Exceeding Hegel and Lacan: Different Fields of Pleasure within Foucault and Irigaray Author(s): Shannon Winnubst Source:

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Exceeding HegelandLacan: within Fieldsof Pleasure Different and Foucault Irigaray

and embodiments poststructuralist Frenchfeminismoften Anglo-American of Interrothemselves with the textsof eitherMichelFoucaultor LuceIrigaray. align I Foucaultand Irigaray, showhowit reinscribes distance between thisalleged gating both and withinfeministdiscourses. thephallic Framing fieldof concepts categories G.W.F Hegel's Lacan's and as Foucault Irigaray exceedingJacques of metamorphosis theirstylesmightyieldrichertoolsfor articulating Concept,I suggestthatengaging withinourdifferent lives. thedifferences

If language is a caressing of the phallus, as Luce Irigaraysuggests in her early essay "This Sex Which Is Not One" (1985c),1 if language is weaving alwaysthrough the field of phallic pleasureand phallic desire-erecting new concepts that are then enveloped by the Oedipal mother of discourse-what could it possiblymean to speakthe feminine?Would it be to refuseto sheathe the concept, the sword, the bloody dagger?And how to speak thus without invoking that fearwhich SigmundFreudboth uncovered and embeddedin us so well, the fearof castration?Is it possible?And who is castrated? The master who feeds his yearningfor Absolute Ownershipwith the powerof languageto name, the power to conceptualize (Irigaray1996, 44)? Who would mournthe castrationof that needy, that need-basedpower?Who would mournthe death of facile sovereignty? The hybridof poststructuralist feminismstrugglesto breakthrough conthe straintsof this phallic field of conceptual thinking. The chains of linear causality,teleology, univocity, individuality,rights,and contractedpowerseem to be losing their grip.And yet it often seems that those chains may work in the same way that a dog's choke collar works:the more we struggle,the tighter
Hypatia vol. 14, no. 1 (Winter 1999) ? by Shannon Winnubst

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their grip. A "clean break"is neither desirablenor possible. Given this predicament, and given the kind of hypervigilance that it calls for-that is, a hypervigilance about not reinscribing,and thus embedding yet further,the feminists hope to very kinds of conceptual constraints that poststructuralist elude, to thwart, to disrupt-the ways in which categories and conceptual feminism continue to puzzleme. distances are erected withinpoststructuralist An exemplarof such a conceptual distancing is found in the Anglo-Ameriand Michel Foucault. Determined, can readingsof the work of Luce Irigaray and perhaps over-determinedas I will suggest, as operating out of mutually exclusive discourses,these two thinkers and the styles of thinking that they have spawned are rarelybrought together in any attempt to engage2 their intersections and divergences.3The discussions,brief and combative, are most often constrained by the frame of the boxing ring, wherein the writer aligns her/himself from the outset with the competitor who is clearly destined to triumph,to trampleover the other-an odd metaphorics,to say the least, for both feminist and poststructuralist attempts to move beyond the power configurationsof strictly dyadic logics. I am wonderinghere whether this disas and tance between Irigaray Foucault,particularly a combative or dismissive indicate something more worrisome,something more insididistance, might ous. I am wondering whether it might indicate a reinscriptionof the phallic field and its erection of concepts and categories withinthe fields of poststructuralistfeminism. And so let us returnfor a while to that field of phallic pleasureand desire. How does it operate?A fair question, given its gridlikeperformanceof singular positions and demarcated-active and passive-roles.
CONCEPTTO THE LACANIANPHALLUS FROMTHE HEGELIAN

To begin, I offerthe following topographical genealogyof the phallic fielda field that might also go by the name of "traditionalwestern metaphysics." of When one framesa characterization the western traditionthroughthe lens of the concept, one must inevitably return to G.W.F.Hegel. Many consider him to be the conceptual thinker par excellence. And yet, by looking more of closely at both the Phenomenology Spirit(Hegel 1977) and the Scienceof Logic (Hegel 1969), we see that this characterization,particularlyas often grounded in an understandingof conceptual thinking as abstractor disembodied, belongs moreproperlyto a kind of anti-Hegelian deploymentof Hegel than it does to the texts that are gathered under his name.4However, I will resist, at least explicitly, Hegel's drive to totalize this essay and offer only a snapshot of Hegel's reworking of the Concept-and thus of cartographer's thinking-as a way of locating, througha Lacanianinterpolation, conceptual the stakes involved in exceeding the phallus.5

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At the beginning of volume 2 of the Scienceof Logic,Hegel locates the Concept6 as a product of the faculty of understanding,not of the faculties of judgmentor formalreason.The faculty of understanding,as can be seen most emphaticallyin Hegel'sdiatribesagainstthe "Philosopherof the Understanding" (who bearsa strikingresemblanceto ImmanuelKant), functions within and Hegel's system in both the Phenomenology the Logicas something of a evil. Through Kant, we can see how the understandinggenerates necessary antinomies necessary to the workings of the dialectic: contradictorydyads are, after all, the origin of the dialectic.7However, the danger of the understanding is, in short, failing to move beyond Kant. The rigidifyingof antinomies into intractable figures frozen in opposition quickly spins into the notorious "badinfinite,"wherein no dialectical mediation can renderthinking fluid again and thinking cannot think itself as a temporalphenomenon. If trapped in the understanding,the strict contradiction will not yield to any mediation, and cognition is damned to a strict Either/Orlogic that is stripped of any temporallocation. In reworkingthe Concept, Hegel effectively mediates this bad infinity of antinomies in which the Philosopher of the Understandingwould otherwise we mire cognition. Given that the Logicpresupposesthe Phenomenology, can in the Logicas having undergone the radical historicizing of read cognition Absolute Knowing that Hegel performsin the Phenomenology.8 Thus, we are no longer fighting the dangersof becoming frozenin the atemporalformalism of the Philosopher of the Understanding,wherein concepts quickly become rigid, isolated forms with impenetrable boundaries.Consequently, this section of the Logicgives us Hegel'sfullest articulationof the figure,place, force, a and meaning of the Concept. Performing classic dialectical mediation of the three figuresof the Concept (universality,particularity,and individuality), Hegel delivers us to that which we should recognizeas the TrueConcept, the determinateConcept. He describesthis figureas "the most concrete and richest determination because it is the ground and the totalityof the preceding determinations,of the categoriesof being and of the determinationsof reflection; these, therefore,are certainly also present in it" (1969, 617). This is the figureof the Concept as self-determining,self-mediating,and ultimately,selfcreating: it totalizes the fields of both ontology and epistemology.It is both the groundand telos of all philosophical thinking. Given Hegel's continuous labor to historicize cognition, we cannot read this figureof the Concept as a frozen, atemporaltarget at which all thinking must aim; it is not a formalConcept or a transcendentalrepresentationof the Truth.Nor is it a method or a tool.9 The Truthof Hegelian dialectics is not a question of correspondence.However, in his move to avert formalism,Hegel rendersthis kind of Concept and its concomitant conceptual thinking essential to the movement of trulyphilosophicalthinking;indeed,conceptualthink-

