Sexual Difference and Ontology

Sexual Difference and Ontology

by Alenka Zupančič 阿伦卡·祖潘契奇

To even suggest discussing sexual difference as an ontological question might induce – not without justification – strong reluctance from both the sides of philosophy (the traditional guardian of ontological questions) and gender studies. These two “sides,” if we can call them so, share at least one reason for this reluctance, related in some way to the fact that the discussion would attempt nothing new.

即便只是提出讨论性别差异作为一个本体论问题的建议，也可能会引起哲学界（传统上本体论问题的守护者）和性别研究领域的强烈抵制——而这种抵制并非毫无根据。可以说，这两个领域至少有一个共同的理由，即这种讨论试图进行一些看似并无新意的探索。

Traditional ontologies and traditional cosmologies were strongly reliant on sexual difference, taking it as their very founding, or structuring, principle. Ying-yang, water-fire, earth-sun, matter-form, active-passive – this kind of (often explicitly sexualized) opposition was used as the organizing principle of these ontologies and/or cosmologies, as well as of the sciences – astronomy, for example – based on them. And this is how Lacan could say, “primitive science is a sort of sexual technique.”¹ At some point in history, one generally associated with the Galilean revolution in science and its aftermath, both science and philosophy broke with this tradition. And if there is a simple and most general way of saying what characterizes modern science and modern philosophy, it could be phrased precisely in terms of the“desexualisation” of reality, of abandoning sexual difference, in more or less explicit form, as the organizing principle of reality, providing the latter’s coherence and intelligibility.

传统的本体论和宇宙论都强烈依赖性别差异，将其视为其建立或结构化的基本原则。阴阳、水火、地日、质形、主动被动这些（通常是明确的性别化的）对立被用作这些本体论和/或宇宙论以及基于它们的科学（例如天文学）的组织原则。正因如此，拉康才会说“原始科学是一种性的技术”。在历史上的某个节点，通常与伽利略科学革命及其后果相关，科学和哲学都与这一传统决裂。如果有一种简单且最普遍的方式来描述现代科学和现代哲学的特征，那就是可以用“去性别化”现实这一术语来概括，即放弃性别差异作为现实的组织原则，从而提供后者的连贯性和可理解性。

The reasons why feminism and gender studies find these ontologizations of sexual difference highly problematic are obvious. Fortified on the ontological level, sexual difference is strongly anchored in essentialism – it becomes a combinatory game of the essences of masculinity and femininity. Such that, to put it in the contemporary gender-studies parlance, the social production of norms and their subsequent descriptions finds a ready-made ontological division, ready to essentialize “masculinity” and “femininity” immediately.Traditional ontology was thus always also a machine for producing “masculine” and “feminine” essences, or, more precisely, for grounding these essences in being.

女权主义和性别研究对这些性别差异的本体化问题持高度怀疑态度的原因是显而易见的。强化在本体论层面上的性别差异强烈地扎根于本质主义——它变成了一种关于男性和女性本质的组合游戏。用当代性别研究的术语来说，社会规范的生产及其随后的描述发现了一个现成的本体论划分，准备立即将“男性”和“女性”本质化。传统本体论因此总是也是生产“男性”和“女性”本质的机器，或者更准确地说，是在存在中奠定这些本质的基础。

When modern science broke with this ontology it also mostly broke with ontology tout court. (Modern) science is not ontology; it neither pretends to make ontological claims nor, from a critical perspective on science, recognizes that it is nevertheless making them. Science does what it does and leaves to others to worry about the (ontological) presuppositions and the (ethical, political, etc.) consequences of what it is doing; it also leaves to others to put what it is doing to use.

当现代科学与这一本体论决裂时，它也大多与本体论整体决裂。（现代）科学不是本体论；它既不假装提出本体论的主张，也不从科学的批判角度承认它实际上在提出这些主张。科学做它的事，并让别人去担心它所做事情的（本体论的）前提和（伦理、政治等）的后果；它也让别人去利用它所做的事情。 (现代科学是是建立在主体被关闭 foreclosure of the subject 的基础上)

Perhaps more surprisingly, modern philosophy also mostly broke not only with traditional ontology but also with ontology tout court. Immanuel Kant is the name most strongly associated with this break: If one can have no knowledge about things in themselves the classical ontological question of being qua being seems to lose its ground. This is not the place to discuss what exactly the Kantian gesture and its implications was for modern and postmodern philosophy, whether it simply closed the door behind ontology (and, as some argue, left us imprisoned by our own discursive constructions, with no access to the real) or laid ground for a new and quite different kind of ontology.

或许更令人惊讶的是，现代哲学不仅与传统本体论决裂，而且还与本体论整体决裂。*（不明白）*伊曼努尔·康德是与这种决裂最紧密相关的名字：如果一个人对物自体没有知识，那么作为存在之存在的经典本体论问题似乎就失去了基础。这里不是讨论康德式的姿态及其对现代和后现代哲学的影响的地方，无论它是简单地关闭了本体论的大门（正如一些人所说，让我们被自己的话语构造所禁锢，无法接触到现实），还是为一种新的、截然不同的本体论奠定了基础。

In any case, it is a fact that the ontological debate, after a considerable time of withdrawal from the foreground of the philosophical (theoretical) stage – and, perhaps even more importantly, of not appealing to general interest is now making a massive “return” to this stage, and is already the reason for the idiom “new ontologies.”2 To be sure, these are very different philosophical projects. But it is safe to say that for none of them sexual difference (in any form) plays any part in their ontological considerations. Being has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual difference.

