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Summary on “There Is No Sexual Relationship” by Slavoj Žižek
In this essay, Slavoj Žižek tries to respond Lacan’s insight ‘There is no sexual relationship’ affirms that there is an opposite condition between the relationship of man and woman through exploring on Wagner’s operas and two films from Kieslowski and Sautet. In this summary, I would likes to focus on five topics includes the motif of renunciation, women’s suffering, androgynous reconciliation, function of death drive, and two films from Kieslowski and Sautet which shows the deadlock of love. At first, Žižek refers a topic “renunciation” which appears in Wagner’s opera, Ring. In this drama, there is a rule ‘only the one who renounces the power of love can take possession of the gold.’ Žižek mentions Claude Levi-Strauss’ insight on this. In Levi-Strauss’ interpretation, there is a problem on the social exchange. For Žižek, “the choice of power not only involves the loss of love but also results in the loss of power” (177). Žižek mentions Kierkegaardian’s stages to respond that why ‘love’s deepest need is to renounce its own power’ which also corresponds the problem on the impossibility of the sexual relationship. In the second place, Žižek refers Wagner’s insights to represent the sexual relationship between man and woman. In Wagner’s view, “man and woman complement each other. Woman is the all-embracing unity, the ground that bears man” (183). But for Žižek, “woman should be subordinated to the formative power of man in her positive, empirical existence” (183). Also, in Žižek’s own interpretation, woman knows she is suffered in this patriarchal society because it seems to people doesn’t care about her suffering on renunciation for her beloved man. Also Žižek thinks women’s suffering like a tool to make man get his redemption and the public social triumph from others. For instance, “the young wife in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, who knows of her husband’s secret adulterous passion, but feigns ignorance in order to save their marriage” (193). Hence, Žižek mentions that people purify themselves through the sacrifice of the Other. In the third place, Žižek refers a condition show androgynous reconciliation from Wagner’s opera, Parsifal. In Parsifal, there are examples to show the androgynous reconciliation on two dimensions: the form and the space. For example, one executes the musical form on chromaticism while performs on the stage and another one executes the musical form on diatonics. Also, in this opera, there are two spaces: Klingsor’s castle and the temple of the Grail refers to the distinction between fulfills one’s desire and renounces the desire. What’s more, Žižek cites the Freudian notion of ‘death drive’ to connect with the problem on the lovers whose love can’t exist on the symbolic order in Tristan. For Freud, the death drive endeavors to erase the symbolic order. In Tristan, the lover who can’t love in the symbolic order in the world so they choose to drink the potion of death to die. After the lovers die, they can ignore the order of the symbolic pact and feel free to acknowledge their passion. So in this drama, the potion of death may function as a tool like death drive to escape the symbolic order. Last but not the least, Žižek refers two films to show the deadlock of love. In the first film, A Film on Love which also shows the failed metaphoric substitution of the object of loved one turns into the subject of loving one.
In the beginning of this film, Tomek is the subject of loving one who peeps on a sexually attractive woman, Maria Magdalena who lives in the same block, across from Tomek’s backyard. At first, Tomek intervenes her life through sending her false notices of money orders and calling plumbers to her apartment in the middle of love-making. Until one day, Tomek gathers his courage to confess that he is the source of her recent nuisances and Maria entices him into a humiliating sexual game that ends in his attempted suicide. After his return from the hospital, their respective roles are reversed: Maria stirred by her guilt and constantly observes his window from her apartment, endeavors to attract his attention, whereas he now ignores her. (196)
For Žižek, “the metaphor of love fails: when the beloved object turns into the loving one, she is no longer loved” (196). Žižek mentions the reverse of Maria to show Maria’s love for Tomek is fully authentic. In his own interpretation, “the loving one is (becomes) the beloved object on account of the sheer intensity of his love’’ (197). And in Lacan’s view, “true love is always a love returned’’ (198). And in the second film, A Heart in Winter, it refers “a story about Camille, a young, beautiful and charismatic violin-player who falls in love with her partner, Stephan. When Camille gathers her courage to confess her love to her partner, Stephan, but Stephan calmly explains to her that it’s all a misunderstanding-maybe he was flirting a little with her, but he definitely does not love her’’ (198). For Žižek, “this incapability to love accounts for the kind of inner peace and completion irradiated by his personality: unperturbed by any emotional turmoil, profoundly apathetic’’ (198). In his own interpretation, “Stephan is not a desiring subject, that he simply does not dwell in the dimension of desire’’ (200). Finally, Žižek provides a conclusion on these two films who shows the obstacle in the way of sexual love; both Tomek and Stephan refuses the woman’s proposal, but this rejection has a totally different dimensions in each cases. For Žižek, “the opposition between Tomek and Stephan is the opposition between the split subject and objet a, between the pure subject of desire and the ‘saint’, somebody who has undergone ‘subjective destitution’ and thereby turned into the pure being of a drive beyond desire’’ (200).