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ing, in all its richnessof historicizingself-mediation,is the core of philosophical thinking and its move towardsself-consciousness.Thus, while Hegel disarmsany formalisturge to control (externally) the shape of "truethinking," he therebydrives the figureof the Concept into the core of cognition. It is no longer a question of whether thinking adequatesa certain external standard known as the Concept of Truth;it is a question of whether thinking is truly the thinking-truly conceptual-at all. It is a question of embodying Concept. The German verb at the core of Hegel's Begriffis begreifen-to grasp, to touch, to feel, to handle; also to conceive, to understand,to comprehend,to realize.The word performsthe embodiment of the mental act of conceptualizing. Indeed, through this bodily contact, we can see how Hegel's reworking of the Concept frees philosophical thinking from an external formalismthat remainsattendantto-but alwaysat a distancefrom-a transcendental,atemporal sense of Truth:Truth and its Concept are no longer abstract,no longer is and disembodied.But the junction between Begriff begreifen not a simple or neutral connection. The junction between Begriffand begreifen performsa kind of embodiment: it requiresa body capable of enclosure, of particular wrappingitself aroundothers;a body attuned to the delineations among bodies and thus capableof graspingand handling others;a body that can seize and control and manage others, that can accommodate the demands of ownership; a body that can totalize, that can masterbodies-bodies of knowledge, bodies of texts, bodies of cultures,bodies. In embodyingphilosophical thinking, Hegel does not entertain the possibility of a variety of different bodies. He demands that true philosophical thinking must embody one form-the form of the Concept.10 What has all of this to do with the navigations of discourseand language that we find in Foucaultand Irigaray? ThroughJacquesLacan'sinterpolation of the Hegelian dialectic into Freudianpsychoanalysis,the figureof the Concept metamorphoses.It changes into a form that has since been deployed almost as an unspoken figure in poststructuralistdiscussions-the figure of the phallus. Through Lacan, the Concept becomes embodied-and thereby strangelydisembodiedyet one more time-as the phallus. Both Foucaultand requirea more detailed map of this transformation. Irigaray Although the formal development of Saussurean linguistics postdates Freud,' LacanreadsFreudas having conceived of the unconsciousin termsof development that gives the signifier/ language. In fact, he claims it is Freud's signifiedopposition "the full extent of its implications:namely,that the signifierhas an active function in determiningcertain effects in which the signifiable appearsas submittingto its mark,by becoming through that passion the signified"(1977, 284). Lacan demands that psychoanalysisboth reclaim its Freudianheritage and recast its Freudianschemasonto the field of language.12 Echoing Ferdinandde Saussureand Martin Heidegger and voicing a virtual

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dictum of poststructuralist thinkers, Lacanproceedsto locate languageas the field out of which the figureof "man"emerges:"This passion of the signifier now becomes a new dimension of the human condition in that it is not only man who speaks,but that in man and throughman it speaks(sa parle),that his nature is woven by effects in which is to be found the structureof language,of which he becomes the material"(1977, 284). The effects of languagebecome the place out of which the subjectemerges.That is, the activities-both mental and corporeal-of the subject are groundednot in the subjecther/himself as an autonomousor self-directing being, but in the fieldof language(Saussure's that gives rise to that subjectivity.All ontologies and epistemologies langue) are thus the effect of language, the effect of signifiers.And what structures that field of signifiers? What gives force and form and meaning to that field of language? valorizaMergingthe Hegelian configurationof desirewith the Saussurean tion of the signifieras the site of meaning, Lacan introducesthe figureof the phallus:"The phallus is the privilegedsignifierof that markin which the role of the logos is joined with the advent of desire"(1977, 287). It is throughthe phallus that the infinite horizon of desire begins to structureitself within the law of language.Emergingout of the complex effects of the mirrorstage, particularlyas followed by the Oedipal stage, Lacan'ssense of desire re-caststhe Hegelian desire for recognition. This is no longer simply the desire to be recognizedby the other; it now becomes the desireto be the cause of desirein the other. Desire thus performsitself in the symbolic register as the attempt to seduce the other13-an attempt on which the subject is dependent, given its both the imaginary's demand groundingin the ontological lack that structures and the real'sneed.14 this is no simple seduction. This is not the seduction But of the other into recognizingone's self as an equal or as a unique or autonomous being-i.e., as a Master,per Hegel. Rather, this is the seduction of the other to view one's self as the cause of desire in the other: this is the seduction of the other to allow one's self to be the ground of her/his desire, to be the and structuring controllingfigureof the her/his-the other's-desire. The other is not recognized in such a play as an autonomous or equal other, but as an other to be manipulatedby the ever greedydesire-demand-need nexus. Desire ultimately speaksonly through the mouth of demand.As ElizabethGroszdescribes,"Desireis concerned only with its own processes,pleasures,and internal logic, a logic of the signifier"(1990, 65). Having seduced the other onto the dangerousand insatiable field of the infinite play of signifiers,desire still strugglesto find its own impossiblesatiation.15It strugglesto dominate, in a classic dialectic of masterand slave, the field of signifiers:it struggles,depending on its placement in the strict binary of sexual difference that is itself alreadystructuredby the phallus, either to haveor to be the phallus.16 Lacan explains this privilege that the phallus exer-

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cises through the registersof both the real and the symbolic:"It can be said in that this signifieris chosen because it is the most tangible element17 the real of sexual copulation, and also the most symbolic in the literal (typographical) sense of the term, since it is equivalent there to the (logical) copula. It might also be said that, by virtue of its turgidity,it is the image of the vital flow as it is transmittedin generation"(1977, 287). While Lacanproceedsto insist that the phallus is not reducible to the penis18(a crucial point to which I shall return later), Lacan nevertheless allows for a metaphoricalrelation between the sexual and logical acts of copulation. Given that both physical and mental acts are effects of language-i.e., effects of the play of signifiers-the privileged signifierof one field should resembleor mirrorthe privilegedsignifierof the other field. Furthermore,as Heidegger tells us, the privilege that Lacan thereby grantsyet again to the role of the copula ensuresthe continuous reinscription of western metaphysics in that field of signifiers.In reading the phallus as possessingthe power of the copula, Lacan easily elevates it to the signifierof signifiersin the field of traditionalwestern metaphysics. Lacan'smetamorphosisof the Hegelian Concept thus begins to emerge, as the phallus assumesa foundationalrole that mirrorsthe one Hegel ascribesto the Concept. This mirroringbetween the symbolic and the real, however, is more than a mere structuralsimilarity.In readingthe symbolic act of the logical copula through the real act of sexual copulation, a particularcriterion emergesas the indication of the power of the phallus:visibility. The phallus, particularlyas read through the embodiment of the penis, can be seen. It is because it is "the imageof the vital flow"and "byvirtue of its turgidity" (Lacan 1977, 287; emphasisadded)that the phallusmeritsbeing chosen as the signifier of signifiers.19 Thus, two crucial, mutuallyconstituting shifts occur. is by virtue of its visibility that the penis, the phallic organ, is privFirst,it ileged in the act of sexual copulation. Simultaneously,however, this act of sexual copulation representsthe metaphysical-logicalact of copulation. The privilegingof visibility,which both groundsand is groundedby the epistemology of representation,must then operate acrossboth registersof the real and the symbolic. That is, insofaras the possibility of staging the Truthrelies on and simultaneously re-enforces the privileged status of sight, of seeing the of Truth,Lacan inscribesthe full apparatus the metaphysicsof representation in his readingsof both the real and the symbolic. Lacan'sdeployment of the Hegelian Concept in the figureof the phallus thus inscribesthe crucial criterion of visibility as a necessary demarcation of privileged-i.e., phallic per Lacan and philosophical per Hegel-ontologies and epistemologies. Conseconceptual quently,despite all of Hegel'sdiatribesagainst"picture-thinking," thinking blursonce again into the metaphysicsof representation:the phallus the may not be reducible to the penis, but the penis does represent phallus.20 Thus, the classic privileging of sight and the dominant ontology and episte-

