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Gender difference and systems theory - the application of systems theory to explicate gender
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Enabling Paradoxes: Gender Difference and Systems TheoryAuthor(s): Drucilla CornellSource: New Literary History, Vol. 27, No. 2, Problems of Otherness: Historical andContemporary (Spring, 1996), pp. 185-197Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057346 .
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Enabling Paradoxes:
Gender Difference and Systems Theory
Drucilla Cornell
I have argued elsewhere that there is a philosophical alliance
between Niklas Luhmann's systems theory and what I have renamed
deconstruction?the philosophy of the limit.1 This alliance turns
not only on shared philosophical roots in French phenomenology but on the replacement of grounding principles with grounding paradoxes. Luhmann explicitly argues that systems theory can have no higher level
grounding of itself beyond the analysis of the operations of the systems themselves.2 The paradox is that one only knows a system as a system from within it and by distinguishing it from other systems, but there is
no system of all systems in which we could ground the analysis of systems
theory. Derrida's philosophy of the limit, as I have interpreted it, is in
alliance with this position in two senses: first, the philosophy of the limit
is an articulation of the philosophical limit of any attempt to ground
reality in an appeal to a system of all systems or, on the contrary, in a
transcendental subjectivity. The limit of philosophy is, in Luhmann's
sense, a limit to the traditional philosophical project of grounding sociological analysis in either a normative description of a sphere of nature with a corresponding teleological conception of history or some
other conception of the ultimate system which encompasses all systems and therefore serves as the basis of the analysis of how one system is
either integrated with or distinguished from another.
Both the philosophy of the limit and systems theory also analyze social and intellectual phenomena within a concept of meaning-effects that
does not coincide with the concept of meaning as individual intention
ality. But even if we accept these as legitimate and shared philosophical
presuppositions between the philosophy of the limit and systems theory, we shall need to ask the question: What are the conditions, even if we
understand these as systems, that make a
system "appear" as a
system
rather than just as the nature of reality? Luhmann's consistent answer to
that question is to turn us back to the observer: "In the case of autopoietic (that is, self-reproducing) systems, this would mean that an observer has to focus on the self-determined and self-determining distinctions a
system uses to frame its own observations."3 For Luhmann, what is
New Literary History, 1996, 27: 185-197
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186 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
observed always turns us back to the observer. He is more than aware
that since there is no reality that is just "there" outside of systems, we not
only observe reality but we also can observe the observing system?
including what we commonly think of as the individual?that is observ
ing reality. Again, to quote Luhmann: "The question then becomes:
Who is to be observed and by whom and for what reasons?" (DS 773).
My purpose in this paper is to argue that deconstruction, or the
philosophy of the limit, brings to the fore an aspect of when and how a
system becomes observable by always returning us to the relationship between meaning, semantic codes, and representation. It is this relation
ship between semantic code, systems analysis, and representation that
adds an important dimension to how and why it becomes possible to
separate out, observe, and define a system
as a system and thus "dissolve
the paradox of the world as a frameless, undistinguishable totality that
cannot be observed" (DS 775). To demonstrate my understanding that the relationship between
systems theory and the philosophy of the limit involves an analysis of the
collusion between meaning and representability, I will focus on an
analysis of the conditions under which gender can come to be observed as a
system. Of course, we already have conflict between two observers
since I observe gender as a system and Luhmann does not. The addition
then that I am insisting upon is that in order to make sense of
observability we must have some account of representability. It is
precisely such an account that the philosophy of the limit shows us is
inseparable from both the consolidation of meaning and its inherent
limit through this very consolidation. It is a consolidated world of
meaning that we "see." This consolidation is a construction, even if not
one attributable to individual intentionality. Luhmann, of course, un
derstands that the world is constructed of systems that are in turn
observed and reconstructed by observers, and that therefore all systems or at least the observers of systems in language can be deconstructed.
Once again to quote Luhmann: "It may go too far to say that language use as such is deconstructive. But
observing an observer who uses
language certainly is" (DS 769). Thus, for Luhmann, the question of how consolidated reality appears
to the observer is itself a question that will turn us back to who the
observer is and how he or she observes reality. For Luhmann, decon
struction is best understood as a second order observing precisely because it shows that the consolidation of meaning, which is a system's
"reality," disintegrates under the observation of an observer who ob
serves the system observing itself and the construction of its objects. To
quote Luhmann: "The stereotypicality of the distinction leads to the
assumption that all these systems observe the same thing, whereas
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ENABLING PARADOXES 187
observing these observers shows that this is not the case. Each of them
operates within its own network. Each of them has a different path and a different future. While the distinction suggests a tight coupling of observations and reality, and implies that there is only
one observer
observing 'the same thing' and making true or false statements, a
second-order observer, observing these observers would see only loose
coupling and a lack of complete integration" (DS 764). Implicit in this
quote is Luhmann's recognition that what we see or how we see it, as
consolidated or as disintegrated, turns in part not only on the political interest of the observer but on the meaning the observer sees as either
coherent or incoherent, integrated or disintegrated. My addition is that
beyond just marking that it is the observer who sees the reality as
disintegrated rather than consolidated, we also need a more exact
understanding of how systems operate so as to
perpetuate and create
meanings and ultimately limit the representability of certain realities as
systems.
My argument is that we can best understand the possibility of a cross
fertilization between systems theory and deconstruction by demonstrat
ing how representability and meaning are intertwined so as to allow
systems to appear as systems; to show, in other words, how they
distinguish themselves or frame themselves so as to be distinct from a
frameless, undistinguishable totality that could not be observed. Gender is instead assumed as a totality so that is almost disappears as a system; it
becomes difficult for it to be represented as a system and instead is
considered, simply, as the way things
are. My argument provides
a new
dimension to the one that Luhmann himself notes in his own systems
reading of deconstruction by analyzing more thoroughly the operation of gender as a system; a system that operates to limit the possibility of the
representability of woman and, as a result, the status that can be given to
"woman" as an observer. Of course, gender is only one
example. But I
hope to show that by looking more closely at Derrida's deconstruction of
the current meaning given to gender hierarchy, we can enrich our
understanding of the relationship between deconstruction and systems
theory more
generally.
Luhmann, as I have already indicated, has argued that deconstruction is best understood as second order observing. Luhmann has described second order observing as follows: "On this level one has to observe not
simple objects but observing systems?that is, to distinguish them in the first place. One has to know which distinctions guide the observations of the observed observer and to find out if the stable objects emerge when these observations are recursively applied to their own results. Objects are therefore nothing but the eigenbehaviors of observing systems that result from using and reusing their previous distinctions" (DS 767-68).
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188 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
As he also notes, "Deconstruction destroys this 'one observer-one
nature-one world' assumption. Identities, then, have to be constructed.
But by whom?" (DS 765). But nothing in Luhmann's own labeling of deconstruction as a second
order observing, however, draws explicitly the connections between
meaning, semantic codes, representability, and how aspects of "reality" can come to be observed as a system in the first place. Thus, I'm not
necessarily disagreeing, at least within the terms of Luhmann's own
systems theory, that deconstruction could be understood as involving second order observing. I am arguing that it can only be so understood if we also understand that this second order observing turns on the
contingency inherent in a world that is given to us only through
meaning-giving systems with corresponding conditions of representability. The contingency is what allows us to separate ourselves from the world
that is given to us as objective so as to be able to see it differently because we can see it as a system and as
nothing more than a
system. In the case
of gender, I will argue that it is precisely the deconstructibility of the
reality of gender that allows it to appear as a system (that is, be
represented as a system) and thus observed as such. Thus, we ironically owe to deconstruction the appearance of gender as a system precisely in
its deconstructibility. More importantly, this is what allows us, then, to
have "appear" on the stage of history the feminine observer whose
observations count enough to mark out the reality of gender as a system from other possibilities of the meaning and representability of her own
sexual difference. Such a marking out would be crucial in the effectua
tion of what Luhmann argues is the hallmark of work for modern
society, "the move to end a social order based on stratified differentia
tion" and replace it with functional differentiation."4 Such a replace ment would ultimately leave us with individuated beings not simply
encompassed by any one system that defines ultimately their status in
society.
Let me turn now to my account of why the gender divide has not only
operated as a system but has operated as a system that paradoxically limits its representability as a system and further does so to erase the
feminine other as the observer who could mark the gender system as a
system. To do so, I will provide an account of how sexual difference and
gender is understood as a semantic code that consolidates its meaning so that we inevitably "see" a world in which there are two sexes and only two sexes: a world in which the woman is defined and thus seen as the
castrated Other. It is this consolidated world of meaning, in other words, that forces us to see sexual difference in such a limited way and to see
this difference as itself a part of an order of reality different than one
based on systems as these are always implicated in the production of
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ENABLING PARADOXES 189
meaning. To provide a systems account of the current stratified reality of
sexual difference, I will rely on the work of Jacques Lacan. Lacan's
important addition to Freud's own biologism is to turn us not to the
objects we associate with sexual difference?the body parts?but to the
system of meaning and the semantic code of desire that reinforces that
system of meaning so that we see sexual difference in a particular way that is mandated by this divide into two and only into two.5
For Lacan, the semantics of desire is consolidated by the Oedipus
complex so as to make inseparable the development of human being and the materialization of sexual difference in and through language. This inevitable materialization of human being in and through lan
guage, as this implicates the divide into gender, means that the symbolic order is itself engendered and thoroughly genderized all the way down.6
This is why, for Lacan at least, it becomes a totality from which we cannot
separate its operation as a system because it is the very foundation of the
materialization of human being in and through language. According to
Lacan, children of both sexes enter into the world of culture, and more
specifically, the signifying system we know as language, only by enduring a severe wound to their own narcissism. This wound is a result of the
recognition that the mother is not there just for them. With this
recognition comes the inevitable question: Who does mommy want if
she does not want just me?
The primordial moment of separation from the mother is literally life
threatening because of the absolute dependence of the infant on this
Other. The terror or threat that the mother presents in her separateness
initiates the struggle to overcome the dependence
or the need the
infant has of her. The move from need to demand is, in part, the infant's
expression of the resistance to vulnerability of his or her need. This
resistance will be against the mother because it is her desire that is
registered as robbing the infant of his security. Of course, this kind of
absolute security is a fantasy. The condition of this fantasy is that the
mother not be "sexed." Thus, it is inevitably associated with the pre
Oedipus phase, the period before the registration of the significance of
sexual difference. The fantasy of absolute security, then, rests on the
corresponding fantasy that the mother is whole in herself and thus a
being unscathed by desire. This fantasy figure on whom the infant is
totally dependent in its need is the imaginary phallic mother. Once the
fantasized mother/child dyad is shattered, the phallic mother remains in the imaginary as all-powerful and threatening in her power both to
bestow and take away life.
This primordial moment of separation is not only experienced
through terror and the fear of loss, it is also the gaining of an identity separate from the mother. The attempt to negotiate the ambivalence of
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190 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
a loss that is also the gaining of an identity is beautifully demonstrated in
the fort/da game of Freud's grandson Ernst.7 The game enacts the
fantasy that the child is separate but still in control of the mother/Other. But this negotiation, in turn, demands an unconscious identification
with the one who is at least imagined to be able to bring the mother back
because he is the site of her desire. The narcissistically wounded infant
thus turns toward the imaginary father because the imaginary father is
whom mommy desires. But what is it that singles out the imaginary father, what is it that makes him so special? What is it, in other words, that daddy has that mommy desires that symbolizes what mommy wants?
The simple answer is the penis, but Lacanians would never put it so
simply. The identification with the imaginary father is inseparable from the
projection of the power to control the mother, to literally give her a
name and, in that sense, guarantee that she, and correspondingly the
infant, is spoken for. Already we see how in Lacan there is social and
symbolic significance to partriarchically structured relationships. It is
precisely the father's power to name that is assumed and legally enforced by a patriarchical legal system. In this sense, it is, of course, a
form of stratified differentiation since it gives the power to name to only one of the sexes and marks the woman as never fully adult because she
can never have the power to name her own lineage. The woman
achieves her status through the man as long as patrilineal lineage
governs family hierarchy. Obviously, this stratified system of differentia
tion has been disrupted by significant feminist reforms. Women can
vote, contract, and own property, but they have yet to achieve equal
status vis-?-vis kinship systems. For a Lacanian, the barrier to such
equality and a full breakdown of the stratified system of gender can be
seen as inherent in the current meaning of gender identity. Thus, Lacan
offers us an account of why Luhmann's own optimism that gender
hierarchy is a historical artefact fated to disappear is unwarranted. Of
course, the power to name is inevitably connected with the power not
only to name the infant but also to name what will come to be seen as
reality. The big Other that keeps the mother as "his," in the specific sense of stamping her with her name, is imagined as a guarantee of
identity that is established, but only precariously so, through the loss of
the fantasized mother/child dyad. But this fantasy projection only makes sense within a symbolic order that is already established as
patriarchal. The terror is that he who is not spoken for slips through the
cracks of social life into figurative nonexistence. With the crumbling of
the fantasy that the mother is phallic, with the recognition of separate ness, comes the desire to turn to the third to guarantee the infant's
identity since he can no longer count on the mother to secure his being
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ENABLING PARADOXES 191
through unity with her. Thus, it is the name of the father and the
symbolic register of his potency that is the basis for identification with him and not the simple fact that he has a penis. The biological penis takes on the significance it does only through the identification as the
big Other that secures identity through the power to control the
mother/Other. As I've already argued, this power cannot be separated from the symbolic register established by patrilineal lineage which identifies the father as the one who names and thus as the one who secures the identity and therefore the separate being of the infant. It is the symbolic power that is read back into the penis, but as it is read back into the penis it will establish a symbolic register that is based on
patrilineal lineage and thus gives to the father, and only the father, the
power to name.
On this account, it is the symbol of the phallus and its reinforcement
by the law of patrilineal lineage that accounts for the meaning given to
the penis and the corresponding significance given to the initial sighting of sexual difference. This is an initial example of the relationship between meaning unconsciously registered as a prior citation on the one
hand and representability on the other. Sexual difference, or more
precisely the registration of feminine sexual difference as lack, would then be the result of a prior citation in the unconscious. It would be the
prior citation that would explain why there is a lack in the mother that has structural consequences for the castration
complex and why
a
woman's "sex" is seen as castration.
The lack in having is both a threat and a nostalgia because it is the
only way in which the primordial loss of the phallic mother can be
signified. Thus, the phallus stands in as a bar to the return to the phallic mother, as a
representation of what is not there, the lack in both sexes.
The phallus, however, is also unconsciously identified with the name of the father in and through the law of patrilineal lineage. On this
interpretation of how the phallus comes to be cited as the signifier of the lack in both sexes, there would be no necessary basis for the identifica tion of the phallus with the penis aside from the automatic reading of an
already registered citation and, therefore, there would be no reason for the phallus necessarily to be appropriated to the side of the masculine. In other words, there would be no biological or even representational basis for the identification of the penis with the phallus other than the
meaning that has already been given to the role of the imaginary father. It would be just a matter of reading?even if that reading were so
automatic that it would appear as inevitable. Thus, the establishment of the phallus as what Lacan calls the "transcendental signifier" is best
understood through a systems analysis of how the operations of the
meaning of the father govern over the actual family setting so as to
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192 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
determine the significance that will be given to the sighting of sexual
difference by young male and female children. Given the identification
of the phallus with the imaginary father, it is masculinized only because
it is part of a system in which it is masculinized. However, the signifi cance of the masculinization of the phallus yields a differential position
ing that engenders each one of us as a man or a woman. Remember
Lacan 's famous example of how the symbolic will inevitably generate the
differentiation between the men's room and the women's room.
Deprived of the penis, the little girl is also deprived of the fantasy that
she has the phallus. She is left only with the masquerade of being the
phallus which is not to be at all. The cut from what Lacan calls the
"feminine imaginary" imposed by the name of the father and the
masculine symbolic renders woman beyond expression, beyond mean
ing. Hence, for Lacan, woman does not exist because what cannot be
expressed does not have existence. Ultimately woman, as the castrated
Other, is only the symptom or inevitable return of the truth that man is
inevitably also marked by the lack in having as he too is barred from the
phallic mother by the law of the Oedipus complex. Man endures this
symbolic castration to be "at all," in order to have his identity as a
speaking being secured by the name of the father against the ever
threatening imaginary Other. But this designation of the woman as a
symptom or as the object of man does not turn, for Lacan, on any
necessary association of woman's sex with her biological destiny. Her
objectification or, more precisely, her abjection, is the result of this
already-in-place system which functions through and is enforced by
patrilineal lineage as a system of stratified differentiation.
If we understand the circular nature of Lacan 's argument that sexual
difference will be engendered by the law of the Oedipus complex as this, in turn, is enforced by the state of differentiation between men and
women imposed by patrilineal lineage, we can begin to read Lacan as
giving us a systems analysis of gender. Of course, Lacan would deny that
this is the case because, for him, the very materialization of human
being takes place in and through a language that is necessarily engen dered by the establishment of the phallus as a transcendental signifier. Thus, it operates so pervasively through the world given to us as the
meaning effect we call human being that we could never separate ourselves from it so as to observe it as an outsider. It simply becomes the
world as we know it. Thus we are enforced to see sexual reality in this
way. But using Luhmann's terminology, we can define gender hierarchy as a self-referential system that codifies its semantic code through the
meaning given to the Oedipus complex in patrilineal lineage. In turn,
the meaning given to the Oedipus complex within this system differen
tiates the human species into two sexes, male and female, even though
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ENABLING PARADOXES 193
the masculine is defined only against the feminine. Luhmann himself
recognizes the importance of binary codes within the systems. To quote Luhmann: "The most
important function-systems structure their com
munication through a binary, or dual, valued code that from the
viewpoint of its specific function claims universal validity and excludes
further possibility." I am arguing that gender differentiation can better
be understood to take place through the consolidation of this binary code which defines each one of us as a man or a woman and which is
inseparable from the semantics of desire that Lacan associates with the
materialization of human being in and through language. To remind those unfamiliar with Lacan's analysis of sexual difference
and, more precisely, why the feminine is excluded from the order of
meaning and, thus, of representability, let me summarize again his
understanding of the meaning of the establishment of the phallus as the
transcendental signifier. The meaning of that establishment is that
woman will be read as the castrated Other, the symptom of man. As
lack?as the castrated Other?she can have no positive, affirmative, and
thus representable characteristics that are intimately associated with the
meaning of her sex. In the place of her representability as a unique form
of human being is the fantasy of what she is in the masculine imaginary. For Lacan, that fantasy itself will be fed by the repression of the phallic mother in the unconscious. This repression creates a splitting: the
phallic mother is the ultimate object of desire and, inevitably as such, the feared, evil one. Thus, the way woman is seen is inseparable from
this fantasy structure imposed by Lacan upon both women and men as
the truth of feminine being by the meaning of sexual difference
enforced by the semantic code of desire, inseparable again from the
Oedipus complex and its symbolic meaning. The meaning of sexual
difference, then, functions as the limit of the representability of woman
in at least two important ways. First, it imposes a limit on how woman will
indeed be represented since she will be represented from within a
fantasy structure that limits the way in which she can be imagined and,
secondly, the system of gender itself, since it is invested in as what
protects man from the feared phallic other, will appear as the necessary
backdrop for his very existence. To challenge that backdrop as the
inevitable foundation of human existence, then, will inevitably be
extraordinarily threatening. Indeed, it may seem life threatening. Thus
there would be, on this analysis, fierce resistance to the representability of gender
as a system.
Let me just note briefly one example of how we could understand the
limit to representability imposed by the operation of the gender system. In Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Mechelle Vinson et al., the crucial circuit
court decision that established an abusive and hostile work environment
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194 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
as constitutive of the wrong of sexual harassment, the Eighth Circuit Court forcefully argued that all evidence of a woman's sexual past and her style of dressing should be excluded from consideration by the court as evidence of her harassability.8 They did so on the basis that such evidence implicated a fantasy structure that gave meaning to and
represented women in a way that had no basis for enforcement in a
court of law. Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Supreme Court, argued on the contrary that such evidence was relevant as it went to the
"desirability" of the woman and the desirability of the woman is
inseparable in our law from her "harassability" (69). Women are
represented through what Lacan calls the "psychical fantasy of woman" as either good or bad girls, depending on certain characteristics. Thus, the kind of evidence that was at stake were black stockings, dangling
earrings, weight, and how many dates the woman had in the past year. Women who wore dangling earrings and black stockings were "seen" as
presenting themselves as "desirable" but "asking for it." Evidence as to
weight and lack of dates was seen as relevant to whether or not it was
credible for a woman to present herself as desirable. But the characteris
tics are given meaning only through an established grid which identifies women through unconscious fantasies which are limited in their array and diversity.
The Meritor decision exemplifies what I mean by the operation of the
system of gender which is enforced through a stratified form of
differentiation that limits the representability of woman for purposes of
the law. Thus, unfortunately, the gender system imposed upon women,
which reinforces stratified differentiation and its inseparable from the
maintenance of stratified differentiation in gender relationships in
modern society, limits the different ways in which woman as an element
in different systems could be constructed.
Derrida's intervention is not intended, in Luhmann's terms, to expose
gender as a system but to expose it as a system that is known through the
meaning effect of the foreclosure of the resymbolization of the feminine
within sexual difference. For Derrida, we see woman as the "castrated
Other" only because she is designated as such by a prior system of
meaning. Derrida shows us, in exactly Luhmann's sense of second order
observing, that the so-called "direct reality" of sexual difference is based
on a system by observing the functioning and operation of that system. He does so not simply by observing the system observing itself but by
explaining how it is possible for either a man or a woman to observe the
system as a system. He explains that possibility by demonstrating that the
establishment of the phallus as a transcendental signifier is based only on a reading of the mother's desire and that what is read can always be
reread. In Lacan 's own terms, he undermines the relationship between
significance and jouissance by showing that the semantic code of desire
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ENABLING PARADOXES 195
does not effectively exclude the sliding of the signifier "woman" so that
she cannot slip out of the place in which she is designated as only the
castrated Other who cannot be represented.
Derrida's argument that the very slippage of language breaks up the
coherence of gender identity allows us to undermine the rigid gender divide that has made dialogue between men and women impossible and
the acceptance of violence toward women not only inevitable, but also not "serious."9 This slippage in language that always allows for the
possibility of reinterpretation is what Derrida means by iterability.10 He uses the term to indicate that the very repeatability of language implies both sameness and difference. What allows language to be repeatable is
that it can be repeated in different contexts. But if there is no context of
context, then what is repeated does not yield an identical meaning. In
this sense, if we assume that all systems are constructed in language, there could never be any pure self-referentiality because as a system seeks to perpetuate itself it would always be doing so by responding to its
irritations or symptoms and, thus, would repeat itself in a slightly different context. This, in turn, means that as it repeats itself, the system also transforms itself.
Within the context of gender hierarchy, iterability means the repeti tion compulsion of imposed gender identity can never completely foreclose transformative possibility. It is Lacan 's very insight into the
linguistic structures that construct gender identity that allows Derrida to
turn Lacan 's analysis against himself by showing how his insight into the
semantics of desire could give way to another reading.11 It is important to note here that I refer to this possibility as transformative to distinguish it from the position that would allow for shifts within the binary code itself. In other words, it is not just that we can shift the meanings of male
and female within the binary code that produces the distinction
between male and female. Such shifts would clearly be comprehensible within Luhmann's understanding of how binary codes are perpetuated by systems. Since the code cannot be separated from its meanings, this
process can never be protected from the effective undermining of the
code itself. It is precisely the undermining of the rigid code of binary
oppositions that the philosophy of the limit seeks to effect. Within the
code of the gender hierarchy, this process itself has an ethical aspiration. That aspiration is Derrida's dream of a new choreography of sexual
difference in which our singularity, not our gender, would be loved by the Other.12
Derrida's specific relevance to this understanding of "sex" is that he
deconstructs the status of the phallus. To summarize: Derrida's decon struction of the law of gender difference undermines the grounding of the phallus through a transcendental illusion which would prevent us
from seeing the system of gender hierarchy as a system. In this sense, the
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196 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
deconstruction of the status of the phallus in Derrida's intervention into Lacanian psychoanalytic theory renders visible a system that validates itself as nature because its meaning has become so unshakable that we
do not see the connection that has been made unconsciously between the signifiers "masculine" and "feminine" and the signifieds they repre sent. Here we are confronted with a specific example of how the
philosophy of the limit operates ethically against a conception of limitation that presents itself as transcendentally grounded. The para
dox of the status of the phallus is ultimately what enables an explosive kind of feminism, a feminism which does not turn us back to any specific systems-meaning of woman.
For Lacan, the law of the phallus establishes woman as exactly what cannot be adequately represented in any current system of meaning and
therefore marks her as what is beyond any of the systems of meaning. This paradox serves both as a limitation to the challenges we seek in
contesting current conventional meanings of woman within systems, and as their ultimate possibility, kept open in the very paradox that the
phallus only establishes itself as the barrier to the re-representation of
the feminine sex because it operates as a barrier. Derrida demonstrates
precisely that these operations are just that, operations, and that they are therefore deconstructible. It is this deconstructibility that is insepa rable not only from the representability of the feminine other more
generally but, indeed, from the possibility of representing the feminine as
capable of observing and whose observations count and therefore
who can create a movement such as feminism which itself will be a
second order observing. Feminism demands not only that we see gender as a system and as a system that blocks the fundamental move that
Luhmann associates with modernity from stratified to functional differ
entiation, but that we see woman beyond the limitations imposed upon our reality by the system of gender. In other words, we begin to see
woman?envision her?as other than the fantasies imposed upon us by the psychical fantasies of woman. In this way, the possibility of the
feminine observer as an observer whose observations count and thus can
mark a system of gender as a system, is inseparable from the
deconstruction of the meaning of woman as the one who is observed but
is never the observer. In this manner, second order observing is
inseparable from the demonstration of the contingency of meaning that
Lacan tries to defend against in his argument for the inevitability or
retroactive performativity of the establishment of the phallus as the
transcendental signifier that guarantees the meaning of sexual differ
ence and acts as a barrier to any challenge to the meaning of gender. Thus, paradoxically, the deconstructibility of the status of the phallus
is precisely what makes gender hierarchy observable as a system and, at
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ENABLING PARADOXES 197
the same time, allows for the rerepresentability of the feminine as other
than the observed. From the viewpoint of a feminist observer, it is
Derrida's deconstruction of the status of the phallus that allows us to see
the significance of the erasure of gender as a system at the same time
that gender can appear as a system precisely at the moment of its
deconstruction. There is an irony, then, in Luhmann's own lack of
recognition that gender is a system in that it is Luhmann himself who
recognizes that it is always from the standpoint of an observer that a
system can be understood in its operations as deconstructible. Thus, we
paradoxically owe to deconstruction the meaning of the appearance of
gender as a system precisely in its deconstructibility. And it is in this
paradox that feminism finds its explanatory power and its political
possibility.
Rutgers University
NOTES
1 See Drucilla Cornell, "The Philosophy of the Limit: Systems Theory and Feminist Legal
Reform," in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel
Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson (New York, 1992), and "The Relevance of Time to the
Relationship between the Philosophy of the Limit and Systems Theory: The Call to Judicial
Responsibility," in The Philosophy of the Limit, ed. Drucilla Cornell (New York, 1992).
2 See Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication, tr. John Bednarz (Cambridge, 1989), The Differentiation of Society, tr. Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore (New York, 1982), Love as Passion, tr. Jeremy Gaicresard and Doris L. Jones (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), "Closure and Openness: On Reality in the World of Law," in Autopoietic Law: A New
Approach to Law and Society, ed. G?nther Teuber, tr. Ian Fraser (Berlin, 1987), "Law as a
Social System," Northwestern Law Review, 83 (Fall 1988/Winter 1989), 136-50, and
"Operational Closure and Structural Coupling: The Differentiation of the Legal System," Cardozo Law Review, 13 (1992), 1419.
3 Niklas Luhmann, "Deconstruction as Second Order Observing," New Literary History, 24
(1993), 767; hereafter cited in text as DS.
4 Luhmann, Love as Passion, p. 5.
5 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977). 6 See Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York, 1993) for an extended discussion of
the inseparability of the ethical, political, and material dimensions of embodiment.
7 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, tr. and ed. James Strachey (London, 1920), XVIII:14.
8 Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Mechelle Vinson et ai, 477 U.S. 57 (1986); hereafter cited in
text.
9 Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, "Choreographies," Diacritics, 12, no. 2
(1982), 66-76.
10 See Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in his Margins of Philosophy, tr. Alan
Bass (Chicago, 1982), pp. 307-30.
11 See Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, tr. Alan Bass
(Chicago, 1987). 12 See Derrida and McDonald, "Choreographies."
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