constellation being examined, but, of
necessity, must also engage with the constellation “equality”. To question
the constellation “sexuality” through the constellation of “equality” is not
then to simply return us to the constellation “sexuality” to enlighten us
about “it”. It can also bring us to question the constellation that gener-
ates and sustains “equality”, which in turn will lead us to its constellating
parts, and so on. The question of “sexuality” is no longer framed in terms
of engaging with “equality” to understand “sexuality”; we also use “sexu-
ality” to examine the constellation “equality.” Rather than the first-order
question that structures second-order issues – a configuration that has led
to a long-standing notion that “sexuality” must be a determined “thing”
or foundation for other spheres; for example, the essentialist-patriarchal-
heteronormative model is based on the idea that “sexuality” is necessar-
ily bifurcated between “men” and “women” who are defined by definitive
characteristics that necessarily require specific responses to questions of
ethics, politics, law, and so on, with these responses, in turn, justifying and
supporting the originary conception of “sexuality” – “sexuality” becomes
a second-order issue dependent upon the responses given to other issues.
“Sexuality” is not that to be studied per se, but is the conceptual lens through
which we examine the concepts and philosophical problems upon which it
depends. This might include a questioning of how political debate generates
meaning, the relationship between political discourse and rights (sexual or
otherwise), questions of exclusion and inclusion, issues of distribution of
resources, including access to education, free movement, and public access
provision, as well as philosophical questions of identity, normative ques-
tions relating to social relations, comportment, and questions about what is
deemed to be legal, that will also tie into issues of power, culture, language,

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and so on. As a second-order phenomenon – that is, we only understand

“sexuality” once we have a grasp of a host of other issues – “sexuality” is
never that which is actually studied. When we study “sexuality” we are actu-
ally studying the first-order questions, the constellation, upon which an idea
of “sexuality” depends. Benjamin’s notion of concept-constellation allows
us to recognise this because it conceives that ideas, including “sexuality”,
are not things but nexus that are organised around and express a particular
constellation. Rather than enquiring into something called “sexuality”, we
only ever engage with its supporting constellation and, from that, bind the
constellating parts together in a particular way. “Sexuality” is the name for
the nexal point through which the constellation is expressed. There never
actually is a questioning of something called “sexuality” per se.
Those looking for a universal theory of sexuality to understand “sexu-
ality” will likely be disappointed by both my rejection of such a possible
theory and indeed this apparent rather radical downplaying of the prob-
lem; after all, sexuality per se is no longer the focus as “it” becomes the
lens for engaging with its constellating components. Rather than continue
to respond to the question of sexuality by conceiving of it as a “thing” to
be designated by a universal characteristic or dimension; or, on the other
extreme, simply abandoning the question and concept altogether, Benja-
min’s notion of concept-constellation allows us to maintain the relevance
of the question without reducing it to “something” to be determined. Spe-
cifically, Benjamin permits us to think of “sexuality” as a complex, moving,
multidimensional field. In turn, this requires that we alter the terms of the
debate away from the question of what sexuality is to think of it in terms
of what it does. By this, I mean that we see the term “sexuality” as fulfilling
a role; it does not correspond to an actual thing but operates as (1) a nexus
that functions as the conceptual hinge that contingently binds its subtend-
ing constellations of component points, and (2) the lens through which
the constellational field that is composed of multidimensional component
points (temporally) expresses itself. Reconceived in this way as an empty
but “singular” point of inflection that depends upon and brings to the fore
a complex field of distinct, often competing, dimensions – at the individual
level, these often deal with questions of self-identity and self-expression,
and, at the collective level, juridical-political issues regarding, for example,
acceptable and ideal forms of sexual expression and social norms, each of
which is also tied to a range of ontological, metaphysical, and epistemologi-
cal questions about what identity is, what we can know, how we should
structure social relations, and so on – and the relation between them, that
“it” is tied to and, indeed, depends upon, we move beyond the long-stand-
ing temptation to frame the question of sexuality in terms of something

