Transsexual surgery: A novel reminder and a navel remainder

Transsexuality as Sinthome: Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (Feminine) Sexual Difference

“…This knotting is overlooked by analysts like Morel (2011), who insists that the transsexual is mistaking the organ for the signifier or, more specifically, mistaking the surgical cut (which would remove an organ) for the phallus, which "lies at the juncture of the real and the symbolic, where language and jouissance are articulated" (p. 186). Whereas for Gozlan (2011) and for Gherovici the "demand of the extraction of an organ can be the demand of the extraction of a signifier that has become all too real" (Gherovici, 2010, p. 194), this possibility is eclipsed in Morel's theorizing. For her, the transsexual position is necessarily delusional and thus psychotic.…”

“…In two important articles Oren Gozlan (2008Gozlan ( , 2011) makes a similar claim about the sinthome and its relation to transsexuality. In what follows, I build upon their precedent-setting work to argue that the sinthome of transsexuality taps into a matrixial domain whereby the subject is attempting to write and reinscribe a relation to a primordial feminine sexual difference.…”

“…Similarly, hormone injections alter the shape, contours, and muscularity of the body such that the subject can establish and create new limits and boundaries. It may also be the case, as Gozlan (2011) suggests, that the sinthomatic knotting of SRS and transsexual autobiography enables the subject to be released from a "phantasized hold of the Other's determinations" (p. 4). In other words, transitions (surgical and otherwise) may enable a patient to cut or establish a limit to the jouissance of the Other as it envelops the subject.…”

“…Just as Ettinger finds traces of the matrixial in art, I suggest along with Gozlan (2014) that transsexual transitions can be acts of artistry that reassemble a borderspace between the subject and 5 In Lacan's sexuation graphs one is either sexuated in the masculine or feminine position. This positioning isn't determined by biology but rather by one's relation to the Other and by one's jouissance.…”

“…The sinthome is highly individual and can involve what Lacan calls "transsexual jouissance" (2006, p. 476). Oren Gozlan (2011) writes that "we create a sinthome when we identify with our symptom, that is, when we no longer believe in the truth of the symptoms but see it as a creative product of the self and hence take ownership of it" (p. 2). In the clinic of transsexuality, a sinthome can be orchestrated by a change in gender pronoun, a name change, hormone treatments, SRS, an autobiographical account of one's gender journey, and so forth.…”