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mology of representationis restoredin-and deployed furtherby-the metapsychology of Lacanianpsychoanalysis. Lacan'sinterpolation of the Hegelian Concept thus mirrorsHegel's system. Just as I have suggestedthat Hegel, in his move to historicize the Concept, effectivelyinscribesit at the core of thinking, so too does Lacanreinscribe the centrality of the phallus, despite his having historicized its privilege.21 Trueto his Freudianroots, Lacanplaces the phallusin the central and defining position as the copula, that which both distinguishesthe two sexes and brings them together: sexual difference, as already indicated above, is determined Moreover, in solely through the location to and relation with the phallus.22 his reinscriptionof the metaphysicsof representation,Lacaneffectively raises the phallus to a transcendentalposition-a strangelydisembodied,abstract, and atemporalsignifierof signifiers.Through a representationof the embodiment of Hegel'sConcept, Lacan'sphallusrendersconceptual thinking as both the impossibledesireand the ultimate power.This phallic powerconsequently becomes the power to distinguish, to delineate, to demarcate,to centralize, and to control the "proper" names of objects and values in the world. These arethe characteristics phallogocentrism,groundedin this genealogicalmap of through Hegel and Lacan, that guide the following readingsof Foucaultand Irigaray.
DISCURSIVE TRUTHS:FOUCAULT'S EXCESSES ORIGINS,PERFORMATIVE

In Foucault'stexts, this phallogocentric field is almost everywhere.Conceptual thinking, which I am now framing as the hallmark of this phallic desire and pleasurethat dominates western language,haunts Foucault'stexts. Conceptual thinking is both that which he strugglesto elude, to evade and thus, to disrupt,and that which animateshis texts with fear-the fearof having alreadyfallen back into it, of having never emergedout of it; the fear of purebeginnings;the fearof Hegel, standingat the end of every text, "motionless, waiting for us" (Foucault 1972, 235). To locate it specifically,I turn to one of Foucault'saccounts of the historical emergence of this conceptual thinking: the break between Hesiod and Plato. Echoing FriedrichNietzsche, Foucaultasksabout "whathas been, what still is, throughoutourdiscourse,this will to truthwhich has survivedthroughout so many centuries of our history"(1972, 218). He then portraysthe historical power struggleand division that producedour unquestionablewill to of knowledge and its investment in the apparatuses concepts and categories. "Withthe sixth centuryGreekpoets, truediscourse-in the meaningfulsenseinspiring respect and terror,to which all were obliged to submit, because it held sway over all and was pronouncedby men who spoke as of right, according to ritual, meted out justice and attributed to each his rightful share; it

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prophesied the future, not merely announcing what was going to occur, but to men contributing its actualevent, carrying alongwithit and thus weaving itself into the fabric of fate" (1972, 218; emphasis added). In Hesiod's time, the truthresidedin what discoursedid, in what and how it performedits meaning. Only a centurylater,however, as Foucaultwrites,"thehighest truthno longer residedin what discoursewas, nor in what it did:it lay in what wassaid"(1972, discourseshifted from its performative 218). The criterionof a "true" poweras a ritualizedact that affectedboth participantsand onlookers to its referential form as an exacting mirror-i.e., a concept or a conceptual representationof the object of its enunciation. The referential character of language, precisely through its denunciation of power as a constitutive site of meaning, triumphsover the performativepower of discourse, and discourse itself becomes unhinged-rather permanently in the wester history of thinkingfromthe exercise of power.Or so the historyof westernphilosophersand their hiding of this phallic desire and pleasurewould have us believe. Where does Foucault go from here? How does he attempt to expose and of simultaneouslyto avoid this "repression" the phallic? How does he exceed this phallic field of desire and pleasure,of truth and its disavowalof power? This placement of discourse,as an event intrinsicallytied to power,prior to the emergence of the Platonic tradition,gives Foucaultthe tools to display how discourse(langage) precedes-not only historicallybut also ontologicallyIf discoursesare rendered meaningful through their perlanguage (langue). formativepower (which Foucaultshows throughouthis work), then concepts, which in turn give representationsof the true, metaphysical nature of "reality,"no longer hold the primaryontological status that the dominant tradition of western philosophy proclaims-or, as we see now, decrees. To the is of contrary,this "discourse metaphysics" one discourse,one articulationof a singularnetwork of power constellations that proclaimsitself as "the true":it is the exclusive discourse erected by the singularpower of the phallus. The Platonic23 disposition towardslanguage as a medium to be willfully manipulated to give the truestpossible approximationof the transcendentalnatureof things-i.e., to imitate, to mime, or to representthe Forms-is no longer the of immutable"truth" language.It is one historical emergenceof a discourse,24 of a network of strugglingpracticesand conflicting power constellations, that hides its intrinsic connection to (phallic) power and thereby proclaims itpowerfulperformance-not the truediscourse, self-through a quintessentially but simply, "the Truth."Phallic desire thereby defines the field of language and scripts the roles of pleasure within it: the singular form of conceptual knowledge becomes the consummatingact. Again following in the Nietzschean heritage, Foucault attempts to turn this discourseof the truth upon itself and to examine this desire that resides silently within it. Of course, this is no easy task:the continual maskingof this

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will, this desire, is the very condition of possibilityof the truth as proclaimed (e.g., as objective, as universal,as transcendental,as neutral-both politically and sexually-as conceptual). This is the breakfrom Hesiod. As Foucault writes, "truediscourseno longer respondsto desire or to that which exercises power in the will to truth" (Foucault 1972, 219). To seek and to speak the truth is now simply our nature-and the nature of our language (langue).As Nietzsche alreadyrealized, the questions, "Why truth?Why not rather untruth?"(Nietzsche 1972, 15) are merely the meaninglessbabble of the sophists.And the sophistshave been routed:"True discourse,liberatedby the nature of its formfrom desire and power,is incapableof recognisingthe will to truth which pervadesit; and the will to truth, having imposed itself upon us for so long, is such that the truth it seeks to reveal cannot fail to mask it" (Foucault 1972, 219). Foucault'slater spin on the logic of repressionoperates in this same relation:true discourserepressesits will and desirefor truth only to have that will and desireproliferate,endlessly,within the discourseof the true.The power of the discourseof the true, significantlynot unlike the power of the logic of repressionand perhapseven the logic of Freudianpsychoanalysis, perpetuates itself through its own denial of its will, through its own denial of its desire-its phallic, infinite, and impossibledesire. This then becomes one of the primarythemes of Foucault's Historyof Sexuality, Volume1 (1978), where he shows how the logic of "the RepressiveHypothesis" operates through a denial of its actual, material effects. In these termsof language(langue)and discourse(langage),the RepressiveHypothesis worksthrougha claim to language,to an ontological state of being that defines absolutely and transcendentallythe normal state of a human's(interestingly neutered) sexuality. It gains its power through its silent and hidden inscription of the heterosexual, conjugal, procreativecouple as the naturalnorm of human sexuality-an inscription that it must not make explicit and cannot riskexposing if it is to representit as, simply,the Truth.Mirroring mechathe nisms of the discourseof the True,the RepressiveHypothesiscan only gain its power through its consistent denial and disavowalof any such power:it is not a historicalor political discourse,it is speakingthe truenatureof human sexuality; it is not a powerfuldiscourse,it is language;the desire that drives it is not specificallyand exclusively phallic desire, it is human desire. Most of all, it is not a performativediscoursethat producessexual subjects,it is a transparent representationof the Truthof human sexuality. The dispersedand multiple effects of Foucault'swork in all three volumes of TheHistoryof Sexuality (1978) thus performthe discursivity-e.g., the powers, struggles,incoherencies, multiplicities of meanings-that both surrounds and groundsthis alleged univocity. That is, the effects of Foucault'stexts renderthis self-proclaimed absolutelogic-this langue-one discourse, langage, one the complex matrix of multiple discourseson sexuality proliferating among

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throughout the last two centuries. Placing the RepressiveHypothesis "back within a general economy of discourseson sex in modem societies since the seventeenth century"(1978, 11), Foucault shows how these discourses,particularlyas multiple and fragmentedpractices,exceed the restrictedexplanaof torylens of repression/liberation: exceed the phallicdemarcations desire they and pleasure. For example, in The Historyof Sexuality,Volume1, the medicalizationof the body enacted "circular incitements ... [and]perpetualspirals of power and pleasure"(1978, 45) that both thwart and outstrip the strict logic of repression.Or, another example from the same volume, the incitement of young boys to speak of sex scientifically invokes an erotics of epistemology that, again, exceeds the binary logic of repression. Reading the RepressiveHypothesis as the representationof true sexuality,and thus as the figureof the Concept here, we can see that Foucaultis not giving us a conceptual analysis. To the contrary,Foucaultperformshis genealogical style in these texts. He circulatesthrough the discursivefields that structuredthe attitudes, expectations, styles, and concerns of a limited epoch. He enters into the practices that both constitute and are constituted by those discursivefields, exploring the styles of problematizationenacted arounda specific area of experiencee.g., around aphrodisiafor the ancient Greeks or around sexuality for the modems. He then localizeshis focus yet furtherby locating the kind of subject that is both submitted to and producedby these specific practices, attitudes, and discourses-e.g., in The Use of Pleasure (1990), the subjectposition of the constellationquite differentfromthat which Greekhusbandenacts a discursive the Greekboy or Greekwife inhabit.Havingexcavatedthese complex layerings of discursiveconstellations (and all of the strugglesand powers that constitute these), Foucaultdoes not then analyzethese differencesthrough a conceptual lens. That is, he does not place some univocal concept of desireupon all of these practices,attitudes,discourses,and subjectsso that he can explain or representthem as they truly are. For example, in volumes 2 (1990) and 3 (1988), Foucaultsuspendsboth the concept of the desiringsubjectthat dominates our contemporary discourses on sexuality and the meta-concept of continuity that would allow a Hegelian reinscription of this contemporary concept of the desiring subject in the language (langue) of ancient Greeks. Rather, having performeda genealogical excavation and thereby immersing his readersinside those powers,struggles,incoherencies, and multiplicities of meanings, Foucaultoften, although far from simply,concludes his texts.25 Thus, Foucault'stexts do not play on a conceptual field. Rather,they frame the move to conceptualize as an exemplary indicator of the struggleswithin and among discourses.Particularlyfollowing upon the victory of the Socratic-Platonicdiscourse(per my earlierreadingof Hesiod and Plato and per The Use of Pleasure[Foucault 1990]) and the emergence of representationin

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the Classicalepisteme (per The Orderof Things[1970] and The Historyof SexuVolume1 [1978]), concepts become the quintessentialmarkerof a victoality, rious discourse. Foucault thus shows-through an enactment of the power that suppresses these forgottendiscursivestruggles-how these victoriousdiscourses produce the concepts through which we then read these various epochs-e.g., we read the modem subject through the concept of sexuality,the very concept that the RepressiveHypothesisproduces.Justas Foucaultshows us in his early reading of Mendel in "Discourseon Language,"(1972) the emergence of a new concept marksthe site of strugglebetween competing discourses.26 Thus, Foucault'stexts move concepts back into the discursive out of which they emerged,re-readingthem as the effects of victoristruggles ous-phallic--desires and powers,not as priorto or outside of such tumult. The erection of concepts as the consummatingact of philosophymarksthe victory of the phallic conquest. Over and over in Foucault'stexts, however, the languageof concepts is exposed as a particulartype of performativediscourse that is distinguishedby its claim to precede all other discourses-both historically and ontologically-as their condition of possibility.The concept performsthe quintessentiallyphallic claim to the pure origin. Yet, while the phallus silences all other desiresand pleasures,conceptualizingthem as "nonphallic" and thus meaningless (both epistemologically and culturally), Foucault'stexts disruptand exceed this phallogocentricstyle of conceptualreading -casting us onto the infinitelycomplex and open-endedhorizonsof discourses, and pleasures,that exceed the dominance of the phallus.
FLUIDSTYLES, MESSYBODIES: IRIGARAY'S EXCESSES

also Irigaray strugglesto play differentlyon this field of phallic pleasureand desire.Displacingthe stakesof winning or losing, she most often disruptssuch judgmentsin the excess of her pleasure.But what of the phallic power structure?Does it move or shake or tremblewith the crossingsof her plays?Is there any tremor,any quaking,any awakeningof a yearningto play otherwise,elsewhere?It seems as though to analyze,or to conceptualize, the movements of texts would be to reinscribethe phallic field, to fall back onto the Irigaray's roles.She disrupts eludes and mappinggridof singular positionsanddemarcated this kind of reading, implicitly and explicitly, acrossher texts. In "The Three Genres,"Irigaray explicitly states that the style she is creatand calling for "cannot be reduced to a grid that can be transposedor ing imposed elsewhere. A style resists coding, summarizing, encrypting, pigeonmachines. It cannot be reduced to opposiholing in differentlyprogrammed tions sensible/intelligible, poetic/conceptual ... or the masculine/feminine, as presentedto us by all these dichotomies.... It may permit them,... but it relation to escapesthem" (Irigaray1991, 148). Thus, the question of Irigaray's

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this phallic field of pleasureand desire cannot be mappedsimply through dichotomousoptions:complicitous/resistant, inside/outside, reinscribing/destroySuch concepts beg her questions, reducingher ing, and caressing/castrating. we irreduciblestyle to components it never owned. In reading Irigaray, must become attuned to the performances-and they are always multiple performances of multiple voices within multiple layers-of her texts. As she tells us in variousvoices, "weneed to proceed in such a way that linear readingis no longer possible"(1985c, 80), to "overthrow syntax by suspendingits eternally of teleological order"(1985b, 142), to performour own retraversals her retraversals of the western tradition. We need to proceed in a way that does not assume conceptual knowledge as the foregone consummatingact of our desire, even if eternally deferred. Given these precautions, we can still follow Irigaray's description of her workas falling generallyinto two types of texts (1991, 142). On the one hand, she gives us many accounts of her field work in linguistics, wherein she maps the differencesbetween women's and men's discoursesalong such registersas subjectpositions, passive/activevoices, and concrete/abstractframingsof the world; this is what she refers to as the necessity of a formal analysis of the structureof discourse(1991, 142). On the other hand, she immersesherself in variousdialogueswith the western philosophical-and psychoanalytic-tradition in her attemptsto deconstruct,to undermine,and, ultimately,to mimic the foundational discourse of metaphysics;here she begins to articulate the sexuate style of discourse that resists formalization-the style that has gone conspicuously unnoticed in the history of the western tradition. We could work aboutlanguage read this division as indicating a split between Irigaray's these at a distance fromone another might and her workin language.Keeping then allow the former work, her work in linguistics as the work about language, to be read as sliding back into a traditionalconceptual analysisof the workingsof grammarand syntax that relies on a kind of transcendentaldisfromwhich to objectify and categorizethese structures. course ("philosophy") The split between her work aboutlanguage and her work in language would work. work and performative then fall into the dualistic frame of conceptual Such a framemight subsequentlybe readas betrayinga persistentreliance on conceptual thinking, despite her deconstructive mimicries of the tradition. To resist this reading, therefore, we must work to show how each of these styles are, as Carolyn Burkesuggests,"partof her overall program... to undo 'the cultural injustices perpetratedby language'[and bring about] sexual liberation ... throughradicalshifts and changes in language"(Burke,Schor, and Whitford 1994, 257). Irigarayexplicitly deflects the possibility that she is proposing new concepts about woman or about woman's language. In the interviews collected in under the name "Questions" ThisSex WhichIs Not One, she says,"Toclaim

