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My thesis is that what passes in American cultural criticism for “Lacanian theory” presents a very limited and distorted reception of Lacan's work. I want to challenge this established picture and render palpable another dimension of Lacan, far more productive for critical social theory.
The predominant feature of this established picture is the notion of Lacan as the phallogocentrist “philosopher of language” who emphasizes the price the subject has to pay in order to gain access to the symbolic order—all the false poetry of “castration,” of some primordial act of sacrifice and renunciation, of jouissance as impossible. So let's begin with this unfortunate castration.
In what, precisely, does symbolic castration consist? The trouble with the critics of Lacan's “phallocentrism” is that, as a rule, they refer to “phallus” or “castration” in a rather commonsense metaphoric way. In the standard feminist film studies, for example, every time a man behaves aggressively toward a woman or asserts his authority over her, one can be sure that his act will be designated as “phallic.” Likewise, every time a woman is framed, rendered helpless or cornered, one can be sure her experience will be designated as “castrating.”
What gets lost here is the paradox of the phallus itself as the signifier of castration: if we are to assert our (symbolic) “phallic” authority, the price to be paid is that we have to renounce the position of agent and consent to function as the medium through which the big Other—the symbolic institution—acts and speaks. When the subject is endowed with symbolic authority, he acts as an appendix of his symbolic title: it is the big Other who acts through him. Suffice it to recall a judge who is a miserable and corrupted person, but the moment he puts on his robe and other insignia, his words are the words of Law itself.
It's the same with paternal authority: a real father exerts authority only insofar as he posits himself as the embodiment of a transcendent symbol