There is a social dimension that is not to be overlooked in Lacan’s famous stipulation “Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel“. “Rapport”, after all, also means  “report“, or even “testimony“.[1] There can be no “relation” but also (or, as Jean-Luc Nancy would have it, rather) there can be no telling of this (non) relation. However, this report or telling is exactly what is asked for in public…

Men must learn to be silent. It must be very painful for them, to silence in themselves the voice of theory, the practice of theoretical interpretation. They have just got to get treatment. We’ve hardly had the time to finish living through an event as huge as May ’68 before men are already talking about it, holding forth with their theories and breaking the silence. [. . .] Without sto…

  (everything comes down to the ear you are able to hear me with)[1]   This essay is divided into two parts: “Good Girl”, a short fictional narrative based on an encounter that bears similarities with a psychoanalytical situation, and “Voicing Intrusion”, a reflection on it, in which I explore the relationship between sexual violence and the signifier.   Good Girl When sh…

Who said psychoanalysis and feminism must oppose one another? If, for Jacques Lacan, woman is “mystical,” for Valerie Solanas, woman is “SCUM”[1], meaning powerful, independent, and, most of all, complete, because she can live without men. However, this completeness is not that of an imaginary omnipotence: it’s the full, undivided, subject of psychosis. The SCUM Manifesto presents us wi…

Testimonials and witnessing are crucial for any accusations and collective action to be rendered against a perpetrator. They are of course crucial determinants for the juridical process for punishing a crime, but they are also crucial in collectively identifying a victim and a perpetrator. They constitute the affective mechanisms for collective retribution, for shaming the perpetrator, …