Joan Copjec

The Sexual Compact

This paper is a full-out defense – and development – of the psychoanalytic position that there are two and only two sexes. It proceeds by problematizing all the main terms at issue, including: the two (which it views as a more complex notion than that of the multiple); sex (as irreducible to raw biology or social convention); and relation (as the unique phenomenon of a distance however close its terms may be brought together). It also introduces the term compact, taken from mathematics, to distinguish the sexual relation radically from the idea of the social contract.