Zizek's Guide-Men and Women

Zizek's thinking about men and women is mainly aimed at the interpretation of Lacan's "sexualization formula". He is committed to correcting people's misunderstanding of such propositions as "women don't exist", "women are men's symptoms" and "sexual relations don't exist", especially in Weininger's Sex and Character.

1, female does not exist:

In Zizek's view, Weininger's interpretation made a mistake of absolute misogyny. Weininger believes that women are passive objects, and women are dominated by senses and erotic instincts. Men are the main body, tearing between senses and spirit, lust and love. For women, the spirit is completely lacking, so men can project their ideal image and spirit on women. In this process, the man betrayed both himself (unaware of his spiritual potential) and the woman (making her obey the spirit of idealism), so the man also felt guilty, because he condescended to project his spirit to sexual desire and created a woman. Before that, there was nothing in women's minds.

In Zizek's view, Weininger's analysis of the concept of women is reasonable, and he reveals that there is nothing in the concept of women. Weininger's real shortcoming is that he doesn't realize that the secret of a woman is that she doesn't exist. In other words, the essence of femininity is nothingness, and nothingness is the basis of subjectivity. In this sense, the conclusion is just the opposite. Women are not objects, but perfect subjects.

Zizek pointed out that Lacan used linguistic concepts to explain the subject of explanation and the subject of explanation. The subject of exposition is the nothingness of the subject, and the subject of exposition is the subject of symbolism. For example, the subject of exposition is the speaker, and the subject of exposition is the pronoun "I" in words. I am actually a concept shared by all people, and I have no particularity. In fact, it was the word I that murdered me in the real world that allowed me to enter the symbolic world. In this sense, we can find that "women don't exist" is actually a concept of subject. In the concept of subject, women exist as the emptiness of subject.

2, a woman is a man's symptoms:

Zizek found through textual research that "women are men's symptoms" was actually a proposition in Lacan's later period, when the symptoms in Lacan's mouth were different from those in his early period.

The early word "symptom" refers to the information that the truth of the subject's betrayed desire returns to the subject. When a man fails to realize his spiritual potential [his real desire], this kind of failure appears in the creation of women [as a symptom]. The "symptom" in Lacan's later period is a kind of meaning composition, which maintains the consistency of the subject, and an individual subject forms its relationship with pleasure. Pleasure is the point at which pleasure becomes pain, and it is the climax of pleasure. For example, scratching a wound to get a sense of satisfaction, the symptom is that such a wound on the subject gives the subject consistency to the subject.

Then the practical significance of "women are men's symptoms" is that men only exist when women give men the consistency of the subject.

3. Sexual relationship does not exist:

First of all, it should be pointed out that the reference of men and women is not physical or even psychological. In fact, men and women are actually two models that symbolize failure. These two modes correspond to the concept, quantity paradox and dynamics paradox in Kant's philosophy.

Copik combined Lacan's sexualization formula with Kant's distinction between the paradox of quantity and the paradox of power. The so-called fallacy is that reason applies categories to entities that cannot be experienced objects (such as God and the universe as a whole), and the quantitative fallacy is that we apply categories to the universe as a whole, which is a fallacy about the phenomenon of "not all". The paradox of dynamics is that we apply categories to those objects that do not belong to the phenomenal order. Zizek thinks that the number fallacy is women's and the power fallacy is men's.

Fuehles, or translated as sai-jo, is actually a sculpture of genital worship and a symbol of penis. So Fuehles is actually a signifier, a symbol. Fuehles's function is to enter the symbolic world, and in the process of entering the symbolic world, we replace the actual things with symbols, which will inevitably lead to loss, which is called "castration". With the appearance of castration, Fuehles prohibited materialization as pleasure, so we lost pleasure.

"We apply categories to those objects that do not belong to the phenomenal order" corresponds to castration. In this sense, all men have been castrated. A dialectics that Zizek often uses is: "Universal laws can only be established through exceptions." The existence of saying "no" to Fuehles' function is the original father. In addition to lowercase men, there is also a man who maintains their capitalization-the original father. Contrary to the killing of father and the elimination of prohibition in totem and taboo, Zizek thinks that the death of his original father gives him more strength, and he becomes a living dead, the symbol of the other in the world, and then becomes a fantasy in order to continue to enjoy.

We have argued before that "women don't exist" is actually the concept of an elaborated subject, and the elaborated subject is actually a concept shared by all. Then women's logic is actually "incomplete" logic. Since it is not all, then women have no boundaries, and capitalized women do not exist as exceptions.

? "Gender differences only appear where symbolization fails", so gender differences must belong to the real world, because it is at this point that symbolization fails. Then, "man" and "woman" are actually just two failed attempts to turn the real world of gender differences into the opposite of the symbolic world. "Man" and "woman" are not two complementary parts of this whole, they are two (unsuccessful) attempts to symbolize this whole.

Not having sex doesn't mean we don't need love. On the contrary, love has become the ideology of gender differences, covering up the failure of symbolization of gender differences.