Charles Taylor’s ‘Sexuated’ Subjects
WILLIAM J. URBAN
NOTES
1 These two articles appear to be written at around the same time, with large sections of text shared verbatim. However, since each develop important ideas not found in the other, we here read both articles together.
2 As cited in Zupančič (2000: 5).
3 For a discussion of the Žižekian reading of Hegel’s logic of reflection and the similar logic behind Lacan’s use of signifiers that are used throughout this paper, see, for instance Žižek (2002: 86, 21ff)
4 We should note from the onset that Taylor’s use of the term ‘desire’ throughout his work is quite loose and should be strictly distinguished from the psychoanalytic use of the term. While both Taylor and psychoanalytic theory explicitly hold desire to be doubly-reflexive, it is only the latter which undertakes a theoretical working-through of the consequences of a notion of desire that is thought to be co-extensive with the subject’s lack.
5 See, for instance, Kojève (1969: 6) for the idea that Hegel held that desire for a natural object is only human to the extent that it is mediated by the desire of another directed to the same object. Of course, Taylor is well aware of the German idealist origins of this type of dialectical thinking through his own extensive work on Hegel. See Taylor (1975, 1979, 1985a)
6 While Taylor does stress that weak evaluation is not to be strictly thought of as a quantitative reflection, since the motivations in weak evaluation may not be sufficiently homogeneous to lend themselves to numerical comparison, it does no harm to his argument to make this assumption here.
7 Indeed, Taylor is quite ambiguous as to whether such a mode of agency behind weak evaluation is essentially human or still animalistic in nature. (Taylor 1985: 16)
8 It certainly seems reasonable to posit a (neglected) developmental component to Taylor’s argument: it is certainly plausible that a child weighs the alternative desires that confront him daily against each other according to a simple calculation of immediate satisfaction and only gradually abandons this approach as he matures into a more strongly self-reflecting subject with the corresponding sense of a deep self.
9 The Heideggerian ‘ex-sistence’ might be a better term, indicating that for all its formal exclusion, it still has real effects on the inclusive elements of the theory. That is, rather than being an ‘intimate’ factor, it has an ‘extimate’ status.
10 See Lacan (1999: 78). What should be understood is that ‘sexual difference’ for Lacan is not the opposition of allocating to each of the two positions a positive identity, but rather the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ positions are merely two ways of coping with the traumatic fact that ‘There is no such thing as a sexual relationship.’ This impossibility is grounded on the fact that each position is prevented, from within, by its antagonistic relation to the other position, thus preventing it from reaching full actualization. Using Taylor’s terms, we will try to indicate that the proper notion of the subject involves thinking both of these sexuated positions ‘together.’
As well, we note that while Taylor does not discriminate in his usage of the terms ‘self,’ ‘subject,’ ‘agent’, ‘person,’ etc., this paper underscores the crucial distinction between a (Lacanian) topologically-conceived subject, which acts as the logical support structure for (Taylor’s) accounting of substantial selfhood.
11 Here is the psychoanalytic logic behind Freud’s myth of the primordial father to whom uninhibited enjoyment was accessible, whose fantasmatic presence constitutes the universal notion of man as one who must forever engage in hard work to define himself, always finding himself lagging some distance behind his symbolic mandate.
12 According to Žižek, Joan Copjec was the first to underline the structural homology between Lacan’s sexuation formulae and the Kantian opposition between the mathematical and dynamical sublime. (Žižek 1993: 250n.9)
13 Taylor cites one such ‘human universal’ that transcends historical and cultural boundaries as the ‘sense that human beings command our respect.’ (Taylor 1989: 11)
14 Throughout Sources of the Self, especially the first two chapters, Taylor speaks of the subject’s ‘horizon’, ‘moral space,’ ‘bearings,’ ‘orientation,’ ‘moral ontology,’ ‘essential fundamental evaluation’ – all of which he describes as part of the ‘inescapable framework’ one always-already possesses – in exactly the same terms as what we are here calling a substantialized unconscious of noumenal status. Our point here is that his notion of ‘deep self’ is ultimately this subjective framework substantially conceived.
15 Here we see Taylor himself falling victim to ‘self-deception:’ what is ultimately found behind the mere (shallow) appearance of a deep self is not the expected deep self with all its substantial weight, but rather the subject’s own act of passage.
16 To the extent that the Lacanian psychoanalyst’s position of agency springs from and embodies this horrifying void, Taylor’s dismissive description of such an ‘imagined [framework-less] agent’ is quite accurate: he ‘is a monster.’ (Taylor 1989: 32)
17 Lacan indicates as much in his algebra beneath the formulae of sexuation: the feminine position is split between the 
, the signifier of the lack in the symbolic order, and 
, the phallus in its fascinating presence that merely gives body to the inherent inconsistency indicated by . In Taylor’s terms, the fascinating presence of ‘deep self’ fills in the gaps in our knowledge of self. It is an element in the guise of which the lack in our positive knowledge of our self acquires a positive presence. Thus, there is a passage here from impossibility to prohibition that is exemplified by Taylor: the impossibility of grasping the signifier of the self is reified into an Exception, a sacred prohibited position where castration is avoided. No wonder Taylor is ambiguous on the ultimate status of the simple weigher self. By fully identifying with its impossibility, he would sooner or later be forced to acknowledge that his notion of unattainable, full agency is ultimately the human subject’s symptom par excellence, a mere phantasm giving presence to the fact that each of our self-evaluations lack depth. Contra Taylor, as subjects, we are better described as simple weighers.
18 These are Žižek’s words on the Kantian categorical imperative, quoted in Zupančič (2000: 63n20). Another way to express the same relation would be to say that the logic of the simple weigher clears the space or is the place (of desire) which comes to be filled in by the (epistemic) lack characterizing the strong evaluator’s deficient knowledge of its deep self. And when this place – a place ‘occupied by the lack’ or ‘full of the lack’ – comes to lack itself, the subject approaches its own drive and anxiety ensues. (Zupančič 2000: 242) We could also see this tautological gesture if we express the strong evaluator as the only species of its own genus. The simple weigher would then represent the ‘vanishing mediator’ between the strong evaluator qua genus and the strong evaluator qua species. In this sense, of the two notions of self Taylor develops, the simple weigher is the more adequate representation of the Lacanian conception of the subject qua void this paper underscores.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
