Psychoanalysis is concerned first and foremost with the acquisition of what is assumed to be healthy, mature, gendered subjectivity. The basic psychoanalytic presupposition that gendered subjectivity is acquired rather than inborn accounts for much of the attraction of psychoanalytic theory for feminists.
(Weedon, 1999: 80)
Barrett begins her account of feminist theories of sexual difference by noting the ground-breaking work of Juliet Mitchell (1974). Mitchell used Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to contribute to feminist developments in Marxist theory. Weedon (1999) also details the significance of Freud and Lacan in terms of feminist accounts of sexual difference. She notes, for example, the development of feminist object relations theory. A principal theorist here is Nancy Chodorow (1978) who emphasized the cultural and psychoanaltyic dimensions to mothering. More recently there has been considerable discussion of what is termed post-Lacanian feminism. Lacan integrated Freud’s work on the unconscious and conscious into a linguistic framework. In this Lacan distinguished between the discourses of the unconscious and the discourses of consciousness:
For Lacan, while consciousness is articulated by means of grammatical and syntactical organization, the unconscious is a system which does not obey these rules. Through repression, signs are reduced to signifers — ie they are quite literally robbed of their meaning, detached from their signifieds. . . The unconscious is thus unable to speak in its own voice and vocabulary. It can only speak through and by means of conscious discourse. It is not the smooth, continuous unfolding of meaning; rather, it is expressed as silence, verbal slips, stutterings, gaps, and puns. (Grosz, 1990a: 77)
It is this attention given to language in the construction of selfhood that has made Lacan attractive to feminists (Grosz, 1990a). This is because his analysis emphasizes a social, rather than biological, construction of identity. Nevertheless ‘For Lacan, meaning, and the symbolic order as a whole, is fixed in relation to a primary, transcendental signifier which Lacan calls the phallus, the signifier of sexual difference, which guarantees the patriarchal structure of the symbolic order’ (Weedon, 1997: 51-2). Feminists have critiqued the status of the phallus as the central signifier of meaning in that it leaves women with no direct access to the symbolic order. Thus, while the attention given to language is important, Lacan’s analysis of the phallocentric order of meaning has been critically evaluated by post-Lacanian feminists. In this respect Weedon notes:
In post-Lacanian feminist theory attempts to rethink the symbolic order in non-patriarchal terms focus on the body of the mother and the maternal feminine. However, the focus of this work is radically different from Chodorow’s theory of mother-child relations. Under patriarchy the maternal feminine is repressed by the processes of psycho-sexual development which enable the individual to enter the symbolic order as gendered subject. It is further marginalized by the structures of the patriarchal symbolic order which govern the Law, culture and sociality. It is exiled from the symbolic order — an order which women can only inhabit via a patriarchally defined femininity. Post-Lacanian feminists have identified the unconscious as the site of the repressed feminine which has its roots in the pre-Oedipal relationship with the mother, before the feminine takes on its patriarchal definition as lack. (1999: 86-7)
Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous are regarded as central to the development of theories of post-Lacanian sexual difference. Although both designations imply a false unity of position, they are variously referred to as members of the ‘French’ school of feminism and the ecriture feminine school. This label is because of the attention they have paid to issues of language and how this is conveyed through their styles of writing. Beasley (1999: 72) notes that feminists within the school of ecriture feminine are concerned to question the Lacanian assumption ‘that femininity can only be seen from the point of view of phallic culture (culture as masculine dominance) and argues for other possibilities’. For example, Irigaray has explored a philosophy of the feminine. This has put questions of sexual difference at the centre of her exploration of women’s experiences of desire and subjectivity and the female body (Bainbridge, 2001). Because of the attention she has given in her work to the importance of the maternal function in the development of the individual, Kristeva is attributed with ‘revolutionising the position and importance of the maternal function in psychoanalytic theory’ (Oliver, 2001: 177).
