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When Sex = (Socially Constructed) Gender, What Is Lost, Politically?

This chapter examines the Lacanian view that sexual difference is neither a biological position nor a discursive construct but a negative ontological category. Sex thus refers to the condition of being split — out of joint and never whole. This contrasts sharply with recent feminist theory's tendency to ignore sexual difference in favor of gender as social construction, which has caused it to overlook the negativity and “trouble” inherent in sex, thereby missing an important way of radicalizing feminist politics. The chapter focuses on two recent variants of the gender and development literature — postmodern feminism and Butlerian performativity — arguing that each prescribes a politics founded on discursivity that yields to a timid and fragmented politics that is ultimately unthreatening to the neoliberal and patriarchal capitalist order. It seeks to valorize instead a feminist politics of development centered on sex as the domain of the “too much” and the “not enough,” amenable to both a more radical politics and universal collective action.