Queer Theory, Sexual Difference and Perversion

Abstract

For queer theorists, phallic logic under which one is either man or woman, is a biologisation of sexual difference. While phallic jouissance is framed, allowing knowledge about its limits, feminine jouissance is something boundless. If the phallus is the product of heterosexual discourse, reminding us of its anatomical origin, why do we need to keep it as a reference and not choose an alternative? In answer, Pelle, turns to Lacan’s teaching on the feminine position as leaving outside the category of the universal, of the all-same. The answer queer theorists offer to the question “What is a woman?” is a striving towards the disappearance of the feminine, a new norm of polymorphous perversion. But is there another possibility, a different status for the feminine exception?