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 Conclusion / 279

to be discerned or understood, to a lens that permits us to engage with the

raft of issues that support it and, in so doing, open up our understanding
of sexuality to its complexity and possibilities. With this, sexuality is in a
sense made less important, as it is not actually the focus of study but a proxy
for the comprehension of the constellation that sustains and subtends it,
while also, somewhat strangely, made more important, as it is used as the
proxy through which the comprehension of the constellation supporting
it is engaged. Reconceptualising sexuality in this way as a nexal function
expressing a constellation opens “it” up by turning “it” into a multidimen-
sional hermeneutic tool that can be used to bring to light and engage with
the intricate dynamics of individual and social existence, both indepen-
dently and in combination, while also reminding us that sexual expression
is complex, constantly shifting, and absolutely singular. Ultimately, it is this
that provides the question(ing) of sexuality with its ongoing philosophical
importance and allure.

Notes
1. Walter Benjamin, Origin of German Trauspiel, trans. Howard Eiland (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), pp. 1–39. Famously, this study was to be
Benjamin’s Habilitationsschrift, the qualification necessary within the German
academic system to be permitted to teach at university level, but was rejected –
more accurately, Benjamin was recommended to withdraw the study to avoid
the embarrassment of rejection – by the University of Frankfurt. Nevertheless,
Benjamin published the thesis in 1928 at which time its reputation gradually
grew until in the second half of the century it came to be regarded as a highly
influential work of philosophical and literary criticism.
2. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
3. Ibid., p. 1.
4. Ibid., p. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 2.
6. Ibid., p. 2.
7. Ibid., p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 2.
9. Ibid., p. 2.
10. Ibid., p. 3.
11. Ibid., p. 3.
12. Ibid., p. 3.
13. Ibid., pp. 2–3.
14. Ibid., p. 3.
15. Ibid., p. 3.
16. Ibid., p. 4.
17. Ibid., p. 4.

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 280 / Questioning Sexuality

18. Ibid., p. 4.
19. Ibid., p. 4.
20. Ibid., p. 4.
21. Ibid., p. 4.
22. Ibid., p. 5.
23. Ibid., p. 5.
24. Ibid., p. 5.
25. Ibid., p. 5.
26. Ibid., p. 5.
27. Ibid., p. 5.
28. Ibid., p. 5.
29. Ibid., p. 5.
30. Ibid., p. 5.
31. Ibid., p. 6.
32. Ibid., p. 7.
33. Ibid., p. 10.
34. Ibid., p. 10.
35. Ibid., p. 10.
36. Ibid., p. 10.
37. Ibid., p. 10.
38. Ibid., p. 10.
39. Ibid., p. 10.
40. Ibid., p. 11.
41. Ibid., p. 11.
42. Ibid., p. 21.
43. Ibid., p. 10.
44. Patricia Hill Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2019). Intersectionality has a juridical origin, in so
far as it was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s to critique and
provide tools to reveal the ways in which US antidiscrimination law, which
provided protection against racial discrimination and sexual discrimination,
was unable to perceive the specific forms of discrimination that arose when
those two categories intersected; in the case examined by Crenshaw that related
to the discrimination suffered by black women within a specific working envi-
ronment. See Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race
and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist
Theory, and Antiracist Politics”, University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989,
iss. 1, art. 8, pp. 139–167. Needless to say, interest in and use of intersec-
tional theory has subsequently exploded and, indeed, has moved far beyond
the juridical sphere. One consequence of this, however, is that intersectional
theory has become extremely heterogeneous. For a history of intersectionality,
see Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016).
45. Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, p. 226.

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 Conclusion / 281

46. Ibid., p. 244.

47. Ibid., p. 250.
48. Ibid., p. 228.
49. Ibid., p. 229.
50. Ibid., p. 229.
51. Ibid., p. 241.
52. Ibid., pp. 243–244.
53. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement
of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 33.

