A Crucial Misunderstanding: Equating the Categories of Diversity and Difference

Q3 Social Sciences Studies in Gender and Sexuality Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI:10.1080/15240657.2022.2037313

L. Fiorini

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses the erroneous equation between the categories of diversity and difference and proposes to intercross Ferenczi’s “confusion of tongues” with Laplanche’s distinction between diversity and difference. Confusion between infantile sexual theories, adult sexual theories, and psychoanalytic theory is pointed out. The aim is to work with at least three variables: anatomical heterogeneity, gender difference/gender diversity, and psychosexual difference. Their intersections are always conflictive and impact on the construction of subjectivity. This model of triadic thought goes beyond binary thought (masculine/feminine and phallic/castrated dichotomies) and demands the inclusion of nonbinary logic. It is underlined that the category of difference is a symbolic operation that should be distinguished from sexual difference. This distinction is fundamental to exploring the symbolic field each subject can construct. In the context of multiple itineraries of sexuality and gender more visible in contemporary societies, the goal is to face the theoretical/clinical problems that arise if those distinctions are ignored.

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一个关键的误解：将多样性和差异的类别等同起来

摘要本文讨论了多样性和差异性范畴之间的错误等式，并提出将费伦齐的“舌头的混乱”与拉普兰切的多样性与差异性区分进行交叉。指出了婴儿性理论、成人性理论和精神分析理论之间的混淆。目的是研究至少三个变量：解剖异质性、性别差异/性别多样性和性心理差异。它们的交集总是相互冲突的，影响着主体性的建构。这种三元思维模式超越了二元思维（男性/女性和阳具/阉割的二元思维），并要求包含非二元逻辑。强调差异范畴是一种象征性操作，应区别于性别差异。这种区别对于探索每一个主体都能构建的符号场是至关重要的。在当代社会中更明显的性和性别的多重流动背景下，我们的目标是面对如果忽视这些区别就会出现的理论/临床问题。

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来源期刊

Studies in Gender and Sexuality Social Sciences-Gender Studies

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0.80

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0.00%

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期刊介绍： Beginning in the final two decades of the 20th century, the study of gender and sexuality has been revived from a variety of directions: the traditions of feminist scholarship, postclassical and postmodern psychoanalytic theory, developmental research, and cultural studies have all contributed to renewed fascination with those powerfully formative aspects of subjectivity that fall within the rubric of "gender" and "sexuality." Clinicians, for their part, have returned to gender and sexuality with heightened sensitivity to the role of these constructs in the treatment situation, including the richly variegated ways in which assumptions about gender and sexuality enter into our understandings of "normality" and "pathology."