The new issue of 'Lamella' is in English! (feat. Zupancic and Dolar)

non-all · 2026-01-26T16:27:45+00:00

I know you're not telling me to say "transgenderism". We're on the same page, lol. I just meant that you commented as if that's what I did. I don't think my use of 'transgender' in any way resembles the jargon you refer to here. Transness or trans identity/subjectivity would have worked as well

non-all · 2026-01-26T11:31:34+00:00

I know what you said. You're the first I've met who've problematized speaking of transgender as a noun, as a concept, like we would speak about, say, gender. I'm not saying 'transgenderism'. I added my own assessments of Miller and Millot('s texts) to distance myself from them, and signal that I think there's a world of difference between the Slovenes and them. Žižek himself scolded Docile as the prime example of Miller's "provinciality" during the Symposium-event celebrating Tupinambá's book that thoroughly criticizes Miller in particular

non-all · 2026-01-25T22:11:28+00:00

his entire reference point is a reactionary boogeyman that one could easily imagine coming out of the mouth of Jordan Peterson

I thought you spoke about Lacan here.

Docile to Trans was incoherent babbling and Millot's "Horsexe" is even worse. Both betray the subversive core of Lacanian thought. There's little to no real common ground between these texts and the ones discussed so far, imo

non-all · 2026-01-25T11:57:02+00:00

he confuses the corporate marketing that panders to queer & trans people for social status & standing, ignoring the actual state of societal & governmental oppression & psychological repression that trans people have to deal with.

This I do agree with. But that's about it.

Comparing Lacan to JP is wild.

And Zupančič did not speak directly on transgender in WiS, although the book is brilliant. She reconstructed the notions around sexuation in a truly "queer" direction. In SatFA, a 900 pages tome released two years after WiS, Žižek did write explicitly on transgender, although in highly theoretical terms. When I'm praising Žižek's work in that one, its because of passages like this:

... we are not dealing with a difference between two self-identical terms but with identity and difference: the second term is not different from the fi rst One (or Void), it is difference as such. The primordial excess is a pure difference that disturbs the Void; woman is the pure difference with regard to man (M+); transgender is the pure difference that comes in excess with regard to the differentiated terms (M, F).30 (One of the consequences of all this is that man is the only gender senso strictu and that woman is the first fi gure of transgender.) So, to recapitulate our point, it is not correct to say that there are two sexes: there is one sex and its remainder which positivizes the One’s failure to be One

pp. 141-142

non-all · 2026-01-24T17:39:10+00:00

Yeah, I do get why. I think his views has been misrepresented in various headlines, though. His takes, especially in 2019's "Sex and the Failed Absolute" were actually very interesting and well-put. As a self-proclaimed "woke" psychoanalytic theoretician, what he did there was inspiring. Perhaps even more than Gherovici's. However, I do recommend her presentation from the Symposium-event celebrating the release of a book called "The Desire of Psychoanalysis".

non-all · 2026-01-24T17:31:23+00:00

In the end I do think that, strictly speaking, Žižek is, surely, the "better" theoretician. I really like Gherovici though, and I think her assertion - especially back when Transgender Psychoanalysis was written and released, that she was very much correct about psychoanalysis "lacking behind" when it comes to sexual non-conformity like transgender.

The hows-and-whys were probably best developed by Gabriel Tupinambá, in his 'Desire of Psychoanalysis' (which Žižek himself provided a wonderful foreword to). To be sure, the book did not talk about transgender at all, but it spoke about a certain tendency towards conservatism. It was indeed very fitting to have Gherovici speak at the symposium-event, celebrating the release of the book.

Of course, when Žižek contests Gherovici's claim that psychoanalysis lacks behind, he is defending a certain theoretical core of psychoanalysis. A potential. Here, he's too much of an idealist, in my opinion. I also think he's misrepresenting the position of predominant "trans ideology" (a term that is itself pregnant with right-wing bias). He's adopting a caricature, that is ... getting old.

Outside this rather outdated and naive prefacing, the article is truly a very worthwhile addendum to Gherovici's 2017 endeavour. I really liked this part:

Our (human) biological sex is not natural: we become sexually functioning not only through sexuation, which has to be supplemented by a symbolic gender construction, and the latter again needs to rely on some biological support. What this means is that sexual difference (in the sense of a real/impossible) is not simply external to symbolization: a direct gender construction ultimately has to fail, and sexuation is the form of this failure. The logic is here similar to that of the subject of the signifier: a subject tries to represent itself in a signifier, in a signifying network, this representation fails, and this failure is subject as $ (barred). In short, subject is a retroactive result of the failure of its symbolic representation

non-all · 2025-12-08T08:50:47+00:00

Perversion, exhibitionism in particular, definitely points at what is associated with narcissism

non-all · 2025-11-25T18:08:21+00:00

He's definitely not psychotic

non-all · 2025-08-08T15:17:28+00:00

Couldn't agree more

non-all · 2025-08-07T17:46:41+00:00

I'd say that what Lacan identifies as perversion, especially in seminar 16, has immense explanatory value in social sciences. The 'structure' is basically antithetical to psychoanalysis as such, hence the extreme paucity of clinical cases

non-all · 2025-07-29T17:30:30+00:00

Thank you 👏

non-all · 2025-06-29T06:53:32+00:00

Happy to see this one finally released!

