Sexistence: Nancy and Lacan

This chapter focuses on the philosophical difference between Nancy and Lacan. This difference is already present in The Title of the Letter that Nancy coauthored with Lacoue-Labarthe, but it becomes even clearer in Nancy’s “The ‘There Is’ of Sexual Relation,” which runs counter to Lacan’s declaration that “there is no sexual relation.” This thought trajectory furthermore allows Nancy to develop in the more recent Sexistence an ontological difference that is de jure sexual, which this chapter argues can be read as postdual, transindividual, essentially trans. In this regard, Nancy’s thought, additionally, can be instrumental in thinking a Fourth Wave feminism: one that insists on not bracketing the fact that we are not beyond historical struggles for parity within binary differences; one that involves the philosophizing in sex that mobilizes psychoanalysis, philosophy, and translation studies.