Desexualization of Ontology

Desexualization of ontology names the theoretical move — which Zupančič attributes to certain strands of post-metaphysical thought — of purging being of its inherent sexual articulation: abandoning the classical (often idealist or vitalist) framework in which ontology was organized around a combinatory of two complementary or opposing principles, "masculine" and "feminine," as co-constitutive of the real. The paradox Zupančič identifies is that this apparent liberation of ontology from a sexed architecture does not neutralize or dissolve the problem of sexual difference; rather, it is precisely the condition under which sexuality reasserts itself most forcefully. When the masculine/feminine dyad is no longer the scaffolding of being, sex ceases to be an organizing principle and erupts instead as the Real's disruptive point within being — that is, as an immanent crack, impossibility, or torsion internal to ontology itself.

This inversion is structurally homologous to the Lacanian insight that the sexual relationship does not exist: removing the fantasy of complementarity (the "two principles" that fit together) does not make sexuality disappear but instead reveals it as constitutive non-relation, as the irreducible impasse at the heart of being. Desexualization of ontology is thus not a solution to the "sexual problem" but a diagnostic occasion — the moment at which the Real of sexuality becomes legible precisely because it can no longer be managed by a pre-given symbolic framework of gendered metaphysical principles. To subtract the old sexual cosmology is not to subtract sex; it is to encounter sex in its properly disruptive, Real dimension.

The concept appears once, in what-is-sex-alenka-zupancic, and sits at the center of Zupančič's core argumentative wager: that sexuality is not a regional theme within ontology but is co-extensive with ontology's own constitutive impossibility. It is best read as a specification and radicalization of the canonical concept of the Real. Just as the Real (in its mature Lacanian formulation) is not a pre-symbolic plenum but the crack or gap immanent to the symbolic order itself, "desexualization of ontology" marks the historical-theoretical moment at which sexuality ceases to be a principle of order and becomes instead the name for that very crack. The desexualized ontology does not overcome the Real of sex; it inadvertently exposes it.

The concept also directly engages sexuation and feminine sexuality. Classical ontologies organized around masculine/feminine principles effectively symbolized — and thereby domesticated — what Lacan's formulas of sexuation insist cannot be domesticated: the non-relation, the not-all, the absence of any meta-level combinatory that would make the two sexed positions complementary. The desexualization of ontology is the philosophical recognition (however unwitting) that no such combinatory exists, which aligns with the axiomatic "there is no sexual relationship." And it resonates with the canonical concept of contradiction: far from resolving the tension, removing the sexual dyad from ontology intensifies the contradiction by making it appear as an internal rupture of being rather than an external polarity. The concept thus functions as an extension of these canonicals, giving them a specific historical and ontological address.

What Is Sex?Alenka Zupančič · 2017 (page unknown)

the desexualization of ontology (that is, ontology no longer being conceived as a combinatory of two, 'masculine' and 'feminine' principles) coincides precisely with the sexual appearing as the real/disruptive point of being

The phrase "coincides precisely" bears the full theoretical weight: it asserts not mere correlation but structural necessity — the subtraction of the masculine/feminine combinatory is the very operation that allows "the sexual" to appear as the "real/disruptive point of being," where "real" carries its full Lacanian valence as the register of impossibility and torsion immanent to the symbolic order rather than beyond it.