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that the feminine can be expressedin the formof a concept is to allow oneself to be caught up again in a system of 'masculine' representations,in which women are trappedin a systemof meaning which serves the auto-affectionof the masculinesubject"(1985c, 122-23). The concept, as we have seen, is one of the strongholds of phallogocentric thinking. It is that exemplaryphallic structurethat allows strict definition, clear demarcation,and precise territorial markers.In Irigaray's re-signifyingof the tradition'sconcepts, therefore, she is working not to construct new concepts but to dismantle this stronghold, this fortress,internally.As MargaretWhitford explains, "[s]heis pointing to the way in which concepts can themselves be used as part of a defence system, in which case countering them with other concepts merely colludes, it does not dismantle the defence"(Whitford 1991, 37). In analyzingthe formal structures men'sand women'sdiscourses, of is therefore,Irigaray not claima conceptual-or universal27-account of the linguistic structures male of ing and female language (langue);rather,she is performingyet another exposure of the sexual difference that is otherwise ignored, silenced, avoided in the phallic resistance to the sexualizedcharacterof discourse(langage). For example, Irigaray focuses on the function of the neuter in French and the waysthat it signifiesan inert, transcendentalnature(see "TheThree Genres"[1991] and "Women'sDiscourseand Men'sDiscourse"[1993b]). Through Irigaray's readingof the everydayphrasessuch as il pleut, il neige,il vent, and il we become sensitized to the animate and forceful characterof such a tonne, nature. It is not an abstraction:it is a physicalforce that moves and blows and makes loud noises. This force touches us. Nature is not a neutral being transcendent to us: it is not a concept. Nature engages us bodily. Why then not articulateour engagements in a languagethat speaksour bodily,subjectivesexual-markings? What bodily markis this neutralityhiding?Who produced it? Again, the phallus veils its markingsin the effort to perpetuateits power: "Thisorderof laws claims to be neutral, but it bearsthe marksof he who produces them" (1991, 14). workon the linguisticstructures contemporary of Irigaray's spokendiscourses thus uncovers the subtle workingsof the phallus in and on language.Particularly in her numerousanalysesof the sexed valuations of nouns (e.g., le soleil and la lune;un chateau unemaison; the morecomplicatedle moissonneur and and and the impossibilityof la moissonneuse anything other than the harvesting as she machine28), showshow such gendereddifferenceseffect a speakingsubject's locating of her/himself in relation to objects, to verbs, to others, and to the world. These are but surfaceindicatorsof the ways in which the syntactical laws of our discourses,while perhaps appearinginnocuous in their alleged neutrality,effectively foreclose the possibility of a sexed language,the possiWithout such workat the level bility of a feminine or trulymasculinevoice.29 of utterances (enonciation) and statements (enonces), Irigarayinsists that the

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cultural order of discoursewill go unchanged. Without her work about language,her workin languageand the styles that she develops there cannot gain a solid foothold in the culturalorder. Turningthen to her style of deconstructivemimicry,we can begin to sense her struggleto play differentlyon the dominating field of phallic desire and pleasure. In this strategy,Irigarayoften locates the voice/place of the femito nine as an "elsewhere" the phallogocentric structure.She articulatesthis as "elsewhere" throughthe eroticsof the feminine morphology, we see in "This Sex Which Is Not One" (1985c), where woman'spleasureoutstripsthe clasIn sic phallocentric representationof sexuality:her pleasureis "everywhere." as being "everywhere," Irigaray develops furtherin An Ethicsof SexualDifferreence (1993a), it is nowhere: it cannot be located; it has no place. Irigaray the feminine from the classic representationas a negative space that signifies is lacking (the phallus) into that which exceeds the graspof the phallus and does resiststhe epistemologiesof representation. However,this re-signification of the feminine is groundedin not occur in a vacuum. Irigaray's re-signifying the original phallic demarcation of the feminine as the condition of possibility of its own foundational, metaphysical discourse-of phallic language (1985b), referringto the account(langue).She locates this space in Speculum that Freudevades, as the unpaid loan-or theft-of the feminine that ability grounds the phallic economy of metaphysics. Merging these two positions, to Irigarayarticulatesthe feminine as "elsewhere" the phallic field, while sithe feminine within the phallogocentric economy multaneouslyreinscribing as the suppressed figurethat groundsthe repressivestructureof the phallusthat grounds the possibility of metaphysical language. The feminine is i.e., both the necessary foundation and an elusive elsewhere. How can Irigaray, how can we, navigate this double bind? In the note that Irigaray (1985b) regardingher omisappendsto Speculum and quotation marks,Irigaray sion of formalnotes writes, "[I]nrelation to the fulfillsa twofold function-as the mute outworkingof theory, the/a woman side that sustains all systematicity;as a maternal and still silent ground that nourishes all foundations"(1985b, 365). In her deconstructive mimicryand subsequentre-signifyingof these figures,the "muteoutside"metamorphoses into the erotics of the feminine morphologythat areeverywhereand nowhere, exceeding the graspof the phallus and troublingall systematicityas it begins to speak;the "maternaland still silent ground,"however, persistsin Irigaray's strong sense that she-woman-cannot simply fly off into these utopias of endless pleasuresand escape the phallic field. If, as Irigaray exposes, the feminine functions as the necessarycondition of possibilityfor the phallic field of pleasureand desire, and if this field has reducedand continues to reduce her to silence, to the flattened mirror,to "the horrorof having nothing to see" (1985c, 26), then the feminine must work back through the machinations of these reductions if she is to recuperateher feminine voice; she must "cross

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back throughthe mirrorthat subtendsall speculation"(1985c, 77). The feminine is both this suppressed,silenced foundation and an elusive elsewhere that exceeds all grasp,all begreifen, concepts. If she is to speak,if she is even all to feel her own excessivepleasure,the feminine mustelude this phallogocentric field that she simultaneouslygrounds. But how? Grounding that which silences her, how can she speak the feminine through a place or voice that is not alwaysalreadya derivative of the phallogocentricstructure,of the phallic language (langue)?How can she speak the feminine that no longer caresses the phallus without performingsome kind of castration? Let us engage Irigaray's style further:who is it that fearscastration? In the closed, speculareconomy of the Same that Irigaray exposes as operand psychoanalyticdiscoursein the western ating throughoutphilosophical tradition, there is only one kind of desiringsubject-the phallic. The power to constitute meaning resides, accordingly,in this phallic subject, and the form of that meaning reflects the phallic emphasis on both singularityand visibility. As we have alreadydeveloped throughHegel and Lacan, this phallic power is the power to distinguish,to delineate, to demarcate,to centralize, and to control the "proper" names of objects and values in the world;it is the to reduce all non-phallic structuresto controlled negations that conpower tinually support-i.e., mirror-the dominance of the phallic economy; it is the power to conceptualize. This singularpower resides in the phallic structure of pleasureand its naturalizingforce as the primary-i.e., as the singularlylegitimate and legitimizing-form of desire.No other desireshave found their voice: the closed, spectral economy relegates them to the space of the mirror.Denying its dependence upon such a mirror,phallic desire narcissistically reflectsonly itself. Within Irigaray's articulatingof the feminine morphology,which "hasyet to be deployed"(1991, 151), desireand pleasureplay differently-but not oppositionally.Again, as CarolynBurkedescribesIrigaray's writings,"it [is]clear that Irigaray's linguistic interventions seek to unsettle the conceptual modes in which languageimaginesthe shapeof actions"(Burke,Schor, and Whitford of 1994, 253, emphasisadded). Fromthe performances female auto-eroticism in the early"ThisSex Which IsNot One" (Irigaray 1985c) to the reconfiguring of space through the fluids and mucous of the interval that is not crossed in An Ethicsof SexualDifference (1993a), feminine morphologyblursany boundariesof strict insides and outsides.It folds back onto itself, touches itself, spills both out of and into itself; there is nothing to see, but everything to feel, to touch. It is from this non-place that is everywherethat Irigaraymimics the field of phallic pleasure and desire, the field of metaphysicsthat she is supposed to reflect silently. In her workin language,Irigaray recuperatesthe body,the materialitythat

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sustains metaphysicallanguageonly to be erasedby it, and thereby re-aligns the phallic field of perception to heed that which it cannot contain, that which it cannot see, that which it cannot represent.She mimics the hysterifeminine. In "The 'Mechanics'of Fluids," cal body of the phallically-marked she writes, "it is alreadygetting around . . . that women diffuse themselves of accordingto modulationsscarcelycompatible with the framework the ruling symbolics"(1985c, 106) (wherein "ateleology of reabsorptionof fluid in a solidifiedform"[1985c, 110] rules). Irigaray evokes, provokes,and wallows in those excessive pleasuresand longings that Freudlabeledhysterical.Her texts laugh,hysterically,with these pleasures.They are diffuse,without form,without place, exceeding all boundariesof morphologyand epistemology.We cannot demarcatethem. Nor can we insist that these fluidexcesses are contained exclusively in the feminine morphology.As Groszhas developed, non-phallocentric male morphologywould be attuned not to the consummationof its solid, penile erection, but to the intensities and flows of its unbounded desires.30 Irigaraythus does not recuperateexclusively the feminine body, in a move that would mirrorthe phallic claims to singularity,and thereby pose a threat to the singularpower of the phallus:she does not castrate the phallus. Rather,she recuperatesthe body-both the unmarkedmale body and the markedfemale body-as it exceeds the strict demarcationsof phallocentric concepts.31 Thus, it is not through castration that Irigarayspeaks the feminine, but throughthe excess and sheer messinessof feminine morphologyand its opening onto pleasuresthat cannot be reducedto the singularityof phallic desire. De-centering the phallic desire for an erect concept and a singular,dominating form of meaning, she speaks from elsewhere-her language neither caressesnor castratesthe phallus.Her languageweavesin and throughand around the phallus in a dance that may dazzle,but can never be captured,can never be staged:it disregards-literallydisobeysthe command,"Regarde!"-thephalis and Lacan'schagrin, Irigaray not performingthe lus. Much to both Freud's struggleeither to be or to havethe phallus:she is speakingbeyondthe phallus.
OF DISCOURSES PLEASURE DIFFERENT THE PHALLUS: EXPOSING

We have two readingsof the origin of philosophy-of conceptual thinking-as the foundational language of western thinking. In Foucault'stexts, this discourse of the True par excellence is based upon certain historical and political constellations of power.32 Echoing themes central to Irigaray's work, Foucaultmuses, "I wonder whether a certain number of philosophical themes have not come to conform to this activity of limitation and exclusion and perhapseven to reinforce it" (1972, 227). For Foucault, the discourseof the Truemasksthe will to truth that pervadesit in ways not unlike the ways

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in which, for Irigaray,the possibility of metaphysical language relies on a fundamentalsuppressionof the feminine. In both thinkers, we find a style of reading that exposes an unspoken erasureas the condition of possibility of this phallic field of discourse,desire, and pleasure.Each has left the phallus exposed, naked, unsheathed, shorn of its omnipotence without its necessary veiling. Thus, both exceed the phallus-differently, but not oppositionally.In exceeding the phallus, they no longer fit the gridof oppositionaldifferenceor its concepts of strict exclusion and contradiction.We can now see the overdetermination of the alleged conceptual distance between them: it is the attempt of the phallus to re-insertits dominance, to mire us yet again in the essentialFrom ist/constructionistdichotomies that these two thinkersoften represent.33 this place beyond the phallus, a place that is both nowhere and everywhere, both sharedand unshareable,both Foucaultand Irigaray play in fieldsof pleasure that are not reducible to the economy of lack that structuresthe phallic field of desire. Both play in fields of discursivelyperformativepleasures,pleasures that are not structuredby language'sneed to possess the phallus, pleasuresthat are not threatened by the fear of castration. If we approachthe texts of Foucaultand Irigaray inhabiting similardisas cursive fields, we can then begin to put their differenceswithin those fields into constructive-rather than destructive-play with one another.Entering these different discursivefields, we can begin to explore the voices that we and might find in engagingthe texts of Irigaray Foucault.How might we radiOr cally reconfigurethe processesthat we label thinking?Or desiring? writing or readingor teaching? The possible avenues, unsurprisingly, exceed the parameters this paper.I of thus offeronly a brieffocus on questions of embodiment to indicate the kinds of transformations that such an engaging might effect.34 While Irigaray a recuperates sexuatemorphologythroughexposingthe ways that phallic power structuresour primarysyntax, Foucault never labels the central mechanismsof power throughthe lens of sexual difference.If we were to put sexual difference-not gender35-into play within the Foucauldianapproach to experience, we might begin to articulate materiality beyond the problematicpassivity that circulates through many of Foucault'stexts. That sense of sexual difference, is, if we engagedFoucault'stexts with an Irigarayan the play of a sexed body would bringa strongersense of the role of materiality into Foucault'svariousaccounts of discursiveinscriptionson the-seemingly neutral and passive-body.36 Simultaneously,bringing Foucault'srich sense of historical discourse,genealogical change, and discursivepower into contact with Irigaray's analysis of the phallogocentriceconomy of the Same might furtherhistoricizeIrigaray's sense of sexualdifference.That is, it might bringIrigaray's insistence on sexual

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differenceas the primaryaxis of subjectivityinto a historicalfield where other differencesaffecthow sexual differencegets articulated.Forexample, the roles of racism,of economics, of nationality, of ethnicity, of varioushistorical discoursesmight begin, througha Foucauldianinterpolation,to articulatesexual differenceas it changes acrossdifferentsymbolicregisters.In so doing, it might furtherdispel the insidious possibility of Irigaray's reinscribingthe economy of the Same in her articulationsof sexual difference. femidebateswithin poststructuralist Castingthis in termsof contemporary nism, bringing Foucault and Irigaraytogether dismantles, yet again, the essentialist/constructionistframe.37 Subsequently,this hybrid of Foucault and might begin to unleash some styles of thinking that are not bound to Irigaray either essentialistor social constructionistmodelsof subjectivity.Forexample, in mergingIrigaray's recuperationof the sexuate body, of materialityas sexed morphology,with Foucault'sdiagnoses of the dynamics of power, we might begin to articulatebodies that are simultaneouslymateriallyand socially constructedwithout placing those vectors into a suspiciouslycompetitive ontoThat is, we might begin to articulatebodies that aredifferent logical hierarchy. both materially(e.g., as sexed, as raced) and historically (e.g., as gendered,as classed,as ethnic, as national, as temporal):we might begin to articulatethese differencessimultaneously,ratherthan oppositionally. we In engaging Foucault and Irigaray, may thus learn how to articulate bodies that are both historicizedand sexed in their subjectivedifferences.We may leam how to articulatedifferencesacrosstheir multiplicities of historical and sexed embodiments, exceeding the reign of phallic, oppositional difference. Foucaultand Irigaray play within similardiscursivefields;however,they accentuatedifferentdynamicswithin these matrices.Learningto invoke, rather than to silence, these differencesmay give us richer tools with which to approach and articulatethe differenceswithin our different lives.