无论如何，事实是，本体论争论在经过一段时间的撤退后——也许更重要的是，不再吸引普遍兴趣——如今正在大规模地“回归”到这个舞台上，并且已经成为“新本体论”这一习语的原因。可以肯定的是，这些是非常不同的哲学项目。但可以说，对于其中的任何一个，性别差异（以任何形式）都没有在其本体论考量中发挥任何作用。存在与性别差异无关。

Since we are debating psychoanalysis and sexual difference, implicating Freud and Lacan in the discussion of the ontological dimension of sexual difference in any way but critical, that is might look like the peak of possible oddities.^undefined For this seems to go contrary not only to the numerous and outstanding efforts the defenders of psychoanalysis have, for decades, invested in showing the incompatibility of psychoanalysis with any kind of sexual essentialism; it is also contrary to what both Freud and Lacan thought and said about ontology. In view of the previously mentioned desexualisation of reality that occurred with the Galilean revolution in science, psychoanalysis (at least in its Freudian-Lacanian vein) is far from lamenting. Its diagnosis of Western civilization is not one of the “forgetting of the sexual,” and it does not see itself as something that will bring the sexual coloring of the universe back into focus again. On the contrary, it sees itself (and its “object”) as strictly coextensive with this move.^undefined Hence Lacan’s emphatic statements such as “the subject of the unconscious is the subject of modern science,” or, “psychoanalysis is only possible after the same break that inaugurates modern science.” I’m not pointing this out, however, in order to argue that psychoanalysis is in fact much less centered on the sexual than is commonly assumed, or to promote the “culturalized version” of psychoanalysis. Rather, the sexual in psychoanalysis is something very different from the sense-making combinatory game – it is precisely something that disrupts the latter and makes it impossible. What one needs to see and grasp, to begin with, is where the real divide runs here. Psychoanalysis is both coextensive with this desexualisation, in the sense of breaking with ontology and science as sexual technique or sexual combinatory, and absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the sexual as the irreducible real (not substance). There is no contradiction here. As there is no contradiction in the Jungian “revisionist” stance, which articulates an utter culturalization of the sexual (its transcription into cultural archetypes) while also maintaining a reluctance to forego the principle of ontological combinatory (of two fundamental principles). The lesson and the imperative of psychoanalysis is not, “Let us devote all of our attention to the sexual (meaning) as our ultimate horizon”; it is instead a reduction of the sex and the sexual (which, in fact, has always been overloaded with meanings and interpretations) to the point of ontological inconsistency, which, as such, is irreducible.

既然我们正在讨论精神分析和性别差异，涉及到弗洛伊德和拉康在性别差异本体论维度上的讨论——以任何方式但批判性的方式——可能看起来是最离奇的事情。这不仅与几十年来精神分析的捍卫者们在展示精神分析与任何形式的性别本质主义不相容的努力背道而驰；这也与弗洛伊德和拉康关于本体论的看法和说法相悖。考虑到之前提到的随着伽利略科学革命而发生的现实去性别化，精神分析（至少在其弗洛伊德-拉康脉络中）远非在哀叹。它对西方文明的诊断并不是“遗忘了性”，也不认为自己是要将宇宙的性彩重新聚焦的东西。相反，它认为自己（及其“对象”）与这一运动严格共时。因此拉康才会强调“无意识的主体是现代科学的主体”或“精神分析只有在与现代科学同样的决裂之后才有可能”。 我指出这一点并不是为了论证精神分析实际上比通常认为的更少以性为中心，也不是为了推广精神分析的“文化化版本”。相反，精神分析中的性是非常不同的东西——它恰恰是打破这种意义游戏的东西，并使其不可能。 精神分析既在这一去性别化的意义上与本体论和作为性技术或性组合的科学决裂，同时在谈到性作为不可还原的实在时也绝不妥协。 这里并没有矛盾。正如在荣格的“修正主义”立场中没有矛盾，后者表达了对性的彻底文化化（将其转写为文化原型），同时也保持了对放弃本体论组合原则（即两个基本原则）的不情愿。精神分析的教训和命令不是“让我们将所有注意力都集中在性（意义）上，作为我们的终极视野”；相反，它是将性和性（实际上总是被意义和解释所过载的）还原到本体论的不一致点，而这个点作为实在是不可还原的。

Georg Dionysius Ehret's illustration of Linnaeus's sexual system of plant classification, 1736. During the Enlightenment, Linnaeus system was polemic precisely because he proposes classification through sex

Lacan’s emphatic claim that psychoanalysis is not a new ontology (a sexual ontology, for example) is thus not something that I’m going to contest. But the reason for nevertheless insisting on examining the psychoanalytic concept of sexual difference in the context of ontology is not simply to reaffirm their incompatibility or radical heterogeneity in the circumstances of this “return” of ontology. The stakes are much higher, and the relationship of psychoanalysis to philosophy (as ontology) remains much more interesting and intricate.Perhaps the best way to put it would be to say that their non-relation, implied in the statement that psychoanalysis is not ontology, is the most intimate. This expression will hopefully justify itself in what follows.

