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Does The Cogito Have (A) Sex?, Emily Laurent-Monaghan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins with a critique of Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude. Chapter One argues against Meillassoux’s injunction to abandon the “transcendental,” while putting forth a Lacanian solution to the “correlationist” problem. Chapter Two expounds the meaning of the Cartesian subject, with a Lacanian twist. Under this view, the subject is split, and this split carries the name “sexual difference.” The cogito is “split” qua sexual difference, whereby sexual difference names the structural antagonism/impossibility that exists in language and bears on all speaking subjects. The second chapter focuses primarily on explaining how sexual difference marks the cogito, by …