ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with a recapitulation of the thesis demonstrated in the previous chapter regarding the phallic signifier’s autonomy from the signifier of the NdP and the question of the efficacy of the phallic function in the copula between the sexes.
It emphasises in this regard the crucial question of what conditions the emergence, starting from the mother’s lack of a penis, of the phallic signification of maternal desire and its transformation into sexual signification. It points out the various contradictions that emerge from the postulate that it is the signifier of the father that operates to produce this signification.
It then interrogates the scope of Lacan’s first thesis, having and being the phallus, and concludes that it is operative in the orientation of desire towards the other sex but does not touch the real of the jouissance of sex.
The chapter then examines the scope of Lacan’s later formulae of sexuation in “L’etourdit”, with which he attempted to produce a matheme of sexual identity that would not be a semblant but engage the real of jouissance. It shows that the dialectic of the phallic function, written as capital phi, is complemented by Lacan in the new construction; it is to be or have the jouissance lacking to the partner, not only its lack of being, and therefore pertains to the real of sex. This will lead to Lacan’s later formulation of Y a de l’Un, developed in the seminar.
It demonstrates that although the phallic function is now designated by Lacan as “supplement” to the real of the foreclosed relation, it nevertheless cannot assure a bipartition of the parlants into two halves homologous to anatomical sex and can neither account for the choice of partner-object.
The chapter ends with another aspect of the theme of identification, developed by both Freud and Lacan, that of the constitution of the subject and of its relation to the collective. This theme will be developed extensively in the next chapters.