拉康强调精神分析不是一种新的本体论（例如一种性本体论）的说法并不是我所要争论的。但是，尽管在这种“本体论回归”的环境中，精神分析概念的性别差异与本体论之间的关系有更高的风险，并且精神分析与哲学（作为本体论）的关系仍然非常有趣且复杂。或许最好的说法是，他们在声明精神分析不是本体论中所暗含的非关系是最亲密的。希望在接下来的内容中这个表达会得到证明。

One of the conceptual deadlocks in simply emphasizing that gender is an entirely social, or cultural, construction is that it remains within the dichotomy nature/culture. Judith Butler saw this very well, which is why her project radicalizes this theory by linking it to the theory of performativity. As opposed to expressivity, indicating a preexistence and independence of that which is being expressed, performativity refers to actions that create, so to speak, the essences that they express. Nothing here preexists: Sociosymbolic practices of different discourses and their antagonisms create the very “essences,” or phenomena, that they regulate. The time and the dynamics of repetition that this creation requires open up the only margin of freedom (to possibly change or influence this process). What differentiates this concept of performativity from the classical, linguistic one is precisely the element of time: It is not that the performative gesture creates a new reality immediately, that is, in the very act of being performed (like the performative utterance “I declare this session open”); rather, it refers to a process in which sociosymbolic constructions, by way of repetition and reiteration, are becoming nature – “only natural,” it is said. What is referred to as natural is the sedimentation of the discursive, and in this view the dialectics of nature and culture becomes the internal dialectics of culture. Culture both produces and regulates (what is referred to as) nature. We are no longer dealing with two terms: sociosymbolic activity, and something on which it is performed; but instead, we are dealing with something like an internal dialectics of the One (the discursive) that not only models things but also creates the things it models, which opens up a certain depth of field. Performativity is thus a kind of onto-logy of the discursive, responsible for both the logos and the being of things.

简单强调性别是完全的社会或文化建构的一个概念死胡同之一在于它仍然在自然/文化的二元对立中。朱迪斯·巴特勒对此看得非常清楚，这就是为什么她的项目通过将其与表演性理论联系起来而激进化了这一理论。与表达性表示预先存在和独立于所表达的东西相反，表演性指的是创造本质的行为，可以说，这些本质就是他们所表达的。这里没有什么是预先存在的：不同话语的社会符号实践及其对抗性创造了它们所调节的本质或现象。 这种创造所需的时间和重复动态打开了唯一的自由边界（可能改变或影响这一过程）。这种表演性概念与经典语言学表演性概念的区别在于时间的元素：它不是说表演性姿态在被执行的同时立即创造一个新的现实（例如“我宣布会议开始”的表演性言语）；相反，它指的是一个过程中，社会符号建构通过重复和再现成为自然——“只是自然的”，人们会说。被称为自然的东西是话语的沉淀，在这种观点中，自然和文化的辩证法变成了文化的内部辩证法。文化既生产又调节（所谓的）自然。我们不再处理两个术语：社会符号活动及其作用的对象；相反，我们处理的是像一个内部辩证法的“一”（话语），它不仅塑造事物，还创造它塑造的事物，从而打开了一定的深度场。表演性因此是一种话语的本体论，负责事物的逻各斯和存在。

To a large extent, Lacanian psychoanalysis seems compatible with this account, and it is often presented as such. The primacy of the signifier and of the field of the Other, language as constitutive of reality and of the unconscious (including the dialectics of desire), the creationist aspect of the symbolic and its dialectics (with notions such as symbolic causality, symbolic efficiency, materiality of the signifier) … All of these (undisputed) claims notwithstanding, Lacan’s position is irreducibly different from the above performative ontology. In what way exactly? And what is the status of the real that Lacan insists upon when speaking of sexuality?

在很大程度上，拉康式的精神分析似乎与这一观点兼容，通常也被呈现为这样的。能指的首要性和他者的领域作为现实和无意识的构成（包括欲望的辩证法）、符号的创造性及其辩证法（诸如符号因果性、符号效率、能指的物质性等概念）……尽管有所有这些（无可争议的）主张，拉康的立场与上述表演性本体论仍然不可还原地不同。究竟以何种方式？拉康在谈到性时所坚持的实在的地位是什么？

It is not simply that Lacan has to take into account and make place for the other, “vital” part of the psychoanalytic notions (such as the libido, the drive, the sexualized body), which gets to be defined as “real,” as opposed to belonging to the symbolic. This kind of parlance, and the perspective it implies, is very misleading, for Lacan also starts with a One (not with two, which he would try to compose and articulate together in his theory). He starts with the One of the signifier. But his point is that, while this One creates its own space and beings that populate it (which roughly corresponds to the space of performativity described above), something else gets added to it. It could be said that this something is parasitic of performative productivity; it is not produced by the signifying gesture but together with and “on top of” it. It is inseparable from this gesture, but, unlike how we speak of discursive creations/beings, it is not created by it. It is neither a symbolic entity nor one constituted by the symbolic; rather, it is collateral for the symbolic. Moreover, it is not a being: It is discernable only as a (disruptive) effect within the symbolic field, yet it is not an effect of this field, an effect of the signifier; the emergence of the signifier is not reducible to, or exhausted by the symbolic. The signifier does not only produce a new, symbolic reality (including its own materiality, causality, and laws); it also “produces,” or opens up, the dimension that Lacan calls the Real. This is what irredeemably stains the symbolic, spoils its supposed purity, and accounts for the fact that the symbolic game of pure differentiality is always a game with loaded dice. This is the very space, or dimension, that sustains the previously mentioned “vital” phenomena (the libido or jouissance, the drive, sexualized body) in their out-of-jointness with the symbolic.5 More simply even, it also acts as the out-of-jointness of the symbolic. It is here that the sexuality that psychoanalysis speaks about is situated. For Lacan the unconscious sexuality is not related (as it is for Jung) to some archetypical remains that would stay with us after the desexualization (“disenchanting”) of the world; it is the new that accompanies this disenchantment, the real that comes to light with it. It is neither the remains of the sexual combinatory nor some aspect of sex that is entirely outside any combinatory. Rather, it is something that gets produced on top of any possible (or impossible) combinatory – it is what signifying operations produce besides what they produce (on the level of being and its regulation).

