Disrupting the Fantasy

“Disrupting the Fantasy: Adorno and the Working-Class Woman” exposes Adorno’s identity thinking in his figurations of the “working-class woman.” The forms in which she appears in Adorno’s texts (the phallic, castrating, and castrated woman) correspond to the three dimensions (the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real) through which Lacan mapped his thought. In all of these forms she advances to object petit a (Lacan)—the unconscious fantasy object that promises to cover up the fears and desires that non-wholeness incites. That the thinker of non-identity reinforces identity thinking exposes some of the challenges to realizing the idea of a (feminist) political subject-in-outline. For such a subject to be able to transform the status quo and remain inclusive, it must deal with the (unconscious) desires and fears the remaining-with-holes incites.