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In Lacanian theory, the hysteric’s relation to truth and desire separates the hysteric from the feminine. As Daniel (2009, p. 49) explains, while the hysteric suffers from castration anxiety, the feminine accepts her castration within the Symbolic, and dwells in it in a mysterious way. The ‘obsession’ of the hysteric to be completely symbolised within the (masculine) Symbolic, makes her a masculine figure (as she does not speak feminine language) but at the same time, also rebellious and powerful. This is the paradox of the hysteric’s position.
The hysteric posits herself as a masculinized figure, a being who only desires to symbolize herself as phallic. She plays her part in the game, as a symbol of feminine jouissance and her only concern is to sustain the frustration. She conforms to and perpetuates the Other’s fantasy of the feminine. But she also problematizes the Other’s claim on truth and exposes his lack, and this makes her truth-demand productive. She retains perpetual dissatisfaction as an inexhaustible source. Her operation exposes the dominant discourse as oppressive and the Other’s language as inadequate and limiting. This language does not acknowledge her infinity. She posits herself as objet a and problematizes the masculine understanding of the feminine. What makes her powerless is her incapability of dealing with her own truth -which she cannot articulate- and expecting answers from the Other.
The feminine is castrated as she inhabits the Symbolic but at the same time, she evades being fully inscribed in it, and has a different ontic quality, which Daniel defines as “a relation to infinity” (2009, p. 50). The feminine subject “exposes the Other’s powerlessness and lack in subversive ways” (Daniel, p. 65). The hysteric resists articulating and symbolizing her being, whereas the feminine inhabits the phallic economy as a speaking subject and exposes its weak edifice: “the feminine actualises her own desiring cause, overcomes the automatic law-like symbolic functioning, and engenders something new in the social realm” (Daniel, p. 49). The feminine inhabits the Symbolic and evades it at the same time.
The hysteric is permanently alienated within the Symbolic and is unable to say her truth. She is caught in the trap of the game with the Other. She is stuck within the desire to be a phallic symbol for the Other. She cannot symbolize her trauma and attempts to hide her castration. She must posit herself as the Other’s object of desire. She also attempts to hide that she is inscribed within the Symbolic, that she is always-already castrated. For Žižek, the hysteric wounds herself to hide the wound of castration which is already there. To redeem herself, she must symbolize her loss/absence and convey her trauma into words, separate herself from the Other and accept the Other’s inability to explain her truth: “only then is she able to move from having a symptom in relation to the Other to becoming the symptom of the Other, the symptom of a man’s finite and dichotomous logic” (Daniel, 2009, p. 73).
In Lacanian theory, woman is not wholly inscribed in the phallic function, she defies being limited to phallic representation, as her relation to language is not wholly phallic. Woman is not entirely castrated because she is not completely bound by the signifier and has a relation to what is beyond the phallic paradigm. There is an excess of woman that is not in the Symbolic. The hysteric is reliant on the other for her identity but the feminine both has a presence within the Symbolic and other jouissance. Lacanian theory tells that the feminine has a bond to what lies beyond the contingency of the Symbolic, that she “unveils something that is excessive, unlimited, and destabilising in language” (Daniel, p. 76-77).
Contrary to the hysteric, the feminine subject does not preserve the cycle of desire qua unsatisfied. She articulates her being with words and enjoys both within the Symbolic and at the same time supersedes it as a being who is not-wholly inscribed within the phallic law. The feminine subject articulates her truth through her own language, through the analytical process, and this way, she establishes her femininity as both representable and something more than the Other’s deficient or inadequate symbolizations and representations.
Bibliography
Daniel, K. C. (2009) Dialogues between Feminists and Jacques Lacan on Female Hysteria and Femininity, PhD Thesis, Duquesne University, https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/455
liquid ground 