问题不仅在于拉康必须考虑并为精神分析概念的其他“重要”部分（如力比多、驱力、性化的身体）留出空间，后者被定义为“实在”，而不是属于符号的。这种说法和它所暗示的视角对拉康来说是非常误导的，他也从“一”开始（而不是他试图在理论中结合和阐述的两个）。他从能指的“一”开始。但他的观点是，虽然这个“一”创造了它自己的空间和填充它的存在（这大致对应于上面描述的表演性空间），但还有一些其他东西被添加到其中。可以说，这些东西是表演性生产力的寄生物；它不是由能指性姿态所生产的，而是与其一起并且“在其上”生产的。它与这一姿态不可分割，但不像我们所说的话语创造/存在那样被它创造出来。它既不是符号实体，也不是符号所构成的实体；相反，它是符号的附带物。而且它不是一种存在：它只能作为符号领域内的（破坏性）效应辨认出来，但它不是这一领域的效应，不是能指的效应；能指的出现不能简化为符号。 能指不仅仅产生一种新的符号现实（包括其自身的物质性、因果性和法律）；它还“产生”或开启了拉康所谓的实在的维度。这正是不可救药地玷污符号的纯洁性并解释了为什么符号的纯粹差异游戏总是带有赌注。这正是维持前面提到的“重要”现象（力比多或欢爽、驱力、性化身体）与符号不符的维度。更简单地说，它也作为符号的不一致而起作用。这里精神分析所谈的性就位于此。对于拉康来说，无意识的性不是像荣格那样与去性别化（“去魅”）后的某些原型残留有关；它是伴随这种去魅而出现的新实在。它既不是性组合的残留，也不是完全超出任何组合的某些性方面。相反，它是在任何可能的（或不可能的）组合之上的东西——是能指操作除了其生产的（在存在及其调节层面）之外所生产的东西。

Madelon Vriesendorp, Apres L'amour, 1975

Sexuality (as the Real) is not some being that exists beyond the symbolic; it “exists” solely as the curving of the symbolic space that takes place because of the additional something produced with the signifying gesture. This, and nothing else, is how sexuality is the Real. It is not that – through its experience – psychoanalysis found and established sexuality as its ultimate real. For this would mean that psychoanalysis put sexuality, taken as an irreducible fact, in the conceptual place of the real, conceived independently. In other words, sexuality would correspond to what is the most real. Yet what is at stake is something very different: Starting from sexuality’s inherent contradictions – from its paradoxical ontological status, which precisely prevents us from taking it as any kind of simple fact – psychoanalysis came to articulate its very concept of the Real as something new. The Real is not predicated on sexuality; it is not that “sexuality is (the) real” in the sense of the latter defining the ontological status of the former. On the contrary, the psychoanalytic discoveries regarding the nature of sexuality (and of its accomplice, the unconscious) have led to the discovery and conceptualization of a singularly curved topological space, which it named the Real.

性（作为实在）不是在符号之外存在的一种存在；它“存在”仅作为符号空间因为能指姿态而发生的弯曲。这就是为什么性是实在的。并不是说——通过其经验——精神分析发现并确立了性作为其终极实在。这将意味着精神分析将性作为一个不可还原的事实放在实在的概念位置上。换句话说，实在定义了性的本体论状态。然而，问题是完全不同的：从性的内在矛盾出发——从其悖论性的本体论状态出发，这恰恰阻止我们将其视为任何简单的事实——精神分析提出了其对实在的概念作为新发现。实在不是基于性；不是“性是实在”，意思是后者定义了前者的本体论状态。相反，精神分析对性（及其同谋无意识）的性质的发现，导致了一个独特的弯曲拓扑空间的发现和概念化，称之为实在。

The something produced by the signifier, in addition to what it produces as its field, curves or magnetizes this field in a certain way. It is responsible for the fact that the symbolic field, or the field of the Other, is never neutral (or structured by pure differentality), but conflictual, asymmetrical, “not all,” ridden by a fundamental antagonism. In other words, the antagonism of the discursive field is not due to the fact that this field is always “composed” of multiple elements, or multiple multiples, competing among themselves and not properly unified; it refers to the very space in which these different multiples exist. In the same way that for Marx “class antagonism” is not simply conflict between different classes, but the very principle of the constitution of the class society, antagonism as such never simply exists between conflicting parties; it is the very structuring principle of this conflict, and of the elements involved in it.

能指所生产的东西，除了它作为其领域所生产的东西之外，还以某种方式弯曲或磁化这个领域。这就是为什么他者的领域或他者的领域从来不是中立的（或由纯差异性结构化的），而是充满对抗、非对称、“并非全部”的，被一种基本对抗所困扰。换句话说，话语领域的对抗并不是由于这个领域总是由多个元素或多个多重组成，这些多重之间相互竞争而未能适当统一；它指的是这些不同的多重存在的空间本身。正如马克思所说，“阶级对抗”不仅仅是不同阶级之间的冲突，而是阶级社会构成的基本原则，对抗作为这样的对抗从来不仅仅存在于对立方之间；它是这个冲突及其涉及元素的结构化原则。

The antagonism conceptualized by psychoanalysis is not related to any original double, or original multiple, but to the fact that a One introduced by the signifier is always a “One plus” – it is this unassignable plus that is neither another One nor nothing that causes the basic asymmetry and divide of the very field of the One. The most general, and at the same time precise, Lacanian name for this plus is jouissance, defined by its surplus character. One is cracked by what it produces on top of what it produces – and this is precisely what incites Lacan to name this fractured, or “barred,” field of the symbolic One the Other. The Other is not the Other of the One; it is the Lacanian name for the “One plus,” which is to say, for the One in which this plus is included and for which it thus has considerable consequences. This, by the way, is also why the Other referred to by Lacan is both the symbolic Other (the treasury of signifiers) and the Other of jouissance, of sexuality.