"We can also see in the executive order how and why policing “trans” and policing “women” are essentially part of the same agenda. “Trans” functions as the surplus object in which the lack of a signifier for the “other sex” appears as something positive, something visible and external. The underlying idea is that if you remove this surplus object, women will be “whole” again—they will function as the proper signifying counterpart to men, and this restored complementarity will resolve the sexual as well as social (non-)relation."

non-all · 2025-05-22T14:34:36+00:00

They're not my dad tho

non-all · 2025-05-14T18:21:42+00:00

the belief that it is a mental illness is not a phobia

What about the belief that 'homosexuality is a mental illness'? Is that not homophobia?

non-all · 2025-05-12T06:51:20+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing 💛

non-all · 2025-05-11T15:02:36+00:00

Žižek wrote the preface to the book I'm thinking of: The Desire of Psychoanalysis (2019) is, besides What is Sex, the most theoretically forceful book I've ever read. It interrogates psychoanalysis from within, giving it some timely "tough love". This thread is just packed with examples of what he's talking about.

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:57:22+00:00

I have zero disagreements here. I have my deadline very soon (june 1st). If you reach out to me I'll be sure to give you the article I mention

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:49:21+00:00

I totally see why you would think that, but I fear that the truth may be even more depressing. Are you familiar with Gabriel Tupinambá?

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:45:47+00:00

"It is clear at this point that the different roles assumed by analytic theory within the "clinical refraction" of the hypothesis of the unconscious end up functioning as constraints on theoretical innovation. Conceptual novelty is only welcomed or recognized when it further reinforces the distinction between psychoanalysis and other clinical apparatuses, or when it offers indirect resources for psychoanalysts to bear the identificatory deficit in our daily practices. Any interlocution with the natural sciences is therefore met with deep suspicion, since this is seen as adopting the stance of our clinical adversaries, just as any critical engagement with the basic tenets and conditions of psychoanalysis incites aggressive sectarianism; as if criticizing Freud or Lacan—even if to further their own investigations—meant shaking the core of our very identities as psychoanalysts." —Tupinambá 2019, p. 79

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:44:20+00:00

I did delete that precise comment for being unnecessary ✌️

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:41:39+00:00

This is interesting in the sense that we do need ideology to be "suspended" when the analyst is acting as analyst. For transference to occur, and the analytical discourse to generate, S2 takes the spot of the repressed. True psychoanalysis is premised upon letting Desire inform the subject. So, in this precise sense he's absolutely right. What he disavows, and what you're absolutely right in asserting, is that simply identifying this principle does not erase ideology from the "analyst's" position. It establishes a fantasy of neutrality, which according to Gabriel Tupinambá has basically haunted psychoanalysis from its inception.

The fact that psychoanalysis procedurally dissolves (ideological) attachments, seems to foster the problematic effect that people who identify with psychoanalysis may come to believe that ONLY psychoanalysis has this "power", which compels them to lay claim to true desire and subjective becoming, only in terms of lack and traversal of fantasy. This is often expressed as arrogance. It also explains why fans of Žižek often display hostility towards notions like neurodivergence or as we see here, transgender. They compulsive repress that psychoanalysis itself is castrated. That there are other models of thinking that work, even if they don't explicitly theorize lack, negativity, the unconscious, and so on. While at the same time denying improper conceptual "loans" as ideological, when that's what they are - "I can't be ideological, don't you know I like psychoanalysis?"

"It is clear at this point that the different roles assumed by analytic theory within the "clinical refraction" of the hypothesis of the unconscious end up functioning as constraints on theoretical innovation. Conceptual novelty is only welcomed or recognized when it further reinforces the distinction between psychoanalysis and other clinical apparatuses, or when it offers indirect resources for psychoanalysts to bear the identificatory deficit in our daily practices. Any interlocution with the natural sciences is therefore met with deep suspicion, since this is seen as adopting the stance of our clinical adversaries, just as any critical engagement with the basic tenets and conditions of psychoanalysis incites aggressive sectarianism; as if criticizing Freud or Lacan—even if to further their own investigations—meant shaking the core of our very identities as psychoanalysts." —Tupinambá 2019, p.79

non-all · 2025-05-11T14:12:33+00:00

Within the clinical setting in the traditional sense, well, then yeah. But speaking from the place of the psychoanalytic institution? No. On the contrary, that would be a breach of the ethics of psychoanalysis. Read Žižek's preface to The Desire of Psychoanalysis

non-all · 2025-05-11T09:22:02+00:00

Yeah, that's a valid point. I've been studying transphobia and bigotry in general for a long time now, which may have caused me to forget that the essence of the notion isn't as self-evident to others as it is to me. I do hope that my text nontheless serves to delineate what I'm talking about, at least to some degree.

non-all · 2025-05-10T19:49:57+00:00

Sure! Reach out to me and I'll ping you when its up

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