哲学家的性生活或性爱系统：从黑格尔到拉康到齐泽克
发布时间：2010-04-10 09:33
分类名称：默认分类
分类名称：默认分类
In the documentary Derrida, in answer to the question of what he would ask some
great classic philosopher if he were to meet him, Derrida immediately snaps back:
“About his sex life.” Here, perhaps, we should supplement Derrida: if we asked this
question directly, we would probably get a common answer; the thing to look for,
rather, would be the theory about sexuality at the level of each’s respective philosophy.
Perhaps the ultimate philosophical fantasy here would be the discovery of a manuscript
in which Hegel, the systematician par excellence, develops a system of sexuality, of sexual
practices contradicting, inverting, sublating each other, deducing all (straight and “perverse”)
forms from its basic deadlock.17 As in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, we would first get
the deduction of the main “subjective attitudes toward sex” (animal coupling, pure excessive
lust, expression of human love, metaphysical passion), followed by the proper
“system of sexuality,” organized, as one would expect from Hegel, into a sequence of
triads.The starting point here is copulation a tergo, the sexual act in its animal, presubjective
immediacy;we then go on to its immediate (abstract) negation: masturbation,
in which solo self-excitation is supplemented by fantasizing. (Jean Laplanche argued
that masturbation-with-fantasy is the elementary, zero-level, form of the properly human
drive as opposed to the animal instinct.) What follows is the synthesis of the two:
the sexual act proper in a missionary position, in which face-to-face contact guarantees
that full bodily contact (penetration) remains supplemented by fantasizing.This
means that the “normal” human sexual act has the structure of double masturbation:
each participant is masturbating with a real partner.However, the gap between the raw
reality of copulation and its fantasmatic supplement can no longer be closed; all variations
and displacements of sexual practices that follow are so many desperate attempts
to restore the balance of the two.
The dialectical “progress” thus first goes through a series of variations with regard
to the relationship between face, sexual organs, and other bodily parts, and the modes
of their respective uses: the organ remains the phallus, but the opening to be penetrated
changes (anus, mouth).Then, in a kind of “negation of negation,” not only does
the object to be penetrated change, but the totality of the person who is the partner
introduction
passes into its opposite (homosexuality). In a further development, the goal itself is
no longer orgasm (fetishism). Fist-fucking introduces into this series an impossible
synthesis of hand (the organ of instrumental activity, of hard work) and vagina (the
organ of “spontaneous” passive generation). The fist (focus of purposeful work, the
hand as the most tightly controlled and trained part of our body) replaces the phallus
(the organ out of our conscious control par excellence, since its erection comes and goes
independently of our will), in a kind of correlate to somebody who approaches a state
that should emerge “spontaneously” in a well-planned instrumental way (a poet who
constructs his poems in a “rational”way, for instance, is a poetic fist-fucker).There are,
of course, further variations here which call for their speculative deduction: in masculine
masturbation, the vagina, the ultimate passive organ, is substituted by the hand,
the ultimate active organ which passivizes the phallus itself. Furthermore, when the
phallus penetrates the anus,we obtain the correct insight into the speculative identity
of excrementation and insemination, the highest and the lowest.There is no room here
to explore further variations to be deduced: doing it with an animal, with a machinedoll;
doing it with many partners, sadism and masochism. . . .The main point is that
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), which condemns any
sexual practice to eternal oscillation between the “spontaneous” pathos of selfobliteration
and the logic of external ritual (following the rules).Thus the final outcome
is that sexuality is the domain of “spurious infinity” whose logic, brought to an
extreme, cannot but engender tasteless excesses like those of “spermathon”contests—
how many men can a woman bring to orgasm in an hour, and so on . . . for a true
philosopher, there are more interesting things in the world than sex.
great classic philosopher if he were to meet him, Derrida immediately snaps back:
“About his sex life.” Here, perhaps, we should supplement Derrida: if we asked this
question directly, we would probably get a common answer; the thing to look for,
rather, would be the theory about sexuality at the level of each’s respective philosophy.
Perhaps the ultimate philosophical fantasy here would be the discovery of a manuscript
in which Hegel, the systematician par excellence, develops a system of sexuality, of sexual
practices contradicting, inverting, sublating each other, deducing all (straight and “perverse”)
forms from its basic deadlock.17 As in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, we would first get
the deduction of the main “subjective attitudes toward sex” (animal coupling, pure excessive
lust, expression of human love, metaphysical passion), followed by the proper
“system of sexuality,” organized, as one would expect from Hegel, into a sequence of
triads.The starting point here is copulation a tergo, the sexual act in its animal, presubjective
immediacy;we then go on to its immediate (abstract) negation: masturbation,
in which solo self-excitation is supplemented by fantasizing. (Jean Laplanche argued
that masturbation-with-fantasy is the elementary, zero-level, form of the properly human
drive as opposed to the animal instinct.) What follows is the synthesis of the two:
the sexual act proper in a missionary position, in which face-to-face contact guarantees
that full bodily contact (penetration) remains supplemented by fantasizing.This
means that the “normal” human sexual act has the structure of double masturbation:
each participant is masturbating with a real partner.However, the gap between the raw
reality of copulation and its fantasmatic supplement can no longer be closed; all variations
and displacements of sexual practices that follow are so many desperate attempts
to restore the balance of the two.
The dialectical “progress” thus first goes through a series of variations with regard
to the relationship between face, sexual organs, and other bodily parts, and the modes
of their respective uses: the organ remains the phallus, but the opening to be penetrated
changes (anus, mouth).Then, in a kind of “negation of negation,” not only does
the object to be penetrated change, but the totality of the person who is the partner
introduction
passes into its opposite (homosexuality). In a further development, the goal itself is
no longer orgasm (fetishism). Fist-fucking introduces into this series an impossible
synthesis of hand (the organ of instrumental activity, of hard work) and vagina (the
organ of “spontaneous” passive generation). The fist (focus of purposeful work, the
hand as the most tightly controlled and trained part of our body) replaces the phallus
(the organ out of our conscious control par excellence, since its erection comes and goes
independently of our will), in a kind of correlate to somebody who approaches a state
that should emerge “spontaneously” in a well-planned instrumental way (a poet who
constructs his poems in a “rational”way, for instance, is a poetic fist-fucker).There are,
of course, further variations here which call for their speculative deduction: in masculine
masturbation, the vagina, the ultimate passive organ, is substituted by the hand,
the ultimate active organ which passivizes the phallus itself. Furthermore, when the
phallus penetrates the anus,we obtain the correct insight into the speculative identity
of excrementation and insemination, the highest and the lowest.There is no room here
to explore further variations to be deduced: doing it with an animal, with a machinedoll;
doing it with many partners, sadism and masochism. . . .The main point is that
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), which condemns any
sexual practice to eternal oscillation between the “spontaneous” pathos of selfobliteration
and the logic of external ritual (following the rules).Thus the final outcome
is that sexuality is the domain of “spurious infinity” whose logic, brought to an
extreme, cannot but engender tasteless excesses like those of “spermathon”contests—
how many men can a woman bring to orgasm in an hour, and so on . . . for a true
philosopher, there are more interesting things in the world than sex.