精神分析所概念化的对抗并不与任何原始的双重或原始的多重相关，而是与由能指引入的一个始终是“一加”的事实相关——它既不是另一个一，也不是无，它导致了这个一领域的基本非对称和分裂。最通用且同时精确的拉康命名这个加号的名称是欢爽，以其剩余特征定义。一个由其所生产的东西加之所生产的东西裂开——这正是促使拉康称这个裂开的或“带斜杠”的符号领域为他者的原因。他者不是一的他者；它是拉康对“一加”的称呼，即在其中包含这个加号的一，这对其产生了相当大的后果。顺便说一句，这也是为什么拉康所指的他者既是符号他者（能指的宝库），也是欢爽、性之他者。

The first and perhaps most striking consequence of this is that human sexuality is not sexual simply because of its including the sexual organs (or organs of reproduction). Rather, the surplus (caused by signification) of jouissance is what sexualizes the sexual activity itself, endows it with a surplus investment (one could also say that it sexualizes the activity of reproduction). This point might seem paradoxical, but if one thinks of what distinguishes human sexuality from, let’s say, animal or vegetal sexualities, is it not precisely because of the fact that human sexuality is sexualized in the strong meaning of the word (which could also be put in a slogan like, “sex is sexy”)? It is never “just sex.” Or, perhaps more precisely, the closer it gets to “just sex,” the further it is from any kind of “animality” (animals don’t practice recreational sex). This constitutive redoubling of sexuality is what makes it not only always already dislocated in respect to its reproductive purpose but also and foremost in respect to itself. The moment we try to provide a clear definition of what sexual activity is, we get into trouble. We get into trouble because human sexuality is ridden with this paradox: The further the sex departs from the “pure” copulating movement (i.e., the wider the range of elements it includes in its activity), the more “sexual” it can become. Sexuality gets sexualized precisely in this constitutive interval that separates it from itself.

第一个也是最显著的后果是，人类的性不是因为包含性器官（或生殖器官）而成为性的。相反，欢爽的剩余（由意指引起的）是性活动本身性化的原因，为其赋予了剩余投资（可以说，它性化了生殖活动）。这个观点可能显得悖论，但如果考虑到人类性与动物或植物性之间的区别，难道不正是因为人类性在强烈意义上被性化了吗（这也可以用口号“性是性感的”来表达）？它从来不是“只是性”。或者更准确地说，它越接近“只是性”，就越远离任何形式的“动物性”（动物不会进行娱乐性行为）。这种性行为的构成性重叠不仅总是已经与其生殖目的相脱节，而且也首先在于与自身的脱节。我们试图提供一个清晰定义性活动的那一刻，我们就会遇到麻烦。因为人类性充满了这个悖论：性越远离“纯粹”的交配动作（即它在活动中包含的元素越广泛），它就越“性化”。性正是在这种将其与自身分离的构成间隔中被性化的。

Sanja Iveković, A New Years Eve Party, Silba, 1969-1970, "Grazia", July 1975, gelatin silver print, magazine page and typewritten text by the artist.

So far we’ve discussed the question of the Real in respect to the psychoanalytic notion of sexuality (or the sexual) in its peculiar ontological status. But how does sexual difference enter this debate? What is the relationship between sexual difference and sexuality tout court? Is it accidental or essential? Which comes first? Is sexuality something that takes place because there is sexual difference? Freud’s answer is unambiguous and perhaps surprising. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) he insists on the original nonexistence of any germ of two sexes (or two sexualities) in preadolescent time.

到目前为止，我们已经讨论了关于实在的精神分析概念在其独特的本体论状态下的性（或性别）问题。但性别差异如何进入这一讨论？性别差异与性别整体有什么关系？是偶然的还是本质的？哪一个是第一位的？性别是因为存在性别差异而发生的吗？弗洛伊德的回答明确且也许令人惊讶。在《性学三论》（1905年）中，他坚持在青春期前不存在任何两性（或两种性别）的萌芽。

The auto-erotic activity of the erotogenic zones is, however, the same in both sexes, and owing to this uniformity there is no possibility of a distinction between the two sexes such as arises after puberty … Indeed, if we were able to give a more definite connotation to the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine,” it would even be possible to maintain that libido is invariably and necessary of a masculine nature, whether it occurs in men or in women and irrespectively of whether its object is a man or a woman.6

“在青春期之前，性器官的自恋活动在两性中是相同的，由于这种一致性，不可能出现青春期后那种两性之间的区别……确实，如果我们能够给‘男性’和‘女性’概念一个更明确的内涵，甚至可以说力比多无论出现在男人还是女人身上都是一种男性的性质，而不论其对象是男人还是女人。”

In other words, at the level of the libido there are no two sexes. And if we were able to say what exactly is “masculine” and “feminine,” we would describe it as “masculine” – but we are precisely not able to do this, as Freud further emphases in the footnote attached to the quoted passage. 7

换句话说，在力比多层面上没有两性。如果我们能确切地说出什么是“男性”和“女性”，我们会描述它为“男性”——但我们正是无法做到这一点，正如弗洛伊德在引用的段落附带的脚注中进一步强调的那样。

So, when confronted with the question of sexual difference, the first answer of psychoanalysis is: From the strictly analytical point of view, there is in fact only one sex, or sexuality. Moreover, sexuality is not something that springs from difference (between sexes); it is not propelled by any longing for our lost other half, but is originally self-propelling (and “autoerotic”). Freud writes, “The sexual drive is in the first instance independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object’s attractions.”8

