‘Raw Sex?’: An Exploration of the Political Potential of Lacan’s Non-conclusive Binary

Lecture by Calum Neill

The Lecture will explore Lacan’s reformulation of two of Freud’s key myths- that of Oedipus and that of the primal horde- and will show how Lacan fruitfully offers us a radically new conception of gender. This new conception not only contests the naturalism of the male/female binary, but unearths a radical political potential in our rethinking of sexuation which requires an unshackling from any identity politics.

Calum Neill, Associate Professor of Psychoanalysis & Cultural Theory at Edinburgh Napier University (Edinburgh, Scotland). Author of Jacques Lacan: The Basics (2023), Ethics and Psychology: Beyond Codes of Practice (2016), Without Ground: Lacan Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity (2014). Co-editor of the Palgrave Lacan Series and Reading Lacan’s Écrits and editor of Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049 (2020). Host of the online monthly seminar Lacan in Scotland.