Sexual Non-Relation

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (32)

1. #01

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_181"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0205"></span>**sexual difference**

   Theoretical move: Sexual difference cannot be grounded in anatomy or biology but is constituted by a fundamental dissymmetry in the signifier: the phallus is the only sexual signifier with no feminine equivalent, so sexual positions (masculine/feminine) are symbolic constructions determined by one's relation to the phallus and formalised through the formulae of sexuation, with the result that no fully 'finished' sexual identity is achievable and the sexual relationship is structurally impossible.

   each side represents a radically different way in which the SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP can misfire (S20, 53–4)

2. #02

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part17.xhtml_ncx_77"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part17.xhtml_page_0096"></span>***G***

   Theoretical move: This passage from Evans's dictionary traces the theoretical development of several key Lacanian concepts—gap, gaze, genital stage, gestalt, and graph of desire—showing how Lacan progressively distinguishes his positions from Freudian ego-psychology, Sartrean phenomenology, and object-relations theory through a consistent emphasis on constitutive division, the non-relation, and the structured duplicity of desire.

   in the relation between man and woman…a gap always remains open' (S4, 374). This anticipates Lacan's later remarks on the non-existence of the SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP.

3. #03

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part06.xhtml_ncx_5"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part06.xhtml_page_0010"></span>***Preface***

   Theoretical move: This preface to an introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis establishes its methodological framework: Lacan's discourse constitutes a unique, topologically structured language whose terms are mutually defining, and the dictionary form—itself a synchronic, self-referential, metonymic system—is the appropriate vehicle for exploring it, while the preface also theorises the dangers of ignoring the diachronic evolution of Lacan's concepts.

   to refer to a Lacanian formula, if there is no point of entry, there can be no sexual relationship

4. #04

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_182"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0208"></span>**sexual relationship**

   Theoretical move: The passage systematically unpacks Lacan's formula 'there is no sexual relationship' as condensing six distinct theoretical points about sexual difference: the mediating role of language, the asymmetry of the symbolic order (one signifier, the phallus), the impossibility of harmony between the sexes, the partiality of the drive's object, the woman's reduction to the mother function, and the opposition of sex to meaning/relation in the real.

   il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel… The formula might be better rendered 'There is no relation between the sexes', thus emphasising that it is not primarily the act of sexual intercourse that Lacan is referring to but the question of the relation between the masculine sexual position and the feminine sexual position.

5. #05

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part22.xhtml_ncx_104"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part22.xhtml_page_0122"></span>***L*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part22.xhtml_ncx_111"></span>**love**

   Theoretical move: Love is constituted as an imaginary, narcissistic, and fundamentally deceptive phenomenon whose relationship to transference, desire, and demand reveals both its structural opposition to and its entanglement with desire — love as metaphor versus desire as metonymy — while simultaneously functioning as an illusory substitute for the absent sexual relation.

   Love is is an illusory fantasy of fusion with the beloved which makes up for the absence of any SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP (S20, 44); this is especially clear in the asexual concept of courtly love

6. #06

   Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.194

   the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

   Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that there is no sexual relation by showing that the field between the small o (objet petit a) and the big Other is structured as a hole — not a unifying One — and that identification (ego ideal/ideal ego) operates in this gap; the Oedipus myth is then mobilised to demonstrate that jouissance itself is constitutively bound to rottenness and the hole, not to any unitive fullness.

   I called it ridiculous, this relation that people speak about as something which would have the slightest consistency when it is sex that is at stake

7. #07

   Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.181

   the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

   Theoretical move: Lacan uses the golden number (φ) as a mathematical support to argue that sublimation cannot achieve a perfect 'One' or sexual relation—a gap always remains between even and odd power series—and then leverages this to attack the psychoanalytic myth of primary narcissism and the 'unitive' fantasy, asserting that the subject is 'measured by sex' as by a unit, not fused with it, and that no analytic sense can be given to 'masculine' or 'feminine' as signifiers.

   I can make understood, in just the right way, that there is no sexual act, which means, there is no act at a certain level and this indeed is the reason why we have to search out how it is constituted

8. #08

   Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.194

   the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

   Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "sexual relation" does not exist as a consistent dyadic unity — it is structurally a hole or gap between the small o and the big Other — and uses the cauldron metaphor (from Freud's Witz) to indict analytic theory for triply refusing to acknowledge this void; the Oedipus myth is recruited to demonstrate that accessing full jouissance covers over a foundational rottenness that truth cannot tolerate.

   I called it ridiculous, this relation that people speak about as something which would have the slightest consistency when it is sex that is at stake ... no one has ever dared to say that if A is the husband of B, then B is the wife of A.

9. #09

   Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.173

   **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968** > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 13 March 1968** > **Seminar 15: Wednesday 27 March 1968**

   Theoretical move: Lacan advances the paradox that "man and woman have nothing to do with one another" as a strictly logical consequence of psychoanalytic doctrine—not a naturalist scandal—while simultaneously arguing that the psychoanalytic act culminates in the analysand rejecting the analyst as objet petit a (the "o-object"), a formulation he notes has gone entirely uncontested.

   Textually, they have nothing to do together. It is annoying that I cannot teach this without it giving rise to scandal. So then I do not teach it, I withdraw it.

10. #10

    Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.173

    **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968** > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 13 March 1968** > **Seminar 15: Wednesday 27 March 1968**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the impossibility of the statement "I am not" to anchor the split subject of the unconscious, then extends this logical paradox to the claim that "man and woman have nothing to do with one another" — not as naturalist provocation but as a structural consequence of desire being constructed through the unconscious, with the psychoanalytic act defined as the analyst being rejected like the objet petit a at the end of analysis.

    Textually, they have nothing to do together... It is precisely because they have nothing to do with one another that the psychoanalyst has something to do with this affair.

11. #11

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.354

    Seminar 22: Wednesday 4 June 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the psychoanalytic act is structurally linked to the field of the big Other as the locus of knowledge, and that the objet petit a — as cause of desire and division of the subject — is what psychoanalysis reveals within that field; he further advances that there is no sexual relationship (logically definable), only the sexual act, which alone produces what would otherwise be an impossible relation.

    there is not, in the precise sense of the word relationship, in the sense where sexual relationship would be a relation that is logically definable, there is precisely none... Sexual relationship, what is usually called by this name, can only be made by an act.

12. #12

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.210

    Seminar 12: Wednesday 26 February 1969 > Seminar 13: Wednesday 5 March 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sublimation, as Freud formulates it, is a mode of drive satisfaction that operates *with* the drive (mit dem Trieb) rather than through repression, and that its satisfaction is achieved precisely by being goal-inhibited (zielgehemmt) — eliding the sexual goal while still satisfying the drive. This pivot is used to distinguish sublimation structurally from repression and to set up the question of what exactly is satisfied when the drive bypasses its sexual goal. The passage also stages a critical dialogue with Deleuze's appropriation of Lacanian concepts, particularly around the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz.

    an anthill like a hive is entirely centred around the realisation of what is involved in the sexual relationship. It is very precisely in the measure that these societies are different from ours, that they take on the form of a fixedness which proves the non-presence of the signifier.

13. #13

    Seminar XIX bis · The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst · Jacques Lacan · p.14

    The Psychoanalyst's Knowledge

    Theoretical move: The passage advances the thesis that there is no sexual relationship in the speaking being—not as mere wordplay, but as a structural impossibility grounded in the constitutive failure of jouissance and the irreducibility of lack at the centre of sexuality—while positioning the psychoanalyst's knowledge as the knowledge of impotence, distinct from both scientific and religious discourses.

    there is a thesis: there is no sexual relationship - I am talking about the speaking being.

14. #14

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.89

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 9 January 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that ontology is a product of the accentuation of the copula "to be" within philosophical/master discourse, that there is no pre-discursive reality (all reality is grounded in discourse), and that the sexual relationship cannot be written — a claim sustained by the bar in the Saussurean algorithm and the letter as a radical effect of discourse.

    the sexual relationship cannot be written. This is what that means, or more exactly that everything that is written is conditioned in such a way that it starts from the fact that it will be forever impossible to write the sexual relationship as such.

15. #15

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.165

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 15 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot provides the only adequate structural account of desire, the Symbolic, and the Name-of-the-Father: the Symbolic consists precisely in the hole it makes, the prohibition of incest is not historical but structural (identical with that hole), and the Name-of-the-Father is the Father-as-naming that knotted through that hole – a logic that admits an indefinite plurality of Names-of-the-Father, each resting on one hole that communicates consistency to all the others.

    there is a further step to be taken otherwise we comprehend nothing about the link of this castration with the prohibition of incest. It is to see that the link is what I call the sexual non-relationship.

16. #16

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.74

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 5: Tuesday 11 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses an anecdotal tour through Nice, Strasbourg, London, and his reading of Strachey's *Queen Victoria* to advance the theoretical claim that the sexual non-relationship is confirmed by historical-biographical evidence, while elaborating the resistance of different *lalangues* to the unconscious and reiterating that "The woman does not exist" but that women (as not-all) have a privileged, unmeasured relation to liberty and to the unconscious.

    this truth that I had found without it, in short, this truth of the sexual non-relationship

17. #17

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.64

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 13 January 1976** > W w e W.