Felski (1997) suggests that there is now a ‘second generation’ of feminist theorists of sexual difference writing in Europe, Australia and the United States. In this regard she names Braidotti, Grosz and Cornell respectively. Each of these theorists is striving to avoid problems of essentialism and naturalism in their work. They are also trying to avoid the problems of dematerializing women. For example, Braidotti (1994) offers the metaphor of ‘nomad’ as a way of conceiving a post-humanist utopian feminist subjectivity that is located within language and geopolitical contexts but has given up all desire for fixity. Braidotti defines sexual difference in the following terms:
sexual difference is neither an unproblematic nor an autonomous category; it is the name we give to a process by which diverse differences intersect and are activated alongside or against each other. It is the process by which subjectivity functions and should be the process by which an adequate form of politics is posited for it. (1997: 39)
Braidotti argues that central to understanding theories of sexual difference are two terms. These are paradox and contradiction. The key paradox is that: ‘Sexual difference is based on one theoretical and practical paradox: it simultaneously produces and destablizes the category ‘‘woman’’’ (ibid.: 26). ‘Woman’ theories of sexual difference form part of a broader concern with the production of the individual in modernity. They also challenge the masculinity at the heart of humanism. Sexual difference theorists also destablize the category ‘woman’ through their deconstructive approaches. These deconstructive approaches can be seen in terms of a key contradiction that is at the heart of sexual difference theorization. This contradiction is the contradiction of subjectivity: ‘Sexual difference brings into representation the play of multiple differences that structure the subject: these are neither harmonious nor homogenous, but rather internally differentiated and potentially contradictory. Therefore, sexual difference forces us to think of the simultaneity of potentially contradictory social, discursive and symbolic effects’ (ibid.: 27).
Braidotti comments that her standpoint is that:
sexual difference is primarily a political and intellectual strategy, not a philosophy. Neither dogma nor dominant doxa, it emerged mostly out of the political practice of Continental feminism in the 1970s as an attempt to move beyond some of the aporias and the dead ends of equality — minded, marxist-based feminism. (ibid.: 26, emphasis in original)
Cornell (1997) similarly offers a definition of sexual difference though her focus is to develop new conceptualizations of legal equality that focus on the female imaginary. She notes that ‘the feminine within sexual difference must be affirmed rather than repudiated’ (ibid.: 54). Cornell’s definition confirms the political significance that is accorded to sexual difference for feminist activism and lays stress on the challenge to compulsory heterosexuality:
What do I mean by sexual difference? First, I mean that who we are as sexed beings is symbolic, institutional; second, it is a way of being that claims one’s own sex outside of the imposed norms of heterosexuality. The first is a point about how to understand gender. The second is a political aspiration that must reform our dreams of how we are to be sexed and to claim our personhood at the same time. (ibid.: 41)
Cornell opposes the assumption of ‘neutered’ personhood that lies at the heart of legal theories of equality. In contrast, she is concerned to develop a theory of legal equality that takes account of individuals as sexuate beings. This is because ‘Sexed beings have a phenomenological existence that puts demands on them’ (ibid.: 42). In other words, although legal theory might assume a ‘no difference’ view of the individual, this ignores the sexed, ‘raced’ and classed meanings that make life meaningful to individuals. For example, Cornell offers the example of hair braiding that some African-Americans undertake and which can cause discrimination or harassment. She notes that hair braiding is one way in which African-American women can continue to identify with African traditions. Yet under formal equality laws in the United States ‘hair braiding is not an ‘‘immutable characteristic,’’ and therefore it does not fall under the traditional understanding of race discrimination’ (ibid.: 44). Because the law assumes a single axis of discrimination, in this case that of ‘race’, it is not possible to sue. Within Cornell’s expanded definition:
The theory of equality gives to women of all nationalities and ‘races’ the right to represent their own meaning of their racial, national, and sexual identification. The symbolic aspect of feminism implicates renaming and reshaping our form of life … I not only recognize but also insist on a feminist analysis that clearly sees that any actual specificity that is given to feminine sexual difference is inherently and necessarily racialized, nationalized, and linguistically conditioned. (ibid.: 53)
Grosz’s (1990b) comments in respect of the implications of difference in the work of Irigaray, Gallop and Cixous may therefore also be applicable to Cornell. She comments:
The notion of difference affects not only women’s definitions of themselves, but also of the world. This implies that not only must social practices be subjected to feminist critique and reorganisation, but also that the very structures of representation, meaning, and knowledge must be subjected to a thoroughgoing transformation of their patriarchal alignments. A politics of difference implies the right to define oneself, others, and the world according to one’s own interests. (1990b: 340).