Urinary Segregation: Jacques Lacan on Sexual Difference

“It is Freud’s discovery that gives the signifier/signified opposition its full scope: for the signifier plays an active role in determining the effects by which the signifiable appears to succumb to its mark, becoming, through that passion, the signified.” (Lacan 2002, p.274). 

This blog introduces Lacan’s theory of sexual difference by using his ‘anecdotal’ example of urinary segregation. It is available here to use as a study tool.

Firstly we have Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic sign (Saussure 1966, pp.66-67) (above), which forms the basis of Lacan’s model. With his model, Saussure assigns the concept (the top level) to the signified, and the sound pattern (the lower level) to the signifier, explaining that their association is arbitrary (Saussure 1966, p.67).

The above image is Lacan’s topography of the unconscious (Lacan 2002, p.141). Note the similarity with Saussure’s, to whom Lacan attributes it. However, Lacan demonstrates the importance of the signifier by reversing the hierarchy here in his own algorithm. The signifier, the unconscious, cannot be a true representation of the signified, because no direct exchange exists.

This is Lacan’s illustration of “urinary segregation” (Lacan 2002, p.143). Lacan’s anecdotal graphic demonstrates how “the signifier in fact enters the signified” (2002, p.142). His aim here is to show how the signifier becomes materialised in reality. His example is based on the traditional “faulty illustration” (ibid.) but here he uses associated binary terms. Lacan explains that from the train windows the children in his story experience a different physical perspective due to their seating arrangement: the boy believes they have arrived at “ladies” and the girl at “gentlemen” (2002, p.143). So, what in fact is happening for Lacan is that the railway lines represent and actualise the bar in Saussure’s model, becoming “a barrier resisting signification” (Lacan 2002, p141). Thus, the real signifier here (the toilet doors) creates for the children an ideological binarity positioning them in opposing domains (Lacan 2002, p.144).

Related Links:
On Knowledge and Phalluses

Bibliography:
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1966. Course in General Linguistics, ed. by Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye and Albert Riedlinger, trans. by Wade Baskin (New York, Toronto and London: McGraw-Hill).
Lacan, Jacques. 2002. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Co.).

Becoming-Gerbil: Part 1 - Becoming-Genome

In 1980 Deleuze and Guattari published a book called A Thousand Plateaus which included a chapter entitled ‘1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible’.

In 2013 Richardson adopted Sister Moonshine.

This is a Deleuzo-Guattarian response to the experience of having a gerbil housemate!

Introduction to Series

There is so much that can be said about being-a-human-caring-for-a-gerbil that comes under the umbrella of Oedipal reterritorialization as it is for Deleuze and Guattari. For instance: there are no males - gerbil or human - who live in the house with Sister Moonshine and myself. Nevertheless, while there is a traditional classical hierarchy - human over animal - that is arguably going on, I attempt as much as possible to not impose my will/rules/power over her. But this is a fine balance, since there are some things I have to do in regards to her care which she doesn’t like much, for instance cleaning her cage out. But, our house/gerbilarium is not a patriarchy. We are sisters in fur/skin together, although Sister M is totally unaware of this. We also enter each other’s spaces: I enter her cage (well my hand does) and she comes out for a run on my bed. We have, somewhat, appropriated each other’s homes/territories.

This relationship is a damage limitation exercise based on the fact that someone put Sister M in a cage and she can no longer go back to her homeland, the Mongolian desert (not that she has ever seen the desert, neither have any of her recent ancestors). Unfortunately she cannot live in my house as a free being: she could disappear into the wall cavities forever or I could get out of bed one morning and accidentally stand on her. Nor can I move into her cage with her. So, Sister Moonshine and I are separated by bars. This becoming-gerbil series of blogs is about those bars of her cage and my attempt to overcome them by adapting myself, as much as possible, to her gerbil nature. In a way the bars are like the rail tracks discussed by Jacque Lacan in Ecrits (the ones that actualise the bar in his signifying model). Sister M looks at the bars and I look at the bars, but we are looking at the bars from a totally different space. (For a Lacanian analysis which discusses this further, please click here: Once Upon a Time) The qualities of becoming-gerbil which I would like to introduce over the next few blogs are: becoming-genome, becoming-small and becoming-furry.


1 - Becoming-Genome: Change, Compensation and Care

Sister Moonshine and myself were related about 80 million years ago. At that historically significant evolutionary point the rodent and primate lineage diverged and I took the primate path. However, this means that Sister M and I have a lot in common. Humans share a lot of DNA with rodents (hence why scientists use rodents in vivisection), even if a lot of that DNA is not ‘switched on’. What is significant about this in relation to becoming-genome is the concept of surface appearance or resemblance. For instance, at some point following this rodent/primate split, on the rodent line there followed a rat/mouse split. What becoming-gerbil is about is difference and relationships. It is about becoming as it is relates to adaptation, morphing and transforming.

When discussing becoming-animal Deleuze and Guattari state: “The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal the human becomes is not; and the becoming-other of the animal is real, even if that something other it becomes is not.” (2007: 260) They go on to say that becoming “concerns alliance” and “it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms” (2007:263).

What this means for becoming-gerbil, and in particular becoming-genome, is the seeking out of a place where the gerbil can express her gerbilness as much as possible in the confines that the site and situation allow. Becoming-genome is about expressions of care. As the human care-giver of the gerbil, one places the needs of the gerbil as a high priority in order to attempt to compensate for the freedom that was taken away from her and her relatives when they were turned into pets in the 1960s (and prior to that used as laboratory animals because of their ‘placid’ nature). While it is impossible to redress the abuses inflicted upon Sister Moonshine’s ancestors, becoming-genome refers to the changes in the caregiver through nurturing her and educating the care-giver to be the best gerbil ‘parent’ possible. This involves adapting to Sister M, rather than expecting her to adapt to me, although that is no doubt occurring too.

Becoming Gerbil: Part 2 - Becoming-Small

Bibliography:
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 2007. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. by Brian Massumi (London and New York: Continuum).
Lacan, Jacques. 2002. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Co.).

Once Upon a Time: A Lacanian Analysis of Clockwork Orange

This blog is the second in a series of film studies blogs that I wrote during my own Cultural Studies BA at the University of Leeds. I have loaded them here as a teaching aid.

Please click here to see the other blogs:
Framing the Russian Ark
Apocalypse Now: The Vietnam War on Perception

Abstract:
This essay offers a Lacanian analysis of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange. Using Jacques Lacan's theory on the symbolic order - in particular his themes of lack, the unconscious, the phallus, the signifier/signified and speech - I use a scene in the film to explicate his theory of sexual difference. The essay is written as a story which utilises the style of a fairy tale in order to draw attention to the different voices in the film, to allude to the original myth of Oedipus and to make reference to the forgotten episode of our own enculturation via the Oedipal trajectory.

Extract:
Alex knows the cat lady doesn’t have the phallus. Women just feature in his life as objects to be done to. But, Alex is under the misapprehension that he does have the phallus. He doesn’t realise that no-one has the phallus. He believes the phallus represents potency, it signifies the life-force. He thinks he is one with his penis, and that the penis-sculpture he holds to his groin is this unity writ large. He actually believes he is the phallus. However, he does not realise that he is not seamless with the phallus: not only does the phallus exist in a space he cannot gain entry to, but his body is a fragmented one, he is a divided self, due to his prior misidentification at the mirror stage.

Click here for a full downloadable pdf of the essay: Once Upon a Time