Femininity and the Limits of Theory

It seems that in approaching the question of femininity, theory comes up against a limit, a point of the unknown. According to Freud the constructions of theory are the fruit of a psychic activity at work in the secondary process, aiming to create coherent relationships between things. This need for rational explanations is informed by repression and censorship. Freud remarks that the activity of thought is the “surrogate” of desire. Thought “inherits” its messianic quality from desire: Thought's search for solution, for logical answers, will move toward refinding a mythical lost completeness. The encounter with the Real, with what is unknown insofar as it is out of symbolization, opposes the messianic movement of thought. An example of this encounter is the discovery of sexual difference: Children's sexual theories emerge as a response to a difficulty of symbolization. Castration anxiety represents as an imaginary absence an impossibility of thought. If femininity is the name given to the object when this object “cannot be named because it is lacking,” femininity represents both the outcome of the law of desire, which, in order to exist, presupposes a missing object and the encounter with a limit of symbolization.