Abstract
I examine Ragland's thesis that, within Islamic Society, the Hijab may function not only as a marker of sexual difference but also as a signifier in a “feminine” strategy of what Joan Rivière calls masquerade – one of the two ways in which, according to Jacques Lacan, human beings (men or women) may cope with the psychic state of lack, that is, a condition of their entry to subjectivity. I then examine Lacan's further claim that through such a strategy human beings may gain access to another form of Jouissance, which, in breaking with the dull, tedious phallic rituals of imposture, goes “beyond the pleasure principle.” I also differentiate the Hijab from the Veil of Hollywood fame that has been so strongly criticized by Laura Mulvey and other feminist authors.
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Notes
It is interesting to note here how in the case of our own society we tend to connect differences in attitudes to the Hijab to political and ideological differences, whereas in the case of Islamic society we tend to connect them to sexual differences. It is tempting to attribute this difference to a failure on our part to allow for the patriarchal exploitation of sexual difference in our own case, but a readiness to see it in other “less civilized” societies.
For a more detailed account of this line of argument see Marilyn Charles's paper in this volume. There is a huge literature on the topic of the Hijab – see, for example, Hildson and Rozario (2006), and Hessini (1994).
The masculine strategy of imposter is not the only context in which the phallus appears. On the contrary, as the distinction is often made, man has the phallus, but woman is the phallus. As we will see below, however, this aphorism is valid only as an aspect of man's phantasy of woman, rather than as an intrinsic aspect of the feminine (see endnote 4).
Neither should we follow other popular misreadings of Freud/Lacan, which say that the (M)Other has the phallus. On the contrary, the (M)Other's desire is presented as a desire for a subject who, unlike her, has the phallus. At best we might say that the (M)Other is something like the phallus. Why? Because woman is not the object of man's unconscious desire, but instead, Lacan claims, is its object-cause, namely what Lacan calls the objet a (Lacan, 1988, p 80). But, insofar as it is an embodiment of lack, the phallus is also like the objet a. Therefore, it seems to follow, woman is like the phallus. But here too we must be careful. As I will point out later, woman identifies with the signifier of lack in the Other, S(Ø). But Lacan also points out that it is man's mistake to confuse S(Ø) with the objet a, and thus, it seems, it is also a mistake to equate woman with objet a, let alone with the phallus that resembles it.
Lacan (1988, p 85). Here, incidentally, we see an issue that, already since Freud, has bedeviled psychoanalysis, namely the relation between the feminine and hysteria. I return briefly to this issue below.
This follows from his remark that “the Lustprinzip is, in effect, based on a coalescence of [the objet] a with S(Ø),” where by objet a he means a pure signifier without a signified – a linguistic structure which, he points out, is shared by the phallus, although not of course the phallic signifier (Lacan, 1988, p 84). More specifically, Lacan categorizes the objet a as a semblant, the raw material of a signifier, clothed in an imaginary envelope, which, by gesturing beyond itself to something that it leaves unspecified, conceals a lack by the simple device of sticking a mystery in its place (Lacan, 1988, pp 6, 83). But, as Lacan also points out, because woman is identified with S(Ø), she separates herself from the objet a. Indeed, Lacan strengthens this point by remarking that it is man's mistake to confuse woman's point of identification, namely the S(Ø), with the mystery of the objet a, a mystery which, in the case of woman takes the form of the feminine mystique (Lacan, 1988, pp 72, 83, 86). It follows that woman cannot partake in phallic Jouissance, and as such, insofar as she enjoys herself, her Jouissance must come from elsewhere.
It is a controversial point within Islamic theology whether this injunction, which applies to the wives of the Prophet, applies as a moral prescription to all devout women.
The “true woman” here, is not, of course, the archetypical woman – who, according to Lacan, does not exist.
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Krips, H. The Hijab, the Veil, and Sexuation. Psychoanal Cult Soc 13, 35–47 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100146
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100146