ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis suggests a narrative recovery of the history and organization of the psyche and has offered the concept of suture to explain the inaugurating gesture of the subject as it emerges within a discursive network of social relations. The narrative scenario in which a pass is performed involves three participants: the passer, the dupe, and a representative of the in-group. The name effectively sutures the gap of racial difference, and this name highlights the singularity of sexual difference in the formulation of the subject of psychoanalysis. Suture provides an illustration of the challenge psychoanalysis poses to Enlightenment philosophy, science, and aesthetics as it pits their competing epistemologies against one another. Art, medicine, and philosophy have a shared history in the tradition of Western metaphysical thought in which the human body represents the ultimate organizing structure. The ethical convergence of philosophical with medical and aesthetic practices persists in the discourse surrounding the bodily transformations performed in plastic surgery.
