4 Lacanian Discourses: Feminist Contentions within the Dichotomy between Theoretical and Empirical Agents


Yanki Doruk Doganay, York University

The contemporary debates within the left academia and politics revolve around the debates of identity, emancipation, universality, and contingency. One of the roots of this debate can be found in the book Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange [1], which includes discussions between Butler, Benhabib, Cornell, and Fraser. Although many reviews and interpretations of this book exist, I approach it not as a philosophical text but as a social phenomenon. By adopting a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, I aim to show common governing principles and shared themes in the authors’ seemingly antagonistic texts. All of the four authors present a meticulous critique of the contemporary patriarchal and capitalist structures. However, I argue that these authors also reproduce certain dichotomies anchored in these structures. I argue they reproduce the Cartesian dichotomy in the guise of the dichotomy between the theoretical or political agent and the empirical agent. The dichotomy is based on the one between the theorizing subject, namely the feminist theory, and the theorized object, the oppressed subjects waiting to be included by the feminist theory. The main motor behind the debate is based on the question of which theory is more inclusionary for the subjects who wait out there. In other words, I argue that, in the text, the struggle of women is assumed to be simply there, and the only aim of the feminist theory is to include this struggle. To demonstrate my argument, I employ Lacanian understanding of four discourses and show the coexistence of the discourse of the university and the discourse of the hysteric in all of the texts. Both the discourse of the hysteric and the discourse of the university cofunction in the debate between Butler, Benhabib, Fraser, and Cornell. Within the discourse of the hysteric, I argue that feminist theory constitutes the agent of hysteric (the barred subject) either in the form of universality (Behabib and Fraser) or contingency (Butler and Cornell). The feminist theory defines women as the agents of theory and political struggle either by identifying them with contingency or with universalist attributes like autonomy. The position of truth within the hysteric’s discourse (object a), on the other hand, is occupied by feminist theories reformation of the existing structure by way of the inclusion of empirical women as such, which is supposed to exist in empirical reality. Within the discourse of the university, I assert that the agent (knowledge or signifying chain) of feminist theory is the dichotomy between the entities and their attributes. In the case of Butler and Cornell, these entities refer to subjects with different identities. In the case of Benhabib and Fraser, the entities refer to women as political subjects and their various political attributes like autonomy, agency, and emancipatory potential. The truth of the discourse is that this dichotomy is based on the one between the theorizing subject, namely the feminist theory, and the theorized object, the oppressed subjects waiting to be included by the feminist theory. I conceptualize this dichotomy as the one between women as a theoretical or political category and the empirical existence of women as such. The debate revolves around the correspondence between the former and the latter. To summarize, I argue that this debate between the four theorists aims not to revolutionize the system but instead calls for the reformation of it from the perspective of the hysteric. This reformation necessitates a correspondence between the political category of women and empirical women. This urge to reform does not overthrow the system. Instead, it contributes to the Master signifier in the manner of solidification of Cartesian cogito toward strengthening the dichotomy between the empirical women as such and the theoretical conceptualization of women as political agents.

This paper will be presented at the following session: