Interview with Alenka Zupancic: Ontology of Sex

PLEASE LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE!

In this interview, we speak with feminist philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist, Alenka Zupančič. Alenka Zupančič talks about important ideas from her book, What is Sex? Zupančič theorizes about sexual difference and the social construction of sex using the Lacanian psychoanalytic lens to highlight the complex dimensions of sex. Alenka speaks about the ontology of sex: the reality of sexual existence. Alenka Zupančič comments upon the Deleuzean ontology of multiplicity, and difference using the Lacanian concept of the not-two and the constitutive lack in subjectivity.

She talks about the dialectical relationship between feminism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, adding to the discourse on Judith Butler’s gender performativity by focusing on the contradictions that animate sexual life. Zupančič highlights the similarities and differences between Lacan’s Real and Deleuze’s Multiplicity. She also succinctly explains the very famous Lacanian aphorisms regarding sex: “Woman does not exist” and “There is no sexual relationship”.

We end on the political implications of Lacanian theory for feminism and the left, the “new signifier”, and the potential for a politics of universal struggle.

If you like this video, please check our other video on her text ethics of the real:

[okaytoletgo]

Alenka is so gracious. Her name is pronounced ZupanCHiCH.

[SarahAshelford-ou]

This is complex by fascinating. Many thanks.

[arjunkumar]

thank you so much for uploading this discussing.

[Rivulets]

Wow really cool of her to come on for a talk

[blackplague-xy]

Oddly, I think we are in a post-sex age. We are so unidated by sexuality that its become its opposite "unsexy". We are entering abn age of spiritual exploration and sex is not necessarily all that.

[JingleJangleJam]

The title the editors chose for the front cover -
''What Is Sex?'' sure is catchy, but it is unfortunate in that it causes a lot of these rhetorical ''What Is Sex?'' questions to Zupancic, whereas her original title ''Sex and Ontology'' is blander but more precise.

[TexasFriedCriminal]

The Real is the intrusion of a seemingly more fundamental unreality into reality. It is how that which is not for us appears for us. The Real thus is always disappearing, it has the character of an event, a suddeness of appearing that immediately disappears into reality. Through this disappearence the possibility of the Real haunts reality. The Real is never integrated into reality as that which it is, but covered up with a reality which it is not. The haunting is the continued suggestion of the Real behind its cover.

[reviraemusic]

wait... "and so on, and so on"?

[ΠαυλοςΝτ]

Sounds like dialectics mashed up with deconstruction

[pedrorocha]

If by now, people don't know the differentiation about sex and gender, maybe they should stop making other people's lives so miserable by legislating and controlling every little nuance to death.

[blackplague-xy]

isn't sex a drive more or less. Something mandatory and malleable.