Guest Lecture, Ashley Sheldon on Lacan Response

I found it most interesting to hear from Ashley Sheldon in regards to the contrasting ideas between Fowles and Lacan on theorizing sexuality and identity. After reading the novel Mantissa it is apparent to me that the author, Fowles, is trying to create his theories on discovering ones identity through discovering ones sexuality. Whereas Lacan's theories prove the discovery of ones sexuality is to undo the discovery of ones identity. This is most interesting to me because as disturbing as the novel can be Fowles really gets his reader thinking as to what certain aspects of sexuality can recall of a persons character. Although this makes perfect sense to me after reading Mantissa, Ashley lectured a good argument on behalf of Lacan's theory and i can also somewhat understand his alternative views on the subject- "sexuality, which contemporary culture associates most closely with one's true self, has nothing at all to do with one's self at all". Lacan believes sexual satisfaction and identity to be seen as completely contradictory. The idea of discovering ones identity is based on a completly linguistic structure, where as the sexual has nothing to do with a linguistic structure, as Lacan sees it you are no longer even thinking.