ABSTRACT
Lacan continues to be one of the most controversial figures within contemporary feminist theory. Many feminists use his work on human subjectivity to challenge phallocentric knowledges; others are extremely hostile to it, seeing it as elitist, male-dominated, and itself phallocentric. These contradictory evaluations of his work seem irresolveable; in some cases they are maintained within one and the same person. Like Freud’s work, Lacan’s is contradictory (sometimes intentionally and sometimes not). His is a self-consciously paradoxical, oxymoronic style; there is nothing he seems to enjoy as much as punning, playing with language, wrenching the maximum resonance from each term. The relations between his version of psychoanalysis and feminism remain ambivalent. It is never entirely clear whether he is simply a more subtle misogynist than Freud, or whether his reading of Freud constitutes a ‘feminist’ breakthrough. The utility of psychoanalysis for feminist endeavours remains unclear. It is a risky and double-edged ‘tool’, for as a conceptual system it is liable to explode in one’s face as readily as it may combat theoretical misogynies of various kinds.
