E—
"Woman Does Not Exist"

The assertion that "Woman does not exist" is perhaps the most notorious and most misunderstood catchphrase associated with Lacan.^[299] We can now explore what this means in greater detail.

[297] See, e.g ., Teresa Brennan, History After Lacan 9–10 (1993); Somer Brodribb, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism 3, 97 (1992).

[298] "The Lacanian account turns [the cultural feminist] story on its head." Cornell, Doubly-Prized World, supra note 173, at 664.

[299] Clément points out that this quotation is frequently used by the ill-informed as evidence of Lacan's "deep-seated misogyny." "He doesn't like women. He said they don'texist." This interpretation is "nonsense of monumental proportions." Clément, supra note 244, at 51.

During the mirror stage, the infant experienced the tragedy of separation from the Mother/(m)other and demanded that she come back. Now he sees himself as a separate subject and desires the Mother. The Mother is the object of his desire. Mother is his Phallus .^[300]

The problem, of course, is that the subject can never again reunite with the Mother because of the incest taboo. Or, more accurately, it is castration from the Phallus pursuant to the law as prohibition which creates subjectivity. If the subject regained the Phallus , it would cease to be a subject. He can never again have the Phallic Mother. The Phallic Mother as the Feminine represents the dream of an unmediated relationship with the other. This utopian relationship exists in the real.

If we understand the nostalgia resulting from the discovery of the mother's castration in this way, then the discovery that the mother does not have the phallus means that the subject can never return to the womb. Somehow the fact that the mother is not phallic means that the mother as mother is lost forever, that the mother as womb, homeland, source, and grounding for the subject is irretrievably past. The subject is hence in a foreign land, alienated.^[301]

"Woman, as a result, is identified by her lack of the phallus. She is difference from the phallus"^[302] even as she also "is" the Phallus —but the Phallus which is always desired and never obtained. The Feminine is therefore projected as "lack."^[303] She does not exist as "not-all" in the sense of "not all subjects are phallic."^[304]

Consequently, the quotation about Woman ascribed to Lacan can be misleading. Indeed, it is a misquotation. The more accurate translation is "The Woman does not exist":

[300] "The man has the illusion of having the phallus, in the sense of the potency to keep her. The woman 'is' for him as the phallus, as his projected desire." Cornell, Beyond Accommodation, supra note 190, at 38.

[301] Gallop, supra note 215, at 148.

[302] Cornell, Beyond Accommodation, supra note 190, at 38.

[303] Once projected into language, however, the primary identification with the mother is projected only as lack. The phallic Mother and what she represents cannot be expressed in language. . . . Thus, Kristeva insists that the Feminine, when "identified" as the phallic Mother, embodies the dream of an undistorted relation to the Other which lies at the foundation of social life, but which cannot be adequately represented.

Cornell, Doubly-Prized World, supra note 173, at 660–61.

[304] Grosz, supra note 18, at 138.

[T]he woman can only be written with The crossed through. There is no such thing as The woman, where the definite article stands for the universal. There is no such thing as The woman since of her essence—having already risked the term, why think twice about it?—of her essence, is not all.^[305]

As negative to the man, woman becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total fantasy) elevated into the place of the Other and made to stand for its truth. Since the place of the Other is also the place of God, this is the ultimate form of mystification.^[306]

As we shall explore, this insistence that the Feminine has no positive content increases, rather than destroys, her presence. She is the potential moment of negativity as radical freedom which is the heart of subjectivity.