Equivocity vs. Formalization

Zupančič's concept of "Equivocity vs. Formalization" names a false opposition and then dissolves it: equivocity (the irreducible multi-valence of the word, championed by Barbara Cassin's reading of Lacan) and formalization/univocity (the mathemic precision championed by Alain Badiou's reading) are not competing alternatives but internally related moments of the same analytic operation. Equivocity is not the pre-formal noise that formalization must eliminate; it is the very condition under which formalization becomes possible and effective. The "right word" in analytic interpretation does not work by fixing meaning univocally — it works by targeting, with the precision of a formula, the singular impasse or contradiction around which the subject's symptom is organized. In doing so, the equivocal word functions exactly like a matheme: it captures a structural relation rather than conveying a determinate semantic content.

This reframing hinges on distinguishing two models of the sign. Codes and symbols (as used in animal communication or conventional signaling) function through established, stable correspondences — a signal univocally picks out a referent. Formalization in the Lacanian sense is something altogether different: it targets a Real impasse that cannot be directly said, and it does so by exploiting language's constitutive equivocity — the way a single signifier can simultaneously resonate across multiple associative chains (condensation). Equivocity is thus not an obstacle to precision but its very medium: the word that "hits" the symptom does so because it can mean more than one thing at once, catching the subject's contradiction in a single phrase. The formula and the equivocal word converge at the point where language touches the Real.

Within what-is-sex-alenka-zupancic, this concept appears at a methodological juncture where Zupančič adjudicates between two rival receptions of Lacan — Cassin's philological-equivocal Lacan and Badiou's formalist-mathemic Lacan — and refuses the choice. It functions as a theoretical hinge that simultaneously positions Zupančič's own project: a Lacan for whom the clinical and the formal are not separate domains. The concept is deeply anchored in the cross-referenced canonicals. It presupposes the Lacanian account of Language as constitutively equivocal and non-totalizable ("lalangue," the impossibility of metalanguage), and it extends that insight by showing that equivocity is not merely language's limitation but the enabling condition for interpretation's precision. It connects to Condensation insofar as the equivocal word's multi-valence is structurally akin to Freud's overdetermined dream-element — a single surface where multiple chains converge. The link to Contradiction is equally direct: the symptom "solves" an internal contradiction, and the equivocal formula targets that contradiction by holding its two sides simultaneously in a single signifier. The concept also bears on the Matheme: rather than the matheme being the antithesis of equivocal language, Zupančič argues that mathemic formalization works precisely because it is freed from the need to mean univocally — its letters are anchored not in semantic content but in structural position, much as an equivocal word is anchored not in one meaning but in the impasse it touches. Finally, the concept touches Jouissance and the Master Signifier: the symptom that analytic interpretation targets is a jouissance-organization, and the equivocal-formula that intervenes does so by operating as a kind of master signifier that retroactively stitches a new quilting without eliminating the Real contradiction underneath.

What Is Sex?Alenka Zupančič · 2017 (p.75)

equivocity itself can function directly as a formula…Equivocity, on the other hand, is the very inherent condition of formalization, insofar as the formalization is not to be confused with symbols and codes as they seem to function between animals.

The theoretical load of the quote rests on two moves: first, the claim that "equivocity itself can function directly as a formula" collapses the opposition between semantic openness and formal precision into identity; second, the qualification "not to be confused with symbols and codes as they seem to function between animals" specifies what formalization is not — a fixed code — thereby relocating it on the side of the Real impasse rather than the Symbolic convention. Together these two clauses redefine both terms (equivocity and formalization) by what they share rather than what separates them.