NOTES Portions of this paper were presented at the 1997 meeting of The International Association of Philosophy and Literatureand the 1997 meeting of The Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.I am gratefulto participants,particularly to Michael Schwartz,for thoughtful responses and suggestions. I also want to thank Helene Meyersfor insightfuland provocativediscussionsof this paperat variousstages. writes:"Thus,for example, woman's 1. In "ThisSex Which Is Not One," Irigaray autoeroticism is very different from man's. In order to touch himself, man needs an instrument:his hand, a woman'sbody, language ... " (1985c, 24). 2. For the fruitfulcoining of "engaging"as a new style of reading, see Margaret Whitford (1991, 25). 3. In most of the recent literature focusing on Irigaray,Foucault either is included in an introductorymention of the problematically phallogocentricturnof many

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towardsquestions of sexuality and the body or, more often, is (male) poststructuralists omitted altogether from relevant themes. A samplingof recent literatureon Irigaray that simply omits Foucault includes the majorpublications of the past few years:see Tina Chanter (1995); Carolyn Burke,Naomi Schor, and Whitford (1994); Whitford (1991). Interestingly,Whitford notes that she had only found one article, "Ethicsof Sexual Difference:The Case of Foucaultand Irigaray" (see Rosi Braidotti 1994), exthese two thinkers, and she recognizesthis work as "an area which plicitly addressing would merit further exploration" (1991, 196, n.24). While Braidotti'sessay remains the singularwork on Irigarayand Foucault, it remains within the combative framework of pitting one against the other, rather than engaging their differences;this is surprising,given Braidotti'sfruitful development of the model of "engaging"in her work on Irigarayand Gilles Deleuze. Conversely, those positions working out of a Foucauldianframeworkoften dismiss Irigarayas essentialist, universalist, or naively biologistic. Perhapsthe foremost Foucauldian feminist is Judith Butler, who clearly levels this critique of Irigarayin GenderTrouble(Butler 1990), but then continues a more muted form of it in Bodies thatMatter(1993), where she accuses Irigarayof universalist sweeps that mirrorthe readingstyle (1993, 45). phallogocentric totalization and of a "penetrative" 4. Of course, as Foucaultarguesin "Discourseon Language" (1972, 220-22), the literatureoften comes to constitute the meaning of "prideployment of "secondary" mary"texts. With appropriateirony,I am not claiming a "pure" readingof any "original" text; rather,I am hoping to re-deploy these texts in differentdirections. 5. I am explicitly attempting to avoid the complex machine of Hegelian interpretation regardingHegel's final or overarching projects. Regardlessof his aim, the Concept remains a central figure in Hegel's system and in the thinking that constitutes it. 6. A.V. Miller translatesHegel'sBegriff Notion. I am substitutingConcept for as Miller'sNotion, as I think it bringsthe spiritof Hegel'stext more directly into contact with both the tradition at which it is aimed and the deployment that has followed it. The Concept is a technical term for Hegel. I have capitalizedit when referringto his text. When not capitalized,I am referringto the more common use of the term. 7. In the strikingresemblanceto the Oedipal child'sorigin, perhapsthe Hegelian dialectic is yet another articulationof logics that framesexual differenceas a simultaneously contradictoryand complementaryopposite. 8. For an example of such a reading of the Phenomenology, Joseph C. Flay see (1984, especially 241-48). 9. As Quentin Lauerputs it, the "concept is not a means employed in order to grasp;it is the very activity of graspingthe object" (1976, 26). 10. For a compelling but problematic argumentthat both embodiment and language are central to Hegel's project, see John Russon (1993). While Russon certainly gives a persuasiveaccount of this thesis, he remains true to his Hegelian roots in his failure to recognize the lack of a sexedbody not only in Hegel's texts, but also in his own. The problemswith this alleged neutering of embodiment are then only exacerbated by Russon'spersistent use of the feminine pronoun, her,to refernot only to his reader,but also to "the Hegelian reader"and to the Hegelian Master and Slave. Finally, this omission of sexual difference is particularlyegregious given that Russon groundshis thesis in a discussionof Antigone and Creon, both of whom, accordingto

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Russon, embody "human bodies," not female and male bodies. For an earlier reading-which Russon fails to note-of Antigone,of the Master/Slavedialectic, and of the processesof bodily habituation (also Russon'stheme) that offersboth a readingof embodiment as central to Hegel and a critique of Hegel through the play of sexual difference, see Rosalyn Diprose (1991). Diprose is, interestingly,quite careful to explain her choice of the pronoun, his, at variousjunctures in her essay. 11. ElizabethGrosz suggeststhat, even if Ferdinandde Saussure's became a son psychoanalystunder Freud, Saussure'slectures on semiology and general linguistics (Saussure1959), which took place from 1906-1911 and werenot publisheduntil 1916, still post date Freud'sdevelopment of his account of the unconscious in 1900 (Freud 1970). She agreeswith Lacan that "Saussurian semiology is at best a post hoc knowledge that Freuddid not use at the time of his formulations"(Grosz 1990, 93). in 12. See particularly "Function Fieldof Speech and Language," Lacan(1977). and 13. It is crucial to distinguish this "other"from the "Other"that is the true horizon of desire. Again, Grosz'sexplanation is quite helpful: "desireis in principle insatiable. It is alwaysan effect of the Other, an 'other'with whom it cannot engage, in so far as the Other is not a person but a place, the locus of law, language, and the symbolic" (1990, 67). In so far as desire remainsfastened to the other-i.e., to the other person-as I am framingit here, desirewill never be sated and the other will alwaysbe expendable in the endless quest for the Other. For a compelling discussion of this dynamic as structuringcolonial discourses,see "InteriorColonies: FrantzFanon and the Politics of Identification,"in Diana Fuss (1995). 14. For a concise discussion of the complex interplays among desire, demand, and need, see Grosz(1990, 59-67). Fora discussionof how desire,demand,and need operate fundamentallyon a phallocentric model of subjectivity,see R. Lee Kress (1996, 7-9). 15. Lacan writes of this impossibility:"In any case, man cannot aim at being whole, while ever the play of displacement and condensation to which he is doomed in the exercise of his functions markshis relation as a subject to the signifier"(Lacan 1977, 287). 16. For a discussion of how this distinction between "having"or "being"the phallus characterizessexual difference for Lacan, see Grosz (1990, 116-22 and 13137). Lacan himself also describesthis central function of the phallus in determining sexual difference: "But one may, simply by reference to the function of the phallus, indicate the structuresthat will govern the relationsbetween the sexes. Let us say that these relationswill turn arounda 'to be' and 'to have,' which, by referringto a signifier, the phallus, have the opposed effect, on the one hand, of giving reality to the subject in this signifier,and, on the other, of derealizingthe relations to be signified"(Lacan 1977, 289). Parveen Adams (1992) argues that both of these positions represent a defense against castration that exists at the level of identification, at the level of the imaginary,and thus, within the phallic order.Her suggestion that then all norms or identifications-regardless of their "feminist"content-are part of the phallic order resonates with the ways in which I am suggesting that both Irigarayand Foucault, resisting the move to conceptualize norms, exceed the phallus. Butler (1993) also argues that disrupting the boundary between "being"and "having"the phallus, as performedby her "lesbian phallus,"effectively displaces the hegemonic symbolic of heterosexist sexual difference.

