Binary, Non-Binary, and Singular Negativity

Identity Politics to Contradictory Politics

Starting May 7th, David McKerracher of Theory Underground and I will be endeavouring something impossible, to co-present in an engaging and creative way, one of the most important philosophical texts released in recent years, Alenka Zupančič’s What Is Sex? There are so many rich insights in this book that need to be explored precisely due to the insanely important political dimensions of sexuality. Zupančič is not only aware of this, but makes it clear from the beginning of the text, that the discovery of the specifically Freudian view of sexuality, is so controversial (and often rejected, repelled, negated, etc.) due to this political dimension. Dave and I are endeavouring, through the course, to raise our discourse to the level that we can more deeply speak to the current political moment of sexuality, in a more satisfying way (perhaps even a way that highlights the central importance of love).

In general, the political discourse on sexuality tends to circulate, on the one hand, the ideas of social constructivism, and on the other hand, the ideas of evolutionary reduction. You do not need to look very far, perhaps a Joe Rogan podcast or a Daily Wire production, to see this binary on display as a fundamental structuring point for contemporary sexual-political discourse. It is an example where the tendency to emphasising the constructivist non-binary nature of sexuality, reaches its own point of contradiction (and ultimately exploitation/manipulation by conservative reactionaries to progressive views of sexuality). For example, if there is the emphasis on non-binary differences, i.e. differences which escape either evolutionary or religious reductions of sexuality to an issue of male/female (genetics) or man/woman (symbolic), then the conservative viewpoint can easily categorise the non-binary itself as a homogenised political entity (“progressivist LGBT+”) in relation to a reification of traditional categories (i.e. trad-man/woman vs. progressivist LGBT+).

Such categorisation makes for popular YouTube content/talking points, but it does not really address the core issues in, or provide a holistic frame for, our contemporary sexual-political networked age.

Of course, both social constructivists and evolutionary reductionists have their points. For the social constructivist, we are simply asked to view sexuality with a more open mind, to see the way in which the traditional categories reify certain ways of being in the world that do not exhaust the possibilities of our sexual expression or performativity. For the evolutionary reductionist, we are simply asked to view sexuality as part of a long natural historical process which has informed the way we appear in and as (sexed) bodies.

Both are true, or have truth to them.

However, both absolutely miss the Freudian dimension of sexuality, that is that, for Freud, sex is neither primarily “constructive” vis-a-vis self-identity, and nor is it “reducible” to evolutionary processes or its presupposed natural history. One does not need to look too deeply into Freud’s writings to find out that he starts his entire investigation into sexuality and its relation to our minds, not as a positive liberating or life-giving power of a “divine eros”, but rather in relation to its insanely disorienting and disturbing character.¹ Indeed, one does not need to look too deeply into Freud’s core writings, to find that he is constantly puzzled by the fact that contemporary science has little or nothing to say about the origin of sexuality² and its role in the construction of human civilisation.³

This is to say that, for a Freudian view of sexuality, we cannot simply emphasise its socially constructed nature, nor its evolutionary historical reduction, even if both play a role, have a truth, etc.

What is more at work in Freud, and what Alenka Zupančič brings out for contemporary politics, is a certain singularity. Precisely, what Zupančič brings out is a singular negativity which is not biological, psychological, or social, but rather something we might call an ontological abyss (why not, let’s think a “black hole”).⁴ This means that, far from modern progressivist politics liberating contemporary identity towards new social constructions that challenge naturalist self-symmetrical collapse of sex and gender, what is going on in modern progressivist politics is a type of obfuscation of the black hole at the center of our libidinal universe. Consequently, it is quite easy for “based” conservative reactionaries to simply point out the way in which confused young people and ideological adults are failing to navigate new identitarian constellations with grace and beauty, but often more in the direction of “cringe”.

Fair enough, especially considering that the progressivist cringe can destroy lives with extremely naive positivist notions of sexual expression. But it is also the case that conservative reactionaries can and do destroy lives with a fear-based politics of repression. So there is no easy way out here.

Conservative reactionaries, in general, are often too quick to hope or long for a previous era, or rely on ancient epistemologies for support, and fail to recognise the inconsistencies in both their own personal histories, unconscious desires, and political projects. Thus, it is not that we simply need to critique confused young people and ideological adults who assert a positivist non-binary path forward, it is that we need to recognise that what these confused young people and ideological adults open up, is in fact a courageous confrontation with a singular negativity (one that in principle unites us all).

