ABSTRACT

Throughout the twentieth century, psychoanalysis and feminism were the practico-intellectual fields most systematic and subversive in demonstrating that humanity is sexually fissured. More recently, further advances in the philosophy of difference and renewed emphases on embodiment, materiality and life offer possibilities for attending to dimensions of gender and sexuality that were previously underdeveloped. This collection examines these possibilities insofar as they can either deepen or displace the traditional centrality of psychoanalysis in matters sexual.

The authors come from a wide range of backgrounds and defend their approaches to the problem of sexual difference in a variety of idioms, drawing on key thinkers such as Lacan, Irigaray, Deleuze, Foucault and Badiou. It is rare to come across these thinkers together; but sex is too crucial a site for critical thought not to mobilize every conceptual power available.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

chapter |29 pages

One, Two, Many

What is Sexual Difference Now?

chapter |18 pages

The Sexual Compact

chapter |25 pages

The Nature of Sexual Difference

Irigaray and Darwin

chapter |9 pages

Sexual Difference Beyond Life and Death

Or, Feminism and the Biopolitical Turn

chapter |24 pages

Against Yin-Yang

The Dao of Feminist Universalism

chapter |8 pages

Afterword

Complexity, Materialism, Difference