Deleuze, Lacan, and the Becoming of Sexuation

This book brings together Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two thinkers widely considered to be incommensurable, in order to reconcile two positions also often considered to be incommensurable: sexual difference theory and gender theory. Sexual difference theory, represented here by Luce Irigaray, maintains that sexual difference has ontological primacy; gender theory, represented by Judith Butler, argues that sexual difference is merely an effect of discursive power. After explaining this apparent theoretical impasse, the book turns to Deleuze's use of psychoanalysis to offer an account that accommodates the concerns of both frameworks. It then applies this account to contemporary debates about gender identity and embodiment through what the author calls Deleuzian sexuation. Ultimately, the book contends that sexual difference is the central idea linking Deleuze and Lacan, and that Deleuzian sexuation holds sexual difference and gender theories together. A novel perspective on a crucial yet intractable problem, this book will be of interest to students of Continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory, trans studies, and gender studies.

Matt Lovett is a teaching associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and a candidate analyst with the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis.

Introduction: Paralipsis, Tension, Plot Chapter 1: The Problem of Sexual Difference: Irigaray, Butler, Deleuze Chapter 2: The Sexual Genesis of Thought: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis Chapter 3: Ungrounding Grounds: The Deleuzian Idea and the Lacanian Sinthome Chapter 4: Deleuzian Sexuation, via Lacan Chapter 5: The Becoming of Sexuation and the Problem of Sexual Difference Afterword: To Speak Ontologically References