United in what?

Perhaps united in abyssal sublimation where mature confrontations with the truth of anxiety, is primary.⁵ That is, what has been opened in our contemporary sexual-political universe is the very conditions of possibility to work with the lack at the core of our sexuality, the fact that all subjectivised positions (whether progressive non-binary or traditional conservative), are positions in response to/positivisations of, a singular negativity.

Here is the way Zupančič thinks of this singular negativity, from a recent book discussion on her latest work, Let Them Rot: Antigone’s Parallax:⁶

“We start out from a fundamental imbalance of Being, the way Being constitutes itself around something falling out. The subject qua subject of desire emerges from this imbalance, from this lack of Being, by subjectivising it in this or that way. The subject is the way the imbalance, the negative core of the structure appears, takes place within this structure itself, as an event within this structure itself. This is the event of a desire.”

She goes on to assert:

“Desire is like a play within a play. It kind of plays out, performs, re-enacts, the very excluded, fallen out condition, of its own existence, re-introduces this absolute condition into reality, forces us to look at it, to manage it in some way.”

In this way, Zupančič quite clearly articulates the way in which, what unifies all identities of desire (man/woman, whatever other categories you want), is a response to a type of negative core as an event, and this response is a “playing out”, a “performance”, which is trying to re-introduce an “absolute condition”, something we must “look at” and “manage” (somehow). That is the political question. Is this not an interesting and unique way to think about both the emergence of a polymorphous perversity of sexual positions and orientations that would have appeared strange or even hostile and dangerous to many of our ancestors, but also a way to think about traditional religious or conservative identities? When someone, for example, dramatically asserts their non-binary identity or asserts an identity which transgresses historical norms and values, or when someone, for example, dramatically asserts their religious conviction as a “Man/Woman of God” and attempts to dramatise a traditional life-world, is this not always the subjectivisation of a singular negativity that in principle unites both?

If the answer is yes, then the question is what type of discourse do we need to sustain a higher order relationality between such different and often contradictory positions? Here solutions seem hard to come by, and at first glance, seem impossible. While there are many emerging physical and online communities that seek to open space for those who do not fit into traditional categories, there are also many emerging physical and online communities that seek to re-assert the primacy of the traditional two. Both represent different responsive ethics for sexual energy. Moreover, the latter does not simply make room for the former, but rather sees the latter as degenerate, hedonistic, unnecessary, childish, or even satanic, and so forth. While the former may make room in principle for a higher order multiplicity, it rarely considers its own negative dimension (or reflexive self-contradiction), that is, the fact that holding space for a multiplicity of differences often, or even as a rule, falls into fierce opposition and ultimately self-contradiction. It is basically impossible to think of a universalist system that includes, or makes room for, “All identities.” Any such universalist system would obfuscate the “negative core” that makes genuine subjectivisation possible.

That is why, at least if I throw my hat into the ring of this sexual-political discourse, it would be to fight for, not a new identity politics, of a binary or non-binary nature, but rather to fight for a contradictory politics, that is a politics that recognises a singular negativity at the core of our identities.⁷ The establishment of a contradictory politics would simultaneously render all positions incomplete, and open a perspectival shift that may help us work with each other, from a more real and generous angle (to quote a perspective inspired by Jon Echanove’s new book The Angle to Happiness).⁸ The only problem there is that it is precisely this capacity to hold incompletion and generosity, that is so difficult for human beings navigating the inhuman abyss of sexuality.

The Philosophy Portal x Theory Underground course on What Is Sex? starts May 7th.

1. Freud, S. 1898. Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses.

2. Freud, S. 1920. Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

3. Freud, S. 1930. Civilisation and its Discontents.

4. When Daniel Garner of O.G. Rose thinks the intersection between a Wisdom Commons and Killing Ourselves with Texts, as a way to avoid Cults, it should be thought precisely at this dimension: the ethics of confronting an ontological abyss.

5. As Javier Rivera has been pointing to of late, and plans to further develop, the relation between anxiety and freedom, see: Sugar Free Anxiety.

6. Zupančič, A. 2023. Let Them Rot: Antigone’s Parallax. Fordham University Press.

7. To work more towards this politics, we should follow Todd McGowan’s Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019).

8. Echanove, J. 2022. The Angle to Happiness. Positive Development.