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neutral signifier, and that the linking of phallus and penis is cultural and arbitrary. 21
From this position phallic power—the control of the satisfaction of desire—
could equally well be linked, under different cultural conditions, with another
signifier of difference (for example, the breast). If this were so, it would free
Lacan’s theory from the criticism of being necessarily, eternally patriarchal and
would make it more acceptable as the basis of a general theory of language,
consciousness and ideology. However, we would argue that this position is
untenable, in that Lacan’s theory of language, which relies on a key structuring
signifier of difference, is rooted in the psychosexual development of the child,
while Lacan, like Freud before him, privileges the penis as the primary and sole
organ of sexual difference, which is apparent from birth onwards.

Feminist appropriations of Lacan
As we indicated earlier in this chapter, a key political and intellectual influence
on the recent development of theoretical debate around psychoanalysis in
relation to ideology and subjectivity has come from feminism. While Althusser’s
appropriation of Lacanian concepts in a Marxist theory of ideology remained at
the level of the mechanism of subject interpellation or positioning on the basis of
misrecognition, feminist theorists have attempted to make Lacan’s theory the
basis of a materialist theory of ideology which could deal with the structure of
gendered subjectivity. The insistence on the importance of gender and sexual
ideologies in the constitution of subjectivity and on the structure of language and
signifying practice within the symbolic order has resulted in three main strands
of development of Lacan’s theory.
First, there are those positions which deny the necessary eternal, patriarchal
structure of Lacan’s and Lévi-Strauss’s general theory. For example, Juliet
23
Mitchell or Rosalind Coward and John Ellis insist that the penis/phallus
22
equation, and the power structures which go with it, are not necessarily universal
but culturally and historically specific and therefore changeable, even within the
terms of Lacan’s theory. Then, informing much of this British work on Lacan, is
the writing of Julia Kristeva, who has attempted, if only in principle, to fill in the
theoretical lacunae in Marxist theorizations of the social formation in relation to
language and subjectivity with Lacanian theory. Her theory involves a
conception of a symbolic order governed by a set of dominant, masculine,
patriarchal discourses to which some available discourses (for example, those of
art, literature and irrationality) are marginal. These ‘feminine’ discourses draw
on areas which the patriarchal symbolic order represses. Women’s position
within language and culture is defined by their negative entry into the symbolic
order, an entry which, Kristeva insists, occurs via the social structuring of the
unconscious. This notion of negative positionality within language has led to
discussion of the need for the development of a separate language for women and
the development of an alternative symbolic order. These ideas have become
most important in the third line of post Lacanian theoretical development, by