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 index

absence, 135–7, 142, 165 being, 70–5, 93–4, 106–7, 119–23,

absurdity, 157, 165–7 131–2, 134–7, 139–42, 146–7,
agency, 194, 199, 210–13, 221–2, 158–62, 171–2, 194, 196–206,
224, 228, 230, 238–40, 243, 217–18, 224, 226–8, 232,
246–9 234–8, 240–1, 243–6, 255,
human, 248–9 266, 268–9, 275
political, 243 human, 24, 104, 115, 129, 238,
agential realism, 13, 209, 214–51 248
ambiguity, 3, 9, 13, 16–18, 76, -in-the-world, 65, 75, 89
78, 90, 92, 103, 108, 112–16, belief, 22, 218, 224
118, 122–3, 125, 127–8, 223, Benjamin, Walter, 262–8, 272,
263 278–9
ontological, 118 binary oppositions, 10, 12–13, 15,
anthropocentrism, 208, 217, 220– 72–3, 75–7, 88–90, 111–12,
3, 238–40, 243, 248–9 142, 144–6, 157–8, 163–4,
apparatus, 34, 192, 229 202, 204, 207–9, 218, 221,
Aquinas, St Thomas, 5, 24, 108, 224, 231–3
251 biological
Aristotle, 3–5, 21–2, 24, 108, 156 differences, 43, 113–14, 122, 135,
168–9, 187
Barad, Karen, 11, 14, 19–20, 25, division, 158, 176
182, 209, 214–5, 247–52, essentialism, 103, 136, 173, 188
258–9, 262, 270, 276, 281 sex, 1, 34, 101, 120, 132
Beauvoir, Simone de, 11–12, 14, biology, 32, 59, 106, 108–9,
16, 18, 25, 74, 92–3, 101–29, 113–14, 120, 135, 147, 159,
178, 181, 183, 187–8, 256–57, 169–70, 191–3, 202, 256
262 birth, 36, 78, 113

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 index / 303

bisexuality, 15, 38, 40, 46, 262, construction, 13, 16, 18, 105–6,
270 108, 119–20, 122, 163, 169,
initial, 32, 36, 38–9 191–4, 197–8, 201–2, 206,
ontological, 259 226, 232
physical, 34–5 cultural, 168, 187, 192
body, 2, 16, 19, 23–4, 36–7, gender, 120, 122, 188, 192–4,
77–86, 88–9, 94, 102, 110–13, 197, 207, 258
119–22, 137, 149, 168–9, critique, 7, 11, 15, 31–2, 54–5,
171–2, 188–9, 191–3, 195, 58–9, 64–5, 103, 155–6,
199–205, 208–16, 225–6, 182–3, 216, 219–20, 233,
262–3 257–8, 261, 276, 280
active, 111, 170 culture, 126, 133, 156, 158, 168–9,
gendered, 75, 83, 93, 197 179, 181–2, 192, 209–10, 249,
human, 85, 111, 255 251, 254, 261, 272, 277
individual, 15, 91, 201, 216
neutral, 16, 80, 84 Dasein, 53, 55, 57–68, 72
passive, 112, 197, 202 Derrida, Jacques, 12, 25, 53, 70,
pre-discursive, 205 177, 213–14, 216, 247, 250,
sexed, 16, 74–97, 103, 191, 239, 252
255 differences, 6, 8, 16, 18, 64, 84–5,
sexualized, 158 91, 96, 115, 135, 137, 154–6,
situated, 103, 121, 123 158–61, 167–8, 170, 173–4,
woman’s, 40, 80, 113, 120 177, 181, 183, 247
Butler, Judith, 11, 13–14, 18–19, essential, 11, 171
25, 82–3, 95, 119–21, 125–6, natural, 168, 270
128–9, 132–3, 149, 176–80, discourse, 33, 94, 116, 135, 151,
183, 187–214, 216–17, 219– 162, 165, 177, 190, 192–3,
23, 231–3, 248–9, 258, 270 203–4, 220, 222–8, 232
discursive
castration, 42–5, 136 practices, 219, 225, 228–9, 258
categories, 12, 41, 75, 92, 104, 121, system, 220, 222, 233
146, 187–8, 191–2, 194, 215, dreams, 79, 130
273–6, 280
child, 7–9, 36–8, 41, 47, 110, education, 6, 21–2, 108, 277
143–5 Enlightenment, 3, 5, 22
children, 1, 3–4, 6, 9, 36, 105 entities, 53, 56–7, 59–61, 64–5,
sexuality of, 36 67, 69, 112, 159, 217, 225–7,
Christianity, 3, 5–6, 29 230–1, 245, 274–5
constellation, 14, 20, 114, 253, equality, 8, 16, 18, 115, 156, 272,
262, 267–79 277

