ABSTRACT
The theoretical work of Lacan has been instrumental in linking structural linguistics with psychoanalysis to give an account of the formation of the human subject, including its construction in relations of sexual difference. Readers of Screen will be familiar with the influence which Lacanian theory has exercised in the attempts within film theory to provide a materialist view of subjectivity, which would solve problems associated with the formalism of semiotics and the functionalism of Marxist cultural analysis. They will recognize, too, its role in feminist theory concerned with the conditions of sexual representation, including pornography. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problems of certain ‘discursive figures’, repeatable forms of reasoning, which organize the Lacanian theory and the objects it constructs, especially its version of ‘the formation of the subject in language’ and ‘sexual difference’. It is these discursive figures or schemata which ground recent debates over biologism and phallocentrism in Lacan’s work. This description of the co-ordinates of a theoretical field allows us to call into question the idea that, in the conjunction of psychoanalysis and linguistics, Lacanian theory ‘discovers’ an essential interrelation of subjectivity, sexuality and language.
