‘There Is No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship’: the Formal Deadlock of Sexuality

Abstract

One of Žižek’s favourite ways to approach and discuss the question of the relationship between the Symbolic and the Real, and thus the key theoretical aspect of his ideology critique, is by referring to one of Lacan’s most highly debated and controversial topics, the question of sexual difference (the so called ‘formulas of sexuation’, see Fig. 15.1). As a rule, Žižek starts with the assertion that sexual difference is Real insofar as it establishes the impossibility of sexual identity as such, i.e. it cuts across both fields of femininity and masculinity: Sexual difference is the Real of an antagonism, not the Symbolic of a differential opposition: sexual difference is not the opposition allocating to each of the two sexes its positive identity defined in opposition to the other sex (so that woman is what man is not, and vice versa), but a common Loss on account of which woman is never fully a woman and man is never fully a man — ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ positions are merely two modes of coping with this inherent obstacle/loss (Žižek, 2000a, 272).