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essentialist-patriarchal model, 11, foreclosure, 2, 13, 200, 206, 245,

13–19, 31, 47, 54, 63, 122, 258–60
134, 148, 173, 177, 188, freedom, 8, 62–3, 102, 106–7, 110,
253–5, 257–9 120–1, 123, 125
ethics, 6, 60, 93, 103, 112–13, 149, Freud, Sigmund, 15, 29–50, 52,
166, 170, 177, 183, 209, 238, 101, 103, 130, 135–6, 149–51,
245, 251 154, 156, 160, 254, 256, 259,
excess, 19, 162, 189, 208 262, 270, 276
experience function, 5, 17, 34–7, 41, 130,
lived, 16–17, 85, 103, 118, 121 134, 138, 142–4, 148–9, 151,
transgender, 176 256, 269, 273, 277–8
expression, 15, 18, 20, 62–3, 197, phallic, 139, 142
199–200, 202, 216, 218, 227, fundamental ontology, 15, 52–73,
230, 235, 237–39, 244–5, 255, 248
258–60, 267, 269–70, 272
gender, 12–13, 18–19, 23–5, 34,
facticity, 58–9, 62–3, 70, 102, 107, 64–5, 67, 117, 119–21, 123,
256 125–6, 128–9, 167–8, 177–8,
family, 4, 8–9, 101 187–94, 196–203, 205–6,
father, 22, 42–3, 45, 143–5, 150 208–9, 258–59, 270–1, 273–4
function, 144, 146 identity, 194, 197, 201, 208–9,
female 217
body, 82–3, 119–20, 168, 171–2, ideology, 1, 21
191 interpellation of, 196, 203
sexuality, 31, 48, 50, 131, 142, norms, 195–7, 199–200, 206
149, 153, 155, 157, 163, performativity, 18, 189, 194,
175 201, 209, 226, 258, 262, 270
feminine, 3–5, 8, 11–12, 23, 29–51, and subjectivity, 126–7
66–7, 74, 104–5, 131–3, 141–2, genitals, 29, 31, 33, 36–8, 43,
157–8, 160–1, 163–7, 169, 158
171, 190–1, 217
position, 133, 140, 142, 256 Hegel, G. W. F., 8–9, 23–4, 102,
sexuality, 30, 48, 149, 175, 177 106, 108, 129, 156, 247–8,
femininity, 15, 17, 31, 35, 39–41, 266
43–5, 47–8, 50, 75, 125, 128, Heidegger, Martin, 12, 14–16,
131, 135–6, 140, 142, 163, 24–5, 52–74, 94, 102–3, 108,
194–5 115, 117, 122, 124, 156–8, 161,
nature of, 39, 47 172, 247–8, 254–6, 276
fluid, 38, 40, 89, 91–2, 103, 109, heteronormativity, 13, 18, 20, 43,
114, 118, 121, 123, 171–2, 177, 173, 175, 182, 187–8, 190,
235–6, 243, 247 224, 231, 233, 236, 257–8

