Lacan Ho's

I was struck by a confluence in the blogosphere--Hysterical Blackness's discussion of  the current (as in marked clearly by the Oscar for best song)  "promotion of black men as the "pimp" & black women as willing "ho" and comments on a thread at the Weblog that reduce women who write about Lacan to Lacan whores.

First, read the insightful remarks from HB:

Do you think there's any connection between/among the promotion of black men as the "pimp" & black women as willing "ho" and the global emphasis on and anxiety around sexual slavery as practice, as commercial enterprise? In each case particular underlying economic (and other) factors, interests, causes are repressed. Think, for example, of Nicholas Kristof of the NYTimes and his "purchasing" (abolitionist emancipation) of Cambodian prostitutes and his new focus on prostitutes in Calcutta. In his focus on prostitution Alexander Cockburn writes that he ignores that, "India has endured more than a decade of virtually unimaginable rural torment consequent upon imposition of neoliberal "reforms" editorially endorsed and endlessly hailed by Times reporters" and the relationship of "women's issues" to the "agrarian crisis." (See: The Nation (Nick Kristof's Brothel Problem).)

OK. Now the production of black man as pimp and black woman as (willing) ho stands in marked contrast to those who struggle to free themselves from prostition, who experience prostitution as degradation and not as "style" qua authenticity. Does this become a way again of making black bodies (and in particular black female bodies) incapable of being violated? Is this another return of the body (the subject) impossible to rape?

Compare to the stupidity of  a commenter to the thread Knowingness and How to Communicate it: "Lots of coke whores, few or no Lacan whores.  Except for Analia, of course." Mr. Misogyny goes on to write:

Ok, there are no Lacan whores. Or maybe lots of them, as John seems to be saying. And Žižek has not attained the kind of Tom Cruise status where people can make snarky remarks about his youthful partners. And Anália is not an odd name for a psychoanalyst's daughter and wife, and "analia and genitalia" doesn't get 500+ hits on Google (with or without the accent).

So, not only is an attractive woman is designated as a Lacan whore, but all women who write about Lacan are.What makes this kind of move possible? Is it the presumption that women cannot think at all? That we only pretend to think so that we can hook up with all those brilliant intellectual men out there?  Why this sexualization, this presumption that women who write about Lacan are selling their bodies? It looks like a big old fantasy to me.

And, why this not so hidden racism, this reliance on a racist trope? Not only is Analia (Zizek's wife, a Lacanian scholar) dismissed in a shockingly xenophobic fashion (funny name? what's up with that? because she isn't named Laura Bush or something similarly vowel deficient? or is this something more specifically anti-Argentinian?) but the entire "whore" motif is prominent today because of the way that it functions as blackface without the cork--as HB rightly points out in the comments on her post.

Comments

[Nate]

hi Jodi,

Wow the Weblog comment box suddenly developed a nasty locker odor there. Christ. That's one of those fucked up things that is surprising in part for its continual ability to surprise, given how common those ideas are.

As for what makes this possible, I don't understand the question, I think, because I just want to say: the guys are pigs and chickens, hence the saying of that stuff and the not calling each other on it. That's not really an explanation, of course, but I'm not sure what kind of explanations are possible, nor what function they serve. But then, I'm one who is content to just dislike people for who they are, rather than try to understand why they are who they are.

The term 'whore' has always made me uncomfortable. There's a scene in a movie I otherwise really like, Cradle Will Rock, where a character who I think is supposed to evoke Brecht says 'we are all whores' a few times. It bugs me that somehow the sale that a prostitute does is taken to be the metaphor for the most degrading sale one can make. I mean, I'm all for women (and men, of course) in sexwork getting out if that's what they want, but the whole use of the emotional charge to the word 'whore' seems just a few steps from villifying (sp?) or patronizing the workers who do that type of job, not to mention the implied gendered move - one is metaphorically like something else that is shameful, something implied to be feminine and immoral. Ugh. Anyway, good on you for calling folks out.
best,
Nate

[old]

where is this on the weblog? I can't seem to find it, though there have been some larger comment threads lately ...

[Jodi]

Old--The thread is called Knowingness and How to communicate it.

[Amish Lovelock]

"There is something about an encounter with Lacan that produces arrogance in the subject."

The arrogance here was far from the encounter with Lacan, methinks.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Jodi,

With all respect (and I have quite a bit for you) I think this is a misunderstanding. Adam's original post had nothing to do with women scholars and John's joke, while not funny or clever, was certainly not meant to suggest that women who write on Lacan are whores or stupid. I know this attitude exists in academia, but, as a personal friend of Adam, I know that he doesn't hold this opinion in any way (John, well, he might, I haven't asked).

