ABSTRACT
Naming the vagina and the vulva uncovers what lies concealed and whose revelation requires turning it over in our minds. Without naming—without the entire signifying system that naming engenders and that engenders naming—there is no way to conceive or represent predicates about what is real or true. Taken together, "masculine" and "feminine" laws create the essential Escher-like dialectic between the boundary setting function of the masculine signifier and the space-creating function of the feminine signifier—space itself, always both immaterial and actual, which resists and elusively invites naming. The dualistic function inaugurates the symbolic realm and lawful processes of signification, exposing to us what is hiding in plain sight: the feminine metaphor. It is the feminine metaphor that marks the ineffable border to the unknown, the as-yet-to-be-signified and also the unsignifiable. Akin the patient who remains faithful to Sigmund Freud's fundamental rule is the "subject of truth" as depicted by philosopher Alain Badiou.