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heterosexuality, 176, 218, 271 Lacan, Jacques, 14, 17–18, 93, 123,
history, 5, 10–11, 60, 66, 84, 130–45, 147–55, 160, 170,
87–8, 153, 157, 178, 180–1, 177–8, 183, 187, 213–14, 219,
191, 247, 253–4, 265, 268, 256–8, 262, 270
272 language, 84, 130, 132, 134,
homosexuality, 207, 232 136–8, 148–9, 151, 161,
hospitality, 242, 252 164–5, 167, 187–8, 190,
human 195–8, 204–5, 209–10, 212,
cognition, 7, 221–3 214, 216–17, 254, 263
sexuality, 217–18 laws, 134, 143, 195, 232, 244–5,
Husserl, Edmund, 52–3, 70, 74–5, 268, 272, 277
85, 92–4, 102 symbolic, 133–4, 143–6
life, 36, 47, 82, 85, 87, 90, 106,
ideas, 75, 81, 130, 137, 188, 195, 109, 171, 209, 271
225, 228, 235, 257, 262–3, lived body, 12, 80, 86, 89, 96, 102,
265–71, 275, 277–8 108, 112, 121, 123, 256
identity, 14–15, 20, 25, 114, pre-reflective, 86, 89
154, 190, 193, 197–8, 207–9, logic, 12, 15, 17, 19–20, 24–5, 47,
217–18, 233–5, 240, 242, 72–3, 104, 106, 115–16, 118,
247–8, 258–9, 271–2, 120, 122, 131–2, 146, 148–9,
277–8 154–6, 159–67, 173–4, 215
imaginary, 131, 133, 140, 144, of foundations, 87–9
234 of hierarchy, 174, 190
individuals, 30, 33–5, 38, 61, 64, love, 1, 6, 8, 42, 45, 74, 93, 139–41,
108, 113, 118, 216, 218, 227, 149, 151–2, 168, 177, 181–2
229, 233, 235–6, 238, 244–5, object, 42–3
259–60
inequality, 6, 105–6 masculine, 3–5, 11, 17, 19, 30–1,
intersectionality, 273–4, 280 34–5, 39–43, 46–7, 66–7,
intra-actions, 19, 217, 227–31, 236, 104–5, 115–17, 132–3, 141–3,
243, 249, 251, 275–6 155–8, 160–2, 167, 169, 188,
Irigaray, Luce, 11–12, 14, 18, 25, 191, 207
93–4, 97, 155–83, 187–8, 192, body, 80, 169, 171
209, 214, 257, 262, 270 perspective, 13, 39, 54, 65, 75,
115, 132, 160–1
judgement, 8, 52, 85–6, 90–1, 107, phallus, 17, 42, 131, 136, 147,
211, 225 155
justice, 3, 9, 44, 84, 156, 222–3, material, 13, 18, 203–4, 208,
242–3, 251 216, 222, 225, 227, 232, 236,
239–40, 244–5, 255, 257–8,
Kant, Immanuel, 7–9, 24, 156 264–5

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material (cont.) neutrality, 54, 60–1, 63–4, 68, 76,