所以，当面对性别差异问题时，精神分析的第一个回答是：从严格的分析角度来看，实际上只有一个性或性别。而且，性不是从差异（性别之间）中涌现的；它不是由我们失去的另一半推动的，而是本质上自我驱动（和“自恋”的）。弗洛伊德写道：“性驱力首先独立于其对象；它的起源不太可能是由对象的吸引力所致。”

Does this mean that sexual difference is only and purely a symbolic construction? Here waits the other surprise (not unrelated to the first, of course) of the psychoanalytic stance: Sexual difference doesn’t exist in the symbolic either, or, more precisely, there is no symbolic account of this difference as sexual. “In the psyche, there is nothing by which the subject may situate himself as male or female being.”9

Andy Warhol,Unidentified Male (With Decorative Stamps), 1950s ballpoint and stamped ink on paper 17 x 13 in

That is to say, although the production of meaning of what it is to be a “man” or a “woman” is certainly symbolic – and massive – it doesn’t amount to producing sexual difference as signifying difference. In other words, sexual difference is a different kind of difference; it doesn’t follow the differential logic. As Mladen Dolar most concisely puts it:

这是否意味着性别差异仅仅是纯粹的符号建构？在这里等待着精神分析立场的另一个惊喜（当然与第一个不无关联）：性别差异在符号中也不存在，或者更准确地说，没有作为性别的符号差异。“在精神领域，没有任何东西可以让主体将自己定位为男性或女性。” 也就是说，虽然关于“男人”或“女人”是什么的意义生产无疑是符号性的——而且是巨大的——但这并不等于生产出作为符号差异的性别差异。换句话说，性别差异是一种不同种类的差异；它不遵循差异逻辑。正如姆拉丹·多拉最简洁地指出的那样：

There is a widespread criticism going around that aims at the binary oppositions as the locus of enforced sexuality, its règlementation, its imposed mould, its compulsory stricture. By the imposition of the binary code of two sexes we are subjected to the basic social constraint. But the problem is perhaps rather the opposite: the sexual difference poses the problem of the two precisely because it cannot be reduced to the binary opposition or accounted for in terms of the binary numerical two. It is not a signifying difference, such that it defines the elements of structure. It is not to be described in terms of opposing features, or as a relation of given entities preexisting the difference … One could say: bodies can be counted, sexes cannot. Sex presents a limit to the count of bodies; it cuts them from inside rather than grouping them together under common headings.10

“有一种广泛存在的批评，认为二元对立是强制性别化的源泉，是规制其强制性结构的基本框架。通过强加二元编码的两性，我们被迫服从基本的社会约束。但问题或许恰恰相反：性别差异提出了两个的问题，因为它不能还原为二元对立，或者用二元数字来解释。它不是一种定义结构元素的符号差异。它不是以对立特征或预先存在的给定实体之间的关系来描述的……可以说：身体可以被计数，性别不能。性别在内部而不是在共同标题下将身体切开。”

And sex does not function as a stumbling block of meaning (and of the count) because it is considered morally naughty. It is considered morally naughty because it is a stumbling block of meaning. This is why the moral and legal decriminalization of sexuality should not take the path of its naturalization (“whatever we do sexually is only natural behavior”). We should instead start from the claim that nothing about (human) sexuality is natural, least of all sexual activity with the exclusive aim of reproduction. There is no “sexual nature” of man (and no “sexual being”). The problem with sexuality is not that it is a remainder of nature that resists any definite taming; rather, there is no nature here – it all starts with a surplus of signification.

性别之所以成为意义（和计数）的绊脚石，并不是因为它被认为是道德上的顽固，而是因为它是意义的绊脚石。这就是为什么性和法律上的去罪化不应该走自然化的道路（“无论我们做什么性行为都只是自然行为”）。我们应该从以下断言开始：关于（人类）性没有任何东西是自然的，最不自然的是以生殖为唯一目的的性行为。没有人类的“性本质”（和“性存在”）。性的问题不在于它是无法完全驯服的自然残余物；相反，这里没有自然——一切都从符号化的剩余开始。

If we now return to the question of what this implies in relation to ontology in general, and, more specifically, to the performative ontology of contemporary gender studies, we must start from the following, crucial implication: Lacan is led to establish a difference between being and the Real. The real is not a being, or a substance, but its deadlock. It is inseparable from being, yet it is not being. One could say that for psychoanalysis, there is no being independent of language (or discourse) – which is why it often seems compatible with contemporary forms of nominalism. All being is symbolic; it is being in the Other. But with a crucial addition, which could be formulated as follows: there is only being in the symbolic – except that there is real. There “is” real, but this real is no being. Yet it is not simply the outside of being; it is not something besides being, it is as I put it earlier the very curving of the space of being. It only exists as the inherent contradiction of being. Which is precisely why, for Lacan, the real is the bone in the throat of every ontology: in order to speak of “being qua being,” one has to amputate something in being that is not being. That is to say, the real is that which the traditional ontology had to cut off in order to be able to speak of “being qua being.” We only arrive to being qua being by subtracting something from it – and this something is precisely that which, while included in being, prevents it from being fully constituted as being. The real, as that additional something that magnetizes and curves the (symbolic) space of being, introduces in it another dynamics, which infects the dynamics of the symbolic, makes it “not all.”

