In psychoanalysis, at least since Lacan - we may hence speak of women not merely as symptoms a -la woman as a symptom of man, but woman also as semblance. That is a kind of object, for which we may still inquire as to how it maps with our fantasy. What is a fantasy? The fictive arrangement of objects which transforms them from mere things to object causes of desire.
And yet, perhaps to more practiced ears, we may notice a certain algebraic semblance in our concept of semblance. That is to say not merely a kind of regulated substitutability of an object for a sign, but a certain use that an object is put to as well. Does this not make our category of women a semblance par excellence?
A semblance however is not a concept, which is perhaps why Lacan says that Woman does not exist, there are only women. A perspective that Miller adds has been known since at least the greeks.
Miller however also presents us with another definition of semblance, that is as a mask for nothingness. He also states that we all have a relation to nothingness, but that the relation of female subjects is 'more essential and more immediate'.
Shyness, perhaps as a semblance is perhaps compared in its function to the veil. The aspect of its localization when performed also paradoxically serves to bring attention to the site in question. In this sense, the line between shyness and respect is a fine one. Freud, in an article from 1932 considers shyness in its manifestation from feminine maturation. A gesture which veils the absence of the genital organ.
We would do well to note that shyness, in its closeness to respect, is an aspect which is not relegated to the young and sensuous. It is not hard to notice a delirious - (Miller), but he does not go as far as to call it hysterical demand, for respect among older people. And the truth is that his hypothesis - that this rises in the absence of an analyst who can make their demands, the valence of their discourse commiserable with perspectives and developments of the day.
Psychoanalysis has said much about the role of the father, and Miller does ask whether the demand for respect is really a demand for a respect of the distance of the father? And here, I think any who are new amongst us would be well directed to familiarise themselves with Lacan's basic argument regarding the phallic function or the authority of the father algebraically defined in Lacanese as The Name of the Father, and its seeming negation or perhaps sublation into the introduction of the child to the symbolic order, and its role within society.
The feminine is indeed a privileged space in psychoanalysis, inasmuch as the discourse of the analyst one is trained to be attentive to the protective impulse in shyness, to the stunted appearance of inhibition, and of course to the sense of injustice that animates any complaint.
Apart from these readily identifiable symptoms - Miller also alerts us to a sense of not having the right to knowledge, and a feeling of illegitimacy. This of course leads to the possibility of possessing and the means of acquisition which can or may succeed in 'filling the hole in the lack'.
There is however another approach which Miller suggests, instead of trying to 'fill the hole, and that is in metabolising it, dialectising it, and in being this hole. In other words, making onself into a being with nothingness.
The appelation in French, to refer to the wife as bourgeoise as in 'ma bourgeoise' (my wife) is perhaps indicative of the kind of ambivalence, that semblance can work with. Alluding to the construal that it might be her who runs or is in charge of the family finances.
In this sense, to become the Other of a demand, ie a mother, figure of authority etc. is to become 'she who has par excellence'.
Instead Miller returns to his point by presenting psychoanalysis as a clinic for the feminine, or perhaps in his own words - a being with nothingness.
He noticeses corporeal fragmentation to be expressed occasionally in this state, along with a lack of identity and consistency, which he gathers from testimonies. Symptoms as it were, or signs if you please which do not sound unlike alienation, perhaps of even the most intimate corporeal kind which modernist literature is replete with. Yet, Miller here seeks to bring to light affects such as losing control fo the body and of psychic pain in seeking to characterise this being absent from oneself; perhaps as he put it - a feeling of radical incompleteness. And here, i cannot but recall Bloch's account of the darkness of the lived moment, nor can I forget his seeming messicanic demand of ontological incompleteness, and perhaps there remaisn an account to be written between these two unfinished projects that may in fact be one.
A common resistance to this is identified. The whole which allows a discourse to welcome is seemingly transposed into the Other, attacking the Other's completeness as it were. Lacan once said that it was Marx who identified, if not created the symptom; that in bourgeoise society relations between people dissolve into relations between things. The common refrain being your money can do things which you cannot. As a metaphor to depict the exchange of commodities in the market - this has proved to be enduringly suggestive.
Another, perhaps more vicious interpretation does present itself to us however, of the logic of the scapegoat often deployed in many absolutist narratives, of the Muslin, the outsider, the jew, immigrants, rabble etc. who represent the detrius of society, and whom we would only gain by eliminating or harming.
It is important to notice following Zizek, that seemingly every discourse, that is seemingly every fictive semblance that provides an evocation of a 'we' or society - leaves this remainder, and - as such it represents soemthing of a discoursive structural symptomal point. The key as it were to understanding a society.
Miller uses the expression 'being a phallus', to indicate a correspondence with the Other's lack, that is being the hole for the other, and here I add that this may also seem to be as the object-cause of desire for another, which brings us to Miller's second empasis - that is as an attempt to embody this hole, potentially displacing the determinateness of the Other's desire; reducing it as it were to a semblance. The act of a true woman is raised, again a semblance but a Lacanian evocation. Yet this section is less clear to me - though it is characterized as a sacrifice of possesions, perhaps warranting the monicker. Added to this is a consent to the precise modality of her castration.
The domesticity implicit in such acts should not be misconstrued for Lacan does provide us or rather cites an example if not an archetype - that is Medea. After having sacrificed and left behind her father and country to live with Jason, she is unable to reoncile with his later desire to marry someone else. He offers to look after their children and pay her bills seems paltry as she is in a predicament where having would note have any meaning without Jason.
Here, her revenge is telling. She does not kill Jason, she kills his new bride and her own children. Euripides' most horrific piece of theatre perhaps. We are presented with this however as an example of what it may mean to be a woman beyond being a mother.
A few more notes on such a figure, whose example is admittedly illustrative for us regarding object relations, lest the context of an example lulls us to the passions at stake. In the act of a true woman, that is beyond the role of a mother, we have a figure who transgresses, hence unpacking uncharted domains.
This can also be done however by doing less and the case of Gide's wife offers us an exemplary example. Sticking by her husband, sacrificially almost, but in an infamous act burning the letters of their correspondence which spanned back to their first meeting. A possession that both had claimed a value to, which they had even spoken of as their dearest possession. Miller tries to show us that thisact is not a negotiation but an emmerging. And, in a certain sense, an answer to a percieved betrayal.
The man as portrayed by Lacan, is on the other hand, cowardly. Even if he goes to war, it is to flee women, burdened by having as he is. His sense of possession also bears with it the fear of its theft, a further encumberance. Masculine cowardice and the limitless feminine. There may indeed be a psychic link that this sense of having has to masturbation, which may hold as some last refuge of jouissance.
In view of allegorical criticism Miller introduces a character here - the Postiche Woman. An individual, who adds on what she lacks but only if it secretly comes from a man. And yet, this must seem to come from her, and appearances of course are to be repspected. I would add here that often the only way this supplement is of the man is by the way of an object choice. This is an aspect of character, so to speak, which is sharply distinguished from and dissasociated from the phallic woman. The latter is a figure who assumes her lack of having which is why she is able to be the phallus, that is what men lack. 'The postich woman' however would hide her lack of having and pretend to be the possessor who 'lacks nothing and no one'. In fact her exess lies in the savagery with which she protects what is hers. According to Lacan, a true woman is one who can allow a man to show that it is he who desires, rather than denouncing men as castrated seemingly completing herself in this condition.
Mdea, at the end of the play departs on the winder chariot of the sun. She demands, nay commands respect as an absolute right, and assumes the sufficient distance necessary to make the postiche woman beliveable. The absurdity of having is what a true woman on the contrary opens up for a man. To end this account with a quote - 'the postiche woman who does not seem castrated, does not threaten men because she does not deamnd that he desire - aquiring respect and rest from castration. Miller does introduce the appearance of this term in Lacan's own work and I would recommend that you read this essay yourself, Pg 22, Duke Univerversity Press if you would like to familiarise yourself with it.
There is a way in which the knowledge of women has been condified so to speak, by past and still enduring institutions, such as the church, with its prescriptions of poverty and chastity. In some of these scenarios the lie, or rather its act itself come to take the place of object a. The vows themselves however, like any vows - work to frame jouissance in a particular way, that is beyond the phallus. Acknowledging that god himself may be called for here.
Indeed, we cannot read these passages without recalling the institutional disenfranchisement of women's knowledge, to the extent where they begin to doubt themselves and what they know, without that is a legitimate way of expressing themselves. This may not however foreclose the fact that occasionally they may require analysis to be made cognizant of what they do know. the position of object a, that is the object cause of desire does suit them inasmuch as it requires a degree of accomodation to the Other's fantasy. This of course is a position with singular demand and here the analyst may on occasion be delegated some of these responsibilities. Analysis, among other things, also provides them with a place of rest. There may also be, on occasion a degree of identification with the role of object a which creates a resistance in ceding it to another even if it is to an analyst.
Masculine desire recognizes a will to jouissance, even in perversion - designating this charge as it were as (phi - the Greek letter) encountering objects that is what yields a - representing their relation if you will. A relation if you will recall, we did a little to explicate at the begininng of this review. it also frames however what is referred to as a partia object, or an object of drive. For the purpose of this presentation over video I shall skip over the formulae of sexuation which you would still find in my notes attached : $ <> Ø (a) - masculine desire. Ⱥ (Ø) - feminine desire. The consistency of the Ø function becomes more insistent when the man discovers the course of his desire.
The end of analysis, beyond and often through all possible cynicisms often consists in the pass, of which I do hope you read some of Lacan. Howver where does that leave the subject. The subject may identify with their symptom for instance instead of trying to disavow it. the revelation of this jouissance is what eliminates their lack of being. For others, it may consist in apassage through fantasy, and its concurrent access to contingency and the feeling of liberty Miller indicates that the pass reveals to the jury a sexual difference in fantasy. Traversing the fantasy however unveils teh significance of jouissance. Miller ends by emphasising the feminine position of the analyst, which the rhetoric of his presentation and my own semblances would lead me to consider a symbol of resistance.
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