I do hope this misunderstanding is cleared up, though I don't know what needs to happen for that to occur.

[Jodi]

Anthony--I fully agree that this doesn't have anything to do with Adam at all. You are completely right that his original post had nothing even remotely related to this. That's yet another reason that John's remarks are so unbearably offensive--they are completely out of the blue, like he can't contain his sexist disregard for intelligent women.
Additionally, John's remark was very much to suggest that women who write on Lacan are whores--that is what he says. So, I disagree with you on that point.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Concede, concede.

Re: Analia's name. Is this a name in common use and so only appears to be clever because of English misunderstanding? I'm not making a moral judgement, I have friends who named their children after Joyce characters and I've named my ferrets after philosophers and their characters. Anyway, I hope you'll still be talking with us.

[Jodi]

Thanks, Anthony. Yes, I'll still be talking with you. I think the Weblog is terrific and that John's comments are exceptions. I'm not sure what you mean about Analia's name. On the one hand, do people who is there something amusing about the name Dick? or John (ooh, it also means toilet!) On the other, even my seven year old knows that it is inappropriate to mock people's names.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

No, I wasn't making fun of her name, I was asking if Analia is like Dick or John or if it is more like, say, Morning Star (an ex-girlfriend).

[Jodi]

Sorry I wasn't clear, Anthony. I thought you were referring to the way that John was making fun of her name (not that you were but that you were referencing that). I don't know for sure, but I would guess that the name isn't like Morning-Star. I would think it akin to names like Analise, Thalia, Amelie, Amelia, that sort of thing.

[josef k.]

Incidentally, though a little unrelated - on the whore/pimp motif - Marx continually deploys this trope thoughout the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to describe the functioning of capitalism, along the lines of the most degrading relation he can think of.

[John Emerson]

Adam said that reading Lacan in French did not help him attain success with certain women. Later on he made a joke about these women instead wanted him to do a couple of lines.

Drawing on my experience of the skeezy areas of restaurant business, I made a coke-whore joke and dragged Analia's name into it. Because after all, Zizek's ability to read Lacan in French did apparently get him somewhere with her.

I in no way meant that she really is a Lacan whore, or that anyone is a Lacan whore, or that anyone should be a Lacan whore. I was not trying to make any serious or satirical comment at all about women in general or women in academia.

It was a joke not meant to have any serious underlying meaning, but partly having something to do with Zizek being an aging celebrity with a youthful bride, and me being an aging nonentity without a youthful bride.

I have also made jokes about Arendt and Heidegger. I have great respect for Arendt, who I read, and not much for Heidegger, who I no longer read, but I make the jokes anyway. Quite possibly Analia will accomplish great things in her own work, just as Arendt did.

I have always thought that her name is a very odd one in English, and yes, I would make jokes about a Dick or a Peter except that those jokes have already been made too many times.

I spend a lot of blogosphere time in areas where this kind of humor is more common. Adam's site is not one of those places, but I go there for other reasons and bring my particular style of humor with me sometimes.

Adam likes some of my stuff on certain topics which are all non-gender-related, and so I post at his site sometimes on those topics. He does not endorse everything I do or write and should not be held responsible for these posts of mine.

I was a bit irritated by what I thought was an overreaction to my first post so I pushed it farther in my second. For Adam's sake, probably I shouldn't have done this.

[Jodi]

Consequently, in your second you did say that other women working on Lacanian themes are Lacan whores, a move that you only 'probably' should not have done and that only for Adam's sake rather than because it was wrong, sexist, racist, and deeply offensive.

[John Emerson]

No, I thought that John's list of women who had written about Lacan was a response to something I hadn't said that he believed that I had said, which apparently was that women are no good, or that women can't write about Lacan, or something like that. So I was ridiculing that.

[Jodi]

"Ok, there are no Lacan whores. Or maybe lots of them, as John seems to be saying."

looks to me like you are ridiculing women who write about Lacan, particularly in light of the fact that John's comment reads as follows:

"I second the motion that the comment about Analía is offensive, or, at the very least, satisfied with its own ignorance. I think my engagement with Lacan has reaped the benefits of concurrent engagement with thinkers like Shoshana Felman, Colette Soler, Joan Copjec, Josefina Ayerza, Flower MacConnell, Catherine Liu, and Jacqueline Rose. Given the little I've seen of Analía Hounie's work, limited as it is to just her organizational role in several conferences in Buenos Aries, and editing Žižek’s Argentine lecture series, Violencia En Acto, I have no reason to think that, when and if she chooses to write or lecture, that what she produces would be any less valuable to serious Lacanian scholarship."

[John Emerson]

I thought that John was silly to make such a long response to something that I hadn't said or intended to say about women in general.

If he had just said that Analia is great, that would have made sense, except that I wasn't trying to say anything meaningful or serious about her either.

[Jodi]

Rather, you were saying something nasty and malicious because she is an attractive woman. This is the problem. That kind of thing isn't funny. It's mean and dismissive.

What's intriguing is the way you keep deflecting any responsibility for what you wrote--saying you didn't say it or didn't intend to say it.

[John Emerson]

I plead guilty to saying something nasty and malicious. I say nasty and malicious things about guys a lot too, but not at that particular moment. I have to admit that to me that Zizek and his lovely bride have ascended into the celebrity class of semi-real people who naturally attract snark, nastiness, and malice.

[John Emerson]

I plead guilty to saying something nasty and malicious. I say nasty and malicious things about guys a lot too, but not at that particular moment. I have to admit that to me that Zizek and his lovely bride have ascended into the celebrity class of semi-real people who naturally attract snark, nastiness, and malice.

[John Emerson]

I have asked Adam to remove my second post, but not my first. I concede that that post was offensive, at least in that venue. I do not concede that the first post was offensive, but admit that my annoyance at the claims that it was caused me to go over the top in the second one.

I don't expect this deletion to make anyone happy. For 30 years now I have disliked the weird mix of kinkiness, prissiness, liberation, obsession, and dialectics involved in the genteel American academic politics of sex and gender, and that's not going to change. People committed to that kind of politics will quite rightly dislike my stuff on those and related topics.

[peBird]

Isn't this joke on the level of finding out that Freudians are psycho-anal-ysts (hardy har).

Or after taking your first astronomy class that they "discovered rings around Uranus"?

The offense is in the lack of humor. Be funnier next time.

[John Emerson]

I really doubt that that is the problem, PB. I've made bad jokes before.

[Jodi]

So, now I am prissy and genteel for calling you out for you sexism? Ok. So be it. Your remarks denigate a woman because she is beautiful. That is sexism plain and simple. You use a racialism and sexualism term to effect this denigration. And, you admit that this was nasty and malicious even as you deflect those who point that out as, to return to the beginning, prissy and genteel. Clearly you are incapable of participating in discussions with anyone but white men who agree with your dismissive old boy behavior.

[John Emerson]

I am incapable of participating in discussions with you. My original joke did not deserve your attack, or John's. My response probably did.

I do not attack all atractive women. I didn't even attack Analia. I made a throwaway joke.

Analia, like most Argentines and like most of us, is Caucasian. Drop the racism part.

I suppose I should go through my files now and find cases where I made comparable dismissive, smutty jokes about heterosexual white men. It shouldn't be that hard, but why bother? I think that we actually have a pretty good mutual understanding already.

[Jodi]

The racism part comes from the way that whore or 'ho' has been reinvigorated in contemporary discourse--a point well made in the Hysterical Blackness post.

When someone dismisses thinking women in a sexist way, they say that women are not worth taking seriously. Perhaps, you would grasp this point more readily if it were linked to anti-Semitism, and the dismissal of someone in anti-semitism terms, or perhaps you would grasp it if it were made homophobically. But, perhaps you can't.

[old]

Just want to register that I think that John is completely wrong here. If the initial 'joke' was a slip, a completely unintentional suggestion that all female Lacanian's were whores, then you should have backtracked and apologized immediately instead of making things worse. I can understand if your problem is with the way Zizek's new wife could easily appear to be a trophy bride, but the 'joke' (Lacan whores) completely didn't match.

Apologizing and then later being willing to remove the second comment were good moves, but have unfortunately been accompanied by an assinine strategy of simultaneously continuing to pour fuel on the fire. In fact, the last comment concerning prissiness and genteelness have only served to show that Jodi was entirely correct to get angry in the first place. Why in the hell should Jodi, all female Lacan scholars, and, apparently, any woman who has ever written about feminist issues be irrationally grouped together?

If anything, even from within the ridiculous position you are taking with respect to the 'American academic politics of sex and gender', Jodi should be applauded. She has made herself into a damn good, hard nosed scholar who now writes primarily on a couple of philosophers (Zizek and Badiou) who have made it a point to swim against the grain in denouncing identity politics, etc. If Jodi reacted that strongly to something I'd written as a sex or gender joke, I'd immediately know without further consideration that i'd gone way, way the hell across the line. I do not want to be a part of an dismissive old boys posse, and if this cannot be resolved satisfactorily, I will have to sadly, but seriously consider giving up my position on the weblog roster.

