phallus

Jacques Lacan

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is a signifier for lacan in the same way that the king's septre puts the subject who acquires them into power such that 'his words are taken as the words of a king'. They castrate me, it is said, because I am never equal to my function.

Why is phallus for Lacan a signifier and not simply the organ of insemination' In the traditional rituals of investiture, the objects which symbolize power also put the subject who acquires them into the position of exercising power if a king holds in his hands the scepter and wears the crown, his words will be taken as the words of a king. Such insignia are external, not part of my nature: I don them... I wear them in order to exert power. As such, they 'castrate' me, by introducing a gap between what I immediately am and the function that I exercise (i.e., I am never fully at the level of my function). (Zizek 'how to read lacan' : 29)

is not part of my being but a kind of attachment, a prosthetic, like a scepter, conferring power that its owner is never equal to.

So one has to think of the phallus not as the organ which immediately expresses the vital force of my being, but, as such an insignia, as a mask which I put on in the same way a king or judge puts on his insignia phallus is a kind of organ without a body which I put on, which gets attached to my body, without ever becoming its organic part, forever sticking out as its incoherent, excessive supplement. (Zizek 'how to read lacan' : 29)

is a symbol for the perpetuation of life, of active power and of the propagation of cosmic forces.

Phallus A symbol for the perpetuation of life, of active power and of the propagation of cosmic forces (57).

phallus, n.Memes

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