ABSTRACT
I weave together the seemingly disparate theories of Lacan, Kristeva, and Deleuze and Guattari to demonstrate how encounters of sexual difference and their effects on subjectivity happen at the level of the unconscious. I begin by first giving a condensed overview of Lacanian psychoanalysis, with specific attention paid to the three registers: Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real, the Lacanian subject, phallic and feminine jouissance, as well as his theory of sexuation. I then briefly explain how I understand Kristeva’s notion of the abject and abjection as being an integral part of the encounter with sexual difference, which allows me to identify sites of feminine monstrosity. Finally, I move into an explanation of how I understand Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of becoming-woman as necessarily reliant on the Lacanian formula for sexuation and how becoming-woman may offer an alternative way to think about these encounters as not only monstrous, but also as producing opportunities to displace the primacy of the phallus in subjectivity.