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17. Jacqueline Rose's translation brings this criterion of the phallus into more direct contact with the criterion of the Hegelian Concept. She writes, "[o]ne might say that this signifieris chosen as what stands out as most easily seized upon" (Lacan 1982, 82), thus characterizingthe phallus as privilegedbecause it can be conceptualized-it is begreiflich. 18. The question of the connection and simultaneous disconnection between the Lacanian phallus and penis is a central hinge for feminist appropriations and/or disavowals of Lacan. Appropriately,it has been the subject of much critical discussion. (See also note 20 below.) For a clear discussion of Lacan's(failed) attempts to disentangle the phallusfrom the penis and its relation to questionsof essentialismand constructionism, see Fuss (1989, 7-10 and 65-66). While Fuss finally suggests that Lacan'sphallus continually risks essentialism in its conjuring of images of the penis, Charles Bemheimer argues provocatively that the penile referent in the Lacanian phallus could in fact disavow any such essentialism when read through the variety of shapes, sizes, and colors of living penises-including both the flaccid and the erect (1992). Bemheimer's essay operates from a point of departuresimilar to Grosz'sattempts to articulate a non-phallocentric male morphology(Grosz 1989), which I develop later in the essay. 19. Of course, the veiling and unveiling of the phallus assumemythical proportions, both in the ancient rituals that Lacan refersto (1977, 287) and in the latent homoeroticism of phallocentric cultures that Irigarayexposes; but this can be read easily enough through the Hegelian fear and suspicion of immediacy.Thus, just as the Concept requirescareful dialectical mediation before arrivingat its true, self-determining form, so too must the phallus undergoconstant mediation-through language and its transformationof an object into a signifier, through property,through the exchange of women-before arrivingat its true form. See KajaSilverman (1992, 8589) for an insightful discussion of this play of the veil in Lacan'stext through its historical referencesto the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteriesin Pompeii. 20. For both a compelling argumentfor this position and a thorough rebuttalof secondarysourcescontending otherwise, see Silverman (1992). While Silvermanrecognizes that recent theory has benefited greatlyfrom Lacan'sdistinction between the penis and the phallus (a point that I will develop later in the essay), we must not read this distinction as a sharp separation. Attention to this logic of representationthat still binds the phallus to the penis may,as she argues,sufficientlycall into question its privilege and expose-unveil-the play of sexual difference in Lacan'stexts. In "The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" (Butler 1993), Judith Butler develops the phallus as both symbolizing the penis and disavowing this status as an imaginaryeffect. For Butler,this disjunction allows for the possibilitiesof transferring the phallus to other body parts,thus creating the possibilityof the lesbian phallus.For my purposeshere, the phallus'ssimultaneousconnection to and disconnection from the penis-a knot that is ontologically impossible to unravel-performs the double bind that conditions both Irigaray's Foucault'sattemptsto exceed the phallic field and of the Concept. 21. See Grosz (1990, 123-25) for a detailed version of this argument. 22. Lacan seems to recognize this as a remnant of Freud'stexts that, despite his implicit critique, he does not fully dismantle. He concludes "The Signification of the Phallus"with the following (apparentlylaudatory)remarkon Freud'sintuition: "he

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advances the view that there is only one libido, his text showing that he conceives it as masculine in nature"(Lacan 1977, 291). While this observationwould seemingly open the door to a feminist critique of the Freudianmetapsychology,Lacan does not walk through that threshold. Thus, I disagreewith Kress's conclusion (1996) that Lacan offers a critique of the phallus as signifier,particularlyas such a claim fails to identify the ways in which the phallus structuresthe field of conceptualization. 23. I would arguethat this is true of the traditionfollowing Plato, ratherthan the texts of Plato, where an understandingof the power of language and of discourse is always present, even if usually cast pejoratively as the power of rhetoric to confuse and distort the truth. 24. It emerges through the specific struggle of various forces, which Foucault develops as the properfield of critical genealogy in "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" (Foucault 1977, 148-57). 25. This apparent inconclusiveness of Foucault'soften becomes the target of charges of moral bankruptcy,relativism, or even nihilism. Such critiques, however, continue to operate on the phallic field of concepts-the field that Foucault'stexts exceed and thus disrupt. 26. Thus, insofar as "discourse" often gets deployed as a Foucauldianconcept, Foucault'stexts are read as inherently phallogocentric. I hope to have shown that fail such appropriations to read discursivitythrough the performativityof Foucault's texts. Again, regardingthe machine of Foucault interpretation, I am hoping not to restore the "originary" texts, but to re-deploy his texts in meaning of his "primary" directions that exceed the phallic graspof conceptual analyses. 27. Many American social scientists' critiques regarding Irigaray'srather lax "method"involved in her samplings miss the point that she is not after a universal comment on some linguistic structure.She states explicitly that she is "not going to define an ideal model of language(langue)" does not "wishto establish a fixed and and immutableschema for the production of discourse"(1991, 143). 28. These examples are taken from "Women'sDiscourseand Men'sDiscourse"in Irigaray(1993b). See also several of the essays in Irigaray(1985a). 29. Fromthis perspective,the task of uncovering the sexed characterof discourse is all the more difficult in non-Romantic languages, where the gendering of nouns does not exist. In response to criticisms that her work applies only to French or Romantic languages,Irigaray begun to do fieldworkin non-Romantic languages.See has ElizabethHirsh and Gary Olson (1995) for a samplingof this work. 30. For a compelling discussion of such possibilities in the reconfiguringtowards fluid desires, see chapters 7 and 8 in Grosz (1989). 31. She recuperatesnot only the feminine body or the non-phallocentric masculine body, but also the body itself, which the specular economy has erased. Just as Lacan'sphallus is not reducibleto the penis, so too Irigaray's recuperatingof the body is not reducible exclusively to the female morphology.If the phallus is not reducible to the penis, then the non-phallic is not contained strictlywithin the non-penile, and reconfiguringof morphologyis not contained strictly within the non-penile Irigaray's also exceeds such logics of containment. body. In exceeding phallocentrism, Irigaray 32. For the most explicit discussion of the emergence of the specific SocraticPlatonic tradition, see the last chapter of Foucault (1990).

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33. The essentialist/constructionistdichotomy seems to framemany of the readings cited earlier (see note 3) that set Foucault and Irigarayagainst one another. I elaborate further below in the essay regardingthe specific readings of embodiment in each. 34. I presented a much more detailed version of the following argumentin the Both Irigarayand Foucault,"at the 1997 meeting of The Society paper,"Embodying of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. 35. As many Foucauldianfeminists have shown, nothing in Foucault'stexts precludes gender as a socio-politico-economic category of analysis. See, for example, the work of SandraBartky(1990), Susan Bordo (1993), Braidotti (1994), and Butler (1990, 1993). 36. In texts such as Discipline Punish(Foucault 1979) and The Use of Pleasure: and Volume2 of the Historyof Sexuality(1990), Foucault focuses on the socio-politicoeconomic inscriptions on bodies and, subsequently,fails to write of the reciprocal, material forces of bodies-particularly of sexed bodies. For example, in The Use of Pleasure(1990), he relies on the (gendered) social roles of the wife and husbandcitizen to account for the varying bodily pleasuresof each. He cannot, however, addresswhy or how it is that these differentbodily pleasuresare attached specificallyto female and male bodies-i.e., he cannot account for the specific power that sexed morphologiesexert in the forming of social (gender) constellations. 37. A simplifiedreadingof these sensesof embodimentagainstone anothermight invoke the essentialist/constructionistdichotomy. Such a readingwould cast Irigaray as maintaining the body as an "essential"site of sexual difference and characterize Foucault as framing the body as a discursive"construction"of social, historical, and culturalforces. As I hope to have shown, this reductionist approachmerely replicates the oppositional logic of phallogocentrismthat each of these thinkers labors, albeit from different directions, to undermine. For incisive accounts displaying the instabilities in the essentialist/constructionist dichotomy, see Butler (1993), Braidotti (1994), Chanter (1995), and Fuss (1989).

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