excess, 189, 205, 208 102, 157, 161, 174
existence, 121 ontological, 63, 68, 122
practices, 226, 228 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 10, 23–4, 71,
materialisation, 19–20, 182, 202–3, 156, 237
219–21, 223, 227–30, 234, norms, 2, 8, 25, 83, 109, 118, 151,
240, 258 191–2, 194–200, 203, 206,
materialism, 216, 237, 247, 251 208, 260
new, 103, 151, 208, 213, 246–7
materiality, 14, 19–20, 189, 200–2, object, 34–5, 37–8, 52, 54, 58, 65,
204–5, 207–8, 213–17, 219–20, 67, 75–9, 81–3, 86, 89, 105,
222–8, 230–8, 242, 244–6, 107, 137–9, 141, 224, 226,
258, 265 263, 265–8
expression of, 20, 222, 238 Oedipus complex, 30, 42, 44,
and language, 212 133–6, 143–5
queerness of, 244–5 ontic, 57, 59, 61, 64–5, 68–9,
matter, 9, 13–14, 19–20, 25, 70, 255
188–9, 201–4, 208–13, 216–21, ontological
224–5, 227–30, 233, 235–6, difference, 15, 25, 53, 56–7,
238, 240–7, 249, 258–60 68–70, 230
mattering, 228, 251 essentialism, 13, 19, 230, 254,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 14, 16–17, 256–8
25, 74–87, 89–97, 102–3, 108, monadism, 227, 274
115, 122, 156, 187, 255–7, 262, order, 1, 81, 197–8, 268, 274
270 symbolic, 144, 146–7, 151
metaphysics, 53, 68, 71, 73, 224–5, organs, 37, 40, 79, 87, 138
248 originary
mind/body dualism, 58, 112, 129 bisexuality, 15, 31, 39–40, 46,
mother, 42–3, 45, 104, 126, 136, 69, 254–5
143–5 neutrality, 54, 60, 63, 66–8, 75,
-hood, 101, 110–11, 127 156
pre-Oedipal, 144–5
mysticism, 153, 180 paternal, 134, 143–6
functions, 143–6
name, 76, 138, 148, 157, 197, 203, law, 134, 144
216, 269–71, 275, 278 metaphor, 133, 143–4, 146
Name-of-the-Father, 143–4 patriarchal, 13, 55, 76, 143–4, 165,
natural attitude, 52, 75 174, 233
nature, 2–4, 6–14, 35–6, 121–2, representation, 162, 164
147, 169–71, 182–3, 192–3, societies, 110–11, 117
220, 223–4, 228, 231–6, 238, system, 18, 158, 162, 164,
241–2, 244, 253–4, 256, 258 166

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patriarchy, 9–10, 12–13, 15–18, 31, power, 17–18, 22, 81, 160,
46–7, 54–55, 63, 66–7, 103–4, 167, 191, 199–200, 202–3,
114–18, 122, 131–2, 134, 148, 209, 211–12, 216, 219, 272,
155–8, 163–6, 173–4, 207, 277
215, 231, 256–8 relations, 192, 199
penis, 1, 42–45, 132, 135, 138, pregnancy, 110–11
160 processes, 35–9, 59, 61, 63, 105–7,
perception, 10, 25, 74, 76–8, 81, 122, 169, 189–90, 193–6,
83–4, 86, 88–9, 93–7, 143, 198, 202–3, 206, 216, 227–30,
215, 226, 268 237–8, 240, 255, 257–8, 260,
erotic, 81, 85 264
objective, 78, 81–2, 85, 89 boundary-making, 239
performativity, 13, 187–213, 217 emergent, 216, 225–6
person, 32, 40, 55, 77, 140, 145 non-binary, 208
phallogocentrism, 129, 163–4, normative, 194
166–8, 170–1, 174–5, 190, production, 5, 157, 192, 200
215 psychoanalysis, 20–1, 27, 30,
phallus, 17, 39, 42, 115, 131–6, 35–6, 49–50, 54, 59, 95,
138–44, 146–9, 151–2, 155–6, 101, 108, 130, 149, 151, 155,
160–1, 178, 188, 194, 256 160
signification of the, 149, 152 puberty, 30–2, 36–9, 41–2, 109–10,
phenomena, 87, 94, 203, 229, 239, 158, 171
256, 263–5, 268–9, 273
phenomenal field, 78, 89 quantum, 228, 236, 243
phenomenological, 14, 16, 110–11, leaps, 20, 233–6, 238, 259
116–18, 156, 177, 254 queer, 14, 20, 91–2, 113, 223,
philosophers, 2, 10, 85–6, 125, 232–3, 236–7, 241, 244–6,
183 251, 259–60, 262
philosophy, 8–9, 21, 23, 64, 94–6,
106, 112, 124–5, 128, 170, race, 7, 64, 67, 158, 160, 176, 181,
179, 210–12, 262–3, 265 273–6, 280
Western, 2, 10, 44–5, 66, 108, reason, 5–7, 9, 40–1, 55–6, 59–63,
156–7, 165, 173, 200, 215, 83–4, 86–8, 110, 112–14,
234, 236–7 116–17, 135–9, 163–4, 170–71,
physics, 19, 220, 225–6, 241 188–93, 195–7, 199–200, 207,
Plato, 4–6, 21, 24, 108, 156, 239, 263–6, 268–9
266 representationalism, 160, 218,
pleasure, 24, 29, 31, 37–8, 42–3, 224–25, 237, 239
49, 65, 78, 183, 210 Cartesian, 218, 224, 236–7
politics, 3–4, 21–2, 24, 84, 106, 150, rhythms, 171–2, 257
177–8, 209, 211–13, 240–1, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 6–7,
245, 247, 272, 277 24