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses Joyce's riddle (the fox burying his grandmother) as an exemplar of the analytic response — necessarily "stupid" relative to the poem-like symptom — and argues that meaning is produced by suturing/splicing the Imaginary to the Symbolic, while simultaneously splicing the sinthome to the parasitic Real of enjoyment; the Borromean knot is the structural model for this therapeutic operation.

    the symptom constituted by the deficiency proper to the sexual relationship... Nonrelationship is indeed the following, it is that there is truly no reason why he should hold One woman among others to be his woman

18. #18

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.16

    **Seminar 3: Wednesday 20 December 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that both analytic speech and analytic intervention are fundamentally acts of writing/equivocation rather than saying, and develops a topological identification of fantasy with the torus within the Borromean knot structure, mapping three coupled pairs (drive–inhibition, pleasure principle–unconscious, Real–fantasy) onto a 'six-fold torus'; simultaneously, he reframes the end of analysis as recognising what one is captive of (the sinthome), and characterises science, history, and psychoanalysis itself as forms of poetry rooted in fantasy.

    There is no sexual relationship, certainly, except between phantasies and the phantasy is to be noted with the accent that I gave it when I remarked that geometry … is woven by phantasies.

19. #19

    The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.113

    ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > The Successful Sexua l Relationship

    Theoretical move: Fantasy's fundamental function is to produce the illusion of a successful sexual relationship, compensating for the structural impossibility of the sexual relation that results from insertion into language; yet this same function constitutes fantasy's political danger by veiling the contradictions of the symbolic order, even as Lynch's films exploit fantasy's capacity to expose the points where that order breaks down.

    There is no sexual relationship because the categories 'male' and 'female' indicate a structural impasse... On the terrain of fantasy, within the narrative that it constructs, the impossible sexual relationship becomes possible.

20. #20

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.124

    <span id="page-116-0"></span>There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship > **"There's no Such Thing** as a **Sexual Relationship"**

    Theoretical move: Lacan's formula "there's no such thing as a sexual relationship" is grounded in the claim that masculinity and femininity are defined separately and differently with respect to the symbolic order—not in relation to each other—such that each sex has a distinct mode of alienation by language and a distinct form of jouissance, making any direct complementary relation between them structurally impossible.

    there's no such thing as a sexual relationship ('il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel')... each sex is defined separately with respect to a third term. Thus there is only a nonrelationship, an absence of any conceivable direct relationship between the sexes.

21. #21

    The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.146

    Structural Dynamics and Temporality of the Comical

    Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that tragedy and comedy are not different attitudes toward the same configuration of discrepancy but rather two standpoints *within* it: tragedy stands at the point of demand (articulating discrepancy as desire's constitutive non-satisfaction), while comedy stands at the point of satisfaction (articulating discrepancy as jouissance/surplus-satisfaction), and this difference in standpoint entails a reversal of temporal sequence in which satisfaction precedes and overtakes demand rather than trailing after it.

    What happens in a love encounter is not simply that the sexual nonrelation is momentarily suspended with an unexpected emergence of a (possible) relation... it is that the nonrelation itself suddenly emerges as a mode (as well as the condition) of a relation.

22. #22

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.320

    Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > Do We Still Live in a World?

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that global capitalism is uniquely "worldless" — it dissolves every stable representational frame rather than founding one — and this creates a fundamental aporia for Badiouian emancipatory politics (which traditionally intervenes from within a world's symptomal excess), forcing a parallax reading of the economy/politics non-relation as the key structural problem for any leftist project today.

    if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint

23. #23

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.40

    The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > The Master-Signifier and Its Vicissitudes

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Master-Signifier operates as a reflexive "quilting point" that transforms disorder into order without adding positive content, and that objet petit a functions as the "transcendental scheme" of fantasy mediating between the formal symbolic structure and the positivity of objects in reality — thereby explaining how ideology schematizes desire and hegemonizes the void left by the primordially repressed binary signifier.

    The fact that 'there is no sexual relationship' means precisely that the secondary signifier (that of the Woman) is 'primordially repressed,' and what we get in the place of this repression... is the multitude of 'returns of the repressed'

24. #24

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.26

    The Kantian Parallax

    Theoretical move: Žižek argues, via Karatani's reading of Kant, that the "parallax view" names an irreducible structural gap between positions that cannot be synthesized or reduced; he then radicalises this by showing that transcendental subjectivity, freedom, and ontological difference all inhabit precisely this "third space" between phenomenal and noumenal—a space structurally homologous to the Lacanian Real as pure antagonism and to the Not-all logic of sexuation.

