Inaugural Lecture for the First Graduating Class of the Master's Degree in LGBTIQ+ Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid

Abstract

This article presents Teresa de Lauretis' inaugural lecture for the first class of the Master's Degree in LGBTIQ+ Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. Drawing on Laplanche's re-readings of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), I offer an approach to the concept of sex drive, sexual instinct and gender, key ideas within Queer Theory. The former refers to the polymorphically perverse sexuality proper to infancy (which nevertheless survives into adulthood), oriented only to pleasure