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Sartre, Jean-Paul, 24, 72, 74, 93, social

102, 108, 117, 124, 129, 248 norms, 193, 195–200, 219, 226,
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 130, 136–7, 258, 278
148, 151 practices, 195–6, 201
schemas, 75, 80, 85, 131, 147, 194, species, 2, 6–7, 108–9, 113, 222
206, 208, 233 structuralism, 99, 123, 129–30,
Schneider, 77–83 154, 177, 213
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 9–10, post-, 123, 149, 154, 177, 215–
23–4 16, 218, 236–8, 247, 255
self, 67, 72, 112, 194, 240, 242, subject, 79–81, 102, 104–7, 112,
272 114–15, 117, 136, 138–9, 142,
sexual 160, 179, 181–2, 188–91,
difference, 12, 18, 25, 53, 70, 75, 194–200, 203, 206, 209–13,
82–6, 92–3, 125, 130–83, 192, 218, 220–1
212–13, 251, 257 conditioned, 189
equality, 3–4, 272, 277 dis-embodied transcendental, 67
essentialism, 9, 15, 31, 43, 47, gendered, 193, 195–6, 201
55, 63, 92, 132, 147, 231, subjectivity, 72, 84–5, 94, 123,
235 126, 183, 209, 212, 230
identities, 38, 142, 160, 177, symbolic
188, 193, 200, 207, 245 construction, 19, 132, 139–40,
instinct, 29, 34–8 188–9, 193, 202, 206–8, 257
life, 32, 38–9, 42, 79–80, 87, phallus, 17, 130–53, 258
110, 150
object, 32–4, 37, 79, 85 theory
relations, 2–4, 10, 18, 139, feminist, 11, 18, 20, 25, 48, 54,
141–2, 146, 168, 176, 188, 114, 119, 121, 123, 125, 177,
207, 232, 253 181, 189–90, 254–5
schema, 16, 76, 80–2, 85–6, 89, gender, 14, 18, 21, 114, 118, 125,
91 190, 206, 232, 255
sexuality, 1–24, 29–83, 85–92, intersectional, 280
94–6, 101–28, 130–6, 138–242, quantum, 217, 228, 233, 235,
244–8, 250–80 240, 242
signification, 17, 119, 131, 137, queer, 12, 14, 18–19, 201, 207,
199, 201–5, 208, 214 214–51, 255
signifiers, 130–2, 136–40, 143–4, transcend, 64, 107, 117–18
204 transcendence, 64, 106–9, 115, 117,
situation, 32, 81, 102, 107, 112–13, 120–1, 123, 125, 128, 200,
116–18, 120–2, 140, 163, 220, 230
273 transcendens, 56, 65
of women, 102, 107 transcendent, 56, 64–5, 80

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transcendental woman, 3–10, 12, 16–17, 24–5,

condition, 65, 78 33, 40–2, 101–29, 131–2,
phenomenology, 75, 92 135–6, 140, 142, 155–6,
subjectivity, 84 160, 162–9, 171–2,
transformation, 71, 107, 247 174–5, 178–80, 182,
transsexual, 176, 183 191, 256
truth, 2, 9, 70, 73, 102, 106, 165–7, world, 56, 58–9, 62, 64–5, 67, 78,
174, 176, 193, 263, 265–7 80–1, 85–7, 105, 107, 113,
137, 168–9, 195–6, 198–9,
unity, 134, 146, 154, 173, 190, 222, 224–5, 228–9, 242–3,
234, 265–6 251–2

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