    Apropos of 'telling all the truth,' we should again apply the Lacanian paradoxes of the non-All; that is to say, we should strictly oppose two cases. Because truth is in itself non-all, inconsistent, 'antagonistic,' every telling of 'all the Truth' has to rely on an exception

25. #25

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.158

    The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > Burned by the Sun

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the parallax structure—a purely formal minimal difference that inscribes the subject's gaze into the perceived object—is the shared logic of aesthetics (Richter, Pizarnik, Kalevala), psychoanalytic topology (objet petit a, death drive, sublimation), and political philosophy (Hegel's 'compromise' with post-Thermidorian reality vs. Hölderlin's Beautiful Soul), thereby grounding the concept of 'Good as the absence of Evil' and of creative silence in a unified parallactic ontology.

    this, of course, does not mean that there is a sexual relationship between Something and Nothing, but, precisely, its failure: this lovemaking is failed.

26. #26

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.132

    The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > interlude 1

    Theoretical move: The passage deploys the "parallax view" as a structural principle—no common denominator can resolve the split between incommensurable perspectives (First World/Third World, Milly/Densher/Kate)—and uses this to argue that genuine ethical acts consist not in symbolic reconciliation or hysterical clinging to fantasy, but in a traversal of fantasy that breaks the deadlock from within, as exemplified by Kate's refusal in James and Paul's self-sacrifice in Iñárritu.

    far from indicating some kind of 'feminine' indecision and passivity, Hyacinth's deadlock signals precisely his inability to perform a properly feminine act. The negative feminine gesture would be the only way to break out of this deadlock

27. #27

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.73

    The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > A Boy Meets the Lady

    Theoretical move: The passage uses the Bobby Peru scene from Lynch's *Wild at Heart* as a pivot to theorize the structure of the empty gesture, desire vs. want, and the "wild analyst" figure, then extends the analysis through Heidegger's reading of Trakl to argue that sexual difference is not between two sexes but between the asexual and the sexual — with the discordant *Geschlecht* being irreducibly feminine, not neutral — making the presexual "undead boy" a figure of Evil and the Real of antagonism.

    This, then, is Heidegger's version of 'there is no sexual relationship'—the reference and indebtedness to Plato's myth from Symposium is obvious here.

28. #28

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.16

    introduction

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that a "minimal difference" (the non-coincidence of the One with itself) underlies apparent dualisms, and deploys the Lacanian enunciation/statement split and the Hegelian concept of concrete universality—illustrated through a mock-Hegelian dialectic of sexuality—to demonstrate how confronting a universal with its "unbearable" particular example reveals the tacit prohibitions sustaining symbolic universes.

    the very 'progress' from one form to another is motivated by the structural imbalance of the sexual relationship (Lacan's il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel)

29. #29

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.194

    Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > The Desublimated Object of Post-Ideology

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the postideological "desublimated" call of jouissance short-circuits the symbolic mediation constitutive of the Other's jouissance, so that the apparent opposition between pure autistic jouissance (drugs, virtual sex) and the jouissance of the Other (language, narrative, remembrance) secretly converges in the Hegelian infinite judgment: the passion for the Real and the passion for semblance are two sides of the same phenomenon.

    what Lacan had in mind with his il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel: not only is masturbation sex with an imagined partner … 'real sex' has the structure of masturbation with a real partner

30. #30

    The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.259

    Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > interlude 2

    Theoretical move: Žižek argues that the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew mystifies constitutive social antagonism by displacing it onto an external limit, and that Milner's "Jewish exception" logic inadvertently reproduces this displacement; the properly Lacanian response is a "not-all" Europe in which everyone becomes an exception (objet petit a), dissolving the need for a constitutive Other — and he extends this critique to Jacques-Alain Miller's therapeutic-political proposal, which he reads as a socially conservative "compassionate cushion" that profits from the disarray of identifications rather than challenging the anonymous systems that produce it.

    the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew enables us to obfuscate the non-All of the constitutive social antagonism, transposing it into the conflict between the social All (the corporate notion of society) and its external Limit

31. #31

    What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.155

    From Adam's Navel to Dream's Navel > Chapter 2

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the non-relation is not a fixed ontological foundation subtending concrete relations, but is instead produced and repeated immanently within each concrete relation: every relation 'resolves' the non-relation only by re-positing its own constitutive impossibility, such that the non-relation is an effect of repetition rather than a transcendent remainder.

    every concrete relation de facto resolves the non-relation, but it can resolve it only by positing ('inventing'), together with itself, its own negativity, its own negative condition/impossibility.

32. #32

    What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.28

    It's Getting Strange in Here … > Christianity and Polymorphous Perversity

    Theoretical move: The non-existence of the sexual relation is not a mere absence but constitutive of the Real itself; partial drives and their satisfactions are not a positive residue left after the fantasy's subtraction, but are intrinsically formed by the negativity of non-relation—the lack does not supplement the drives from outside but structures them from within.

    non-relation is not simply an absence of relation, but is itself a real, even the Real… The lack of sexual relation is real in the sense that, as lack or negativity, it is built into what is there.