London Society seminar: Psychoanalysis, Trans & Gender, with special guest Fabian Fajnwaks
LONDON SOCIETY SEMINAR
“Psychoanalysis, Trans & Gender”
with special guest Fabian Fajnwaks
Saturday 11th December 2021 | ONLINE
The Lacan Quotidien newsletter “2021 année trans” has elicited renewed discussions in our school and in our cartels, while giving rise to desires to respond to what is customary to describe as the trans phenomenon, the trans movement, trans discourse, trans revendications or trans critiques (of psychoanalysis). It seems that the only sure way to grasp trans is as an attributive adjective, or as predicate trans(x). This constitutes Trans as One, single, unique, indivisible and, in some occurrences, self-referent. Trans there is, Y’a du trans, and trans is trans. This enables certain types of responses to it while foreclosing others.
On one hand then, what do we call the trans phenomenon? Is it singular, and if so who are its subject and its object? Is it best viewed as a synchronic formation S2 or as a diachronic one S/s? And what might we call trans discourse or discourse of gender study? Must it be seized as a particular case of the general “trans” mutation we can notice as a symptom of civilisation where transitions between men and women and machines and knowledge are taking place as transhumanism, cyborgs and other mutants?
On the other hand, how does Lacanian psychoanalysis approach the question of gender? How can we, from the psychoanalytic clinic, account for medically assisted gender fluidity and the “neutral” gender as new revendication and new right of subjects in the 21st century? Whereby trans sexual subjects very often have a very precise Ideal of the Woman or Man they want to become as an exception to the Universal order, transgender subjects are usually looking for a singular RSI nomination knotting a sinthomatic solution. That sets different demands and different clinical orientations.
Psychoanalysis shares the denaturalisation of sexuality with gender studies, but it doesn’t confine itself to a simple deconstruction of gender seen as a social norm. But to restore the sense of the Lacanian orientation in matters of gender, one needs to go beyond the misunderstandings and misconceptions engendered by famous authors of gender studies such as Judith Butler, Monique Wittig, Gayle Rubin or Eve Kosofski Sedgwick. If the analytic cure revolves around questions such as “what is it to be a woman?” or “how to be a man?”, it nevertheless does not invite the subject in analysis to conform to gender norms. Beyond identification to a mode of jouissance that may be shared with others, beyond belonging to a community that allows the subject to identify itself with others, psychoanalysis invites each person, in their solitude, to confront themselves to a kernel of jouissance, which is also what Lacan called “a real.”
Our special guest to help us approach these questions will be Fabian Fajnwaks, who is a psychoanalyst, senior lecturer in the department of psychoanalysis of the University of Paris VIII, and member of the ECF. In 2015, Fabian Fajnwaks and Clotilde Leguil published Subversion lacanienne des theories du genre (Editions Michèle), which attempts to let the ethical and political stakes of psychoanalysis emerge in response to gender studies.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS TICKET IS FOR A ZOOM MEETING FOR WHICH YOU WILL RECEIVE A LINK ON THE EVENING BEFORE THE EVENT AND AT 1:30PM ON THE DAY.
