Does the Cogito Have (a) Sex?
Abstract
This thesis begins with a critique of Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude. Chapter One argues against Meillassoux’s injunction to abandon the “transcendental,” while putting forth a Lacanian solution to the “correlationist” problem. Chapter Two expounds the meaning of the Cartesian subject, with a Lacanian twist. Under this view, the subject is split, and this split carries the name “sexual difference.” The cogito is “split” qua sexual difference, whereby sexual difference names the structural antagonism/impossibility that exists in language and bears on all speaking subjects. The second chapter focuses primarily on explaining how sexual difference marks the cogito, by expanding on Alenka Zupančič’s “What is Sex,” and Lacan’s Seminar XX. Finally, Chapter Three discusses the Cartesian phenomenon of love, in looking at Descartes’ most obscure text, The Passions of the Soul. The third chapter serves as a “testing site” for the theses of the first two chapters, such that the experience of love makes explicit the argument that the cogito is split.