There is no Sexual Relation
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This paper will integrate two different strands of Lacanian psychoanalysis that link together under the banner of my heading, that there is no sexual relation. As I will show, this does not argue that there are no sexual relationships, rather that sexuality is not a relation but a series of what Lacan would term “missed encounters” that keep our motor of desire running beyond our control - we never get “there.” I will explicate what he means by this seemingly odd statement, concentrating particularly on the centrality of Lacan’s conception of anxiety, then contextualise it in relation to a contemporary issue, that of the gaze. If we are to take Lacan’s argument on in any serious manner, then recent articulations of the notion of the gaze, especially as theorised within film theory, are challenged as being dependant on a fixed concept of gender that Lacan’s argument undermines.