如果我们现在回到这个问题：这对一般的本体论和更具体地对当代性别研究的表演性本体论有什么影响？我们必须从以下关键的含义开始：拉康被引导建立了存在与实在之间的区别。实在不是存在或物质，而是其僵局。它与存在不可分割，但它不是存在。可以说，对于精神分析来说，没有独立于语言（或话语）的存在——这就是为什么它经常看起来与当代形式的唯名论兼容。所有存在都是符号性的；它是在他者中的存在。但有一个关键的补充，可以这样表述：只有在符号中存在——除了有实在。这“有”实在，但这个实在不是存在。但它不仅仅是存在的外部；它不是存在之外的东西，而是——正如我之前所说的——存在空间的弯曲。它只作为存在的内在矛盾存在。这正是为什么对于拉康来说，实在是每个本体论中的骨头：为了谈论“作为存在的存在”，必须从存在中截取一些东西，而这个东西不是存在。也就是说，实在是传统本体论必须切割的东西，以便能够谈论“作为存在的存在”。我们只有通过从存在中减去某些东西才能到达作为存在的存在——而这个东西恰恰是虽然包含在存在中，却阻止其完全构成存在的东西。

Now, a very good way of getting closer to the relationship between sexuality as such (its real) and sexual difference is via an excerpt from a lecture by Joan Copjec, in which she made the following crucial observation:

现在，接近性作为实在与性别差异之间关系的一个很好的方法是通过琼·科普杰克的一个讲座摘录，其中她做了以下关键观察：

The psychoanalytic category of sexual difference was from this date [the mid- 1980s] deemed suspect and largely forsaken in favor of the neutered category of gender. Yes, neutered. I insist on this because it is specifically the sex of sexual difference that dropped out when this term was replaced by gender. Gender theory performed one major feat: it removed the sex from sex. For while gender theorists continued to speak of sexual practices, they ceased to question what sex or sexuality is; in brief, sex was no longer the subject of an ontological inquiry and reverted instead to being what it was in common parlance: some vague sort of distinction, but basically a secondary characteristic (when applied to the subject), a qualifier added to others, or (when applied to an act) something a bit naughty.11

“从那时起（20世纪80年代中期），精神分析的性别差异类别被认为是可疑的，并在很大程度上被中性类别性别所取代。是的，中性。我坚持这一点，因为当性别取代这个术语时，特别是性别的性被移除了。性别理论实现了一项重大壮举：它从性中移除了性。虽然性别理论家继续谈论性行为，但他们不再质疑什么是性或性别；简而言之，性不再是本体论探究的主题，而是恢复到普通话语中的意义：某种模糊的区别，但基本上是一种次要特征（当应用于主体时），是其他特征的修饰符，或者（当应用于行为时）是一种有点顽固的东西。”

I would like to use this quote as the background against which the following thesis can fully resonate: It is because sexual difference is implicated in sexuality that it fails to register as symbolic difference. Indeed, psychoanalysis doesn’t try to de-essentialize sexual difference. What de-essentializes it most efficiently (and in the real) is its implication in sexuality as defined above; that is, as the out-of-beingness of being. And this is what psychoanalysis brings out and insists upon – as opposed to the gender differences, which are differences like any other, and which miss the point by succeeding too much, and by falling in the trap of providing grounds for ontological consistency. It might seem paradoxical, but differences like form- matter, yin-yang, active-passive … belong to the same onto-logy as “gender” differences. Even when the latter abandon the principle of complementarity and embrace that of gender multiplicity, it in no way effects the ontological status of entities called genders. They are said to be, or to exist, emphatically so. (This “emphatically” seems to increase with numbers: One is usually timid in asserting the existence of two genders, but when passing to the multitude this timidity disappears, and their existence is firmly asserted.) If sexual difference is considered in terms of gender, it is made – at least in principle – compatible with mechanisms of its ontologization. Which brings us back to the point made earlier, and to which we can now add a supplementary point: De-sexualization of ontology (its no longer being conceived as a combinatory of two, “masculine” and “feminine” principles) coincides with the sexual appearing as the real/disruptive point of being. And taking the sexual away (as something that has no consequences for the ontological level) opens again the path of the ontological symbolism of sexual difference.

我想用这个引用作为背景，使以下论题能够充分共鸣：正是因为性别差异涉及到性别，它才无法作为符号差异注册。实际上，精神分析并没有试图去本质化性别差异。最有效地去本质化它（在实在中）的正是它在上述定义的性别中的涉及；即作为存在的出局。而这正是精神分析所揭示并坚持的——与性别差异相反，性别差异是像其他任何差异一样的差异，它们通过过于成功地提供本体论一致性的基础，而错过了要点，并落入了陷阱。这看起来可能是矛盾的，但像形态-物质、阴阳、主动-被动等差异属于与“性别”差异相同的本体论。即使后者放弃了互补性原则，转而接受性别多样性，这在任何方面都不会影响被称为性别的实体的本体论地位。它们被说成是存在的，或者存在，这一点强调得非常明显。（这种“强调”似乎随着数量的增加而增加：人们通常在断言两种性别的存在时会有些胆怯，但当转向多样性时，这种胆怯就消失了，它们的存在被坚定地断言。）如果将性差异考虑为性别，它至少在原则上与将其本体论化的机制相容。这又使我们回到了前面的观点，并可以再加上一个补充点：本体论的去性化（它不再被构想为两种“男性”和“女性”原则的组合）与性作为存在的现实/破坏性点同时出现。而将性拿走（作为对本体论层面没有后果的东西）再次打开了性差异的本体论象征主义的道路。”

This is why, if one “removes sex from sex,” one removes the very thing that has brought to light the problematic and singular character of sexual difference in the first place. One doesn’t remove the problem, but the means of seeing it and eventually tackling it.12

这就是为什么，如果一个人“从性中移除性”，就会移除最初揭示性别差异问题和独特特征的东西。一个人不会移除问题，但会移除看到问题和最终解决问题的手段。

The fact that “sexual difference” is not a differential difference (which might explain why Lacan actually never uses the term “sexual difference”) can explain why Lacan’s famous formulas of sexuation are not differential in any common sense: They don’t imply a difference between two kinds of being(s) – there is no contradiction (antagonism) that exists between M and F positions. On the contrary, contradiction, or antagonism, is what the two positions have in common. It is what they share, the very thing that binds them. It is the very point that accounts for speaking about “men” and “women” under the same heading. Succinctly put, the indivisible that binds them, their irreducible sameness, is not that of being, but that of contradiction or out-of-beingness of being. This is also what it means that “there is no sexual realtionship”: It doesn’t mean, as the popular title goes, that “men are from Mars and women from Venus,” and as such it can never form a harmonic couple. It is not something that aims at explaining the war between sexes, “the war of the Roses,” the alleged incompatibility of sexes. For these explanations are always full of claims about what is “feminine” and what is “masculine” – something that psychoanalysis denies all knowledge of, as we’ve already seen. The psychoanalytic claim is at the same time much more modest and radical: Sexes are not two in any meaningful way. Sexuality does not fall into two parts; it does not constitute a one. It is stuck between “no longer one” and “not yet two (or more)”; it revolves around the fact that “the other sex doesn’t exist” (which is to say that the difference is not ontologizable), yet there is more than one (which is also to say, “more than multiple ones”).

“性别差异”不是一种差异化的差异（这可能解释了为什么拉康实际上从不使用“性别差异”这个术语），可以解释为什么拉康著名的性别公式不是通常意义上的差异化：它们不意味着两种存在之间的差异——在男性和女性位置之间没有矛盾（对抗）。相反，矛盾或对抗是两者共有的。这是它们共同的东西，将它们联系在一起的东西。这是解释“男人”和“女人”在同一标题下的理由。简而言之，绑定它们的不可分割性不是存在的，而是矛盾的或存在的出局性。这也意味着“没有性关系”：这并不是说像流行的说法那样“男人来自火星，女人来自金星”，因此永远无法形成和谐的情侣。它不是解释性别之间的战争“玫瑰战争”，性别不相容的解释。这些解释总是充满了关于什么是“女性化”的和什么是“男性化”的断言——这是精神分析所否认的知识。精神分析的断言既谦虚又激进：性别在任何有意义的方式中都不是两个。性别不是分为两部分；它不构成一个一。它介于“不再是一个”和“还不是两个（或更多）”之间；它围绕“另一性别不存在”这一事实旋转（这就是说，差异不是本体化的），但有多个（这也是说“多个之一”）。

Psychoanalysis is not the science of sexuality. It doesn’t tell us what sex really is; it tells us that there is no “really” of the sex. But this nonexistence is not the same as, say, the nonexistence of the unicorn. It is a nonexistence in the real that, paradoxically, leaves traces in the real. It is a void that registers in the real. It is a nothing, or negativity, with consequences.

精神分析不是性别的科学。它没有告诉我们性别的真正是什么；它告诉我们性别没有“真正的”。但这种不存在并不等同于独角兽的不存在。它是在实在中留下痕迹的不存在。它是一个在实在中注册的虚无或否定。

Which brings us to the logic implied in the following joke: A guy goes into a restaurant and says to the waiter, “Coffee without cream, please.” The waiter replies, “I am sorry sir, but we are out of cream. Could it be without milk?” Sexuality is that cream whose nonbeing does not reduce it to a mere nothing. It is a nothing that walks around and makes trouble. The fundamental lesson of psychoanalysis is precisely that of the joke above: if psychoanalysis cannot “serve” us anything without sexuality, it is because there is no Sexuality that it could serve us. And it is precisely this “there is no,” this non-being which nevertheless has real consequences, that is lost in translation when we pass from sex to gender.

这引出了以下笑话所暗示的逻辑：

一个人走进餐馆，对服务员说：“请给我一杯不加奶油的咖啡。”服务员回答：“对不起，先生，我们没有奶油。可以是不加牛奶的吗？”

性别就是那个其不存在并不将其简化为纯粹虚无的奶油。它是一个四处游荡并制造麻烦的虚无。精神分析的基本教训正是上述笑话：如果精神分析不能“为我们提供”任何没有性的东西，那是因为没有性别可以提供给我们。这正是这种“没有”这种不存在，但却有实际后果的东西，在我们从性别转向性别时所丧失的。

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This paper was originally presented at the conference "One Divides Into Two: Negativity, Dialectics, and Clinamen," held at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin in March 2011.

这篇论文最初在2011年3月于柏林文化研究所举行的“一个分成两个：否定性辩证法和随机偏差”会议上发表。

Alenka Zupančič (born 1 April 1966) is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. She is currently a full- time researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a visiting professor at the European Graduate School. Zupančič belongs to the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, which is known for its predominantly Lacanian foundations. Her philosophy was strongly influenced by Slovenian Lacanian scholars, especially Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek. Zupančič has written on several topics including ethics, literature, comedy, and love. She is most renowned as a Nietzsche scholar, but Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Bergson and Alain Badiou are also referenced in her work.

阿伦卡·祖潘契奇（1966年4月1日出生）是一位斯洛文尼亚哲学家，其研究重点是精神分析和大陆哲学。她目前是斯洛文尼亚科学院与艺术学院哲学研究所的全职研究员，同时也是欧洲研究生院的客座教授。祖潘契奇属于卢布尔雅那学派的精神分析学者群体，以其主要的拉康基础而闻名。她的哲学受到斯洛文尼亚拉康学者的强烈影响，尤其是姆拉丹·多拉和斯拉沃热·齐泽克。祖潘 契奇撰写了关于多个主题的文章，包括伦理学、文学、喜剧和爱情。她最著名的是尼采学者，但她的作品中也提到了伊曼纽尔·康德、格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔、亨利·柏格森和阿兰·巴迪欧。