[John Emerson]

What I said was that "unfortunately there are no Lacan whores". That's rather different than saying that all female Lacanians are whores.

The context of the joke was Adam's saying a.) his knowledge of Lacan got him nowhere with women and then later b.) that certain women wanted to do lines with him. I took it from there and added c.) Zizek's knowledge of Lacan did seem to get him somewhere with Analia.

To me that's obviously a throwaway wisecrack making no serious statement about Lacan, Zizek, Lacanians, Analia, or anything else. So I was offended when others were offended at it.

The "coke whore" was a recognizable type in the restaurant biz I knew of, and in Portland they were mostly white. So that phrase was in my vocabulary.

I've always felt like the odd man out at Adam's blog, where I never write about sexual politics, so perhaps I should be the one to leave if anyone does.

[Adam Kotsko]

John has tendered his resignation from The Weblog.

[Jodi]

Old--thank you for your kind words, your thoughtful intervention, and for your stand. It's strange and sad that John chose the option of leaving the weblog rather than recognizing how his comment was offensive. Until the prissy business I had actually thought that some progress was being made (as you suggest in your post). What's also odd is how in his mind this became a matter of writing about sexual politics--but maybe that makes more sense to weblog regulars. Again, thank you.

[Adam Kotsko]

I do not think that John intended to say that his lack of writing about sexual politics was the reason he felt like the odd man out. It probably had more to do with not being a graduate student in religion. The Weblog is not known for its constant fixation on sexual politics, as far as I can tell.

[Jodi]

Precisely. And thus why I found the way it put it quite odd.

[new york pervert]

John--you're pathetic, giving in to such incredible pettiness about something that was indeed nothing but a throwaway wisecrack. If you can't stand up to this kind of silly bullshit, masquerading as seriousness by a 'hardnosed scholar' who's just trying to hitch her wagon to a star (no matter what he comes up with), what are you going to do next? Publish a Muslim cartoon? Refuse to support 9/11 insider conspiracies? If you were going to resign from the Weblog, the least you could have done would have been to fight off this oppressive 'person' who censors like fucking Pravda.

[Jodi]

welcome back, Patrick.

[new york pervert]

Jodi, thanks for you warm welcome. I realize that I've been silly and beyond rude and I humbly beg your forgiveness. From now on, I will be on my best behavior, treating others with kindness and respect.

[Padraig]

Are these antics a prelude to St Patrick's Day, Mr McManus?

Major: Will you give the Court your name, fellow?
Padraig: Is it my name, sir? Ah, your jokin' ...
Defence Counsel: Come, Padraig, my man.
Padraig: There, didn't I tell ye! He knows me well enough.
Major: Padraig, that's the Irish for Patrick, I gather.
Padraig: No sir; Patrick is the English for Padraig.
Major: Are you guilty as charged?
Padraig: Shure, I thought that was what we'd all come here to find out.

John and Patrick's hysterical sexism, and pretexts for thereof, recall another Zizek anecdote:

"In the summer of 2000, a disturbing advertising poster was displayed in all large German towns: it depicted a girl in her late teens in a sitting position, holding a TV remote control in her right hand, staring at the spectators with a resigned and, at the same time, provocative gaze; her skirt did not fully cover her slightly spread thighs, so that one could clearly perceive the dark patch between them. This large photo was accompanied by the words ‘Kauf mich!’ (‘Buy me!’). So what was this poster advertising? On closer inspection, it was clear that it had nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality: it endeavored to solicit young people to play the stock market and buy shares. The double entendre on which its effect relied was that the first impression, according to which we, the spectators, were interpellated to buy the young girl herself (ostensibly for sexual favors), was supplanted by the ‘true’ message: she is the one who is doing the buying, not the one who is for sale. Of course, the efficiency of the poster relied on the initial sexual ‘misunderstanding’ which, although it was subsequently supplanted, continued to reverberate even when one discerned the ‘true’ meaning. THIS is sexuality in psychoanalysis: not the ultimate point of reference, but the detour of an initial misunderstanding which continues to reverberate even after we reach the ‘true’, asexual meaning."

... psychoanalysis of course being nothing more than the study of "a throwaway wisecrack," as Patrick would have it.

[Jodi]

Bravo!
The gloss from the example of the ad helps me understand better the offense of attaching the word 'whore' to the intelligent women--it relies on a displacement of her position as a buyer.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Jesus, someone quit over this? Sigh.