Sexuation as Sublimation. The Function of Desire for the Process of Subject-Formation

Abstract

J. Butler emphasized with S. Freud the identifications of the child (The Psychic Life of Power 1997), in so far as she pointed out that gender identity is a product of a melancholic introjection of the early other. But what, if someone doesn’t consider the oedipal identifications to be the determining factor for sexualization, but desire? This question I would like to raise with J. Lacan, who understood desire as a structural capacity of the subject. This capacity occurs, as soon as the maternal attachment figure is substituted by symbols, which enables the child later to substitute its next of kin, restricted by the incest taboo, with legitimate objects of desire. This two stage process shifts sexualization into proximity with sublimation, whereby sexualization can be understood as a special form of sublimation. In the process, desire proves to be more sustainable than the identifications, since it leads the subject - beyond dangerous melancholy entanglements - to the third and the Other in the social context. Sexuality thus understood through desire also has sociopolitical relevance, since identity does not have to be understood as the central pivotal point of subject formation: gender politics would not only be a matter for identical identification groups, but for a community that is always to be created by the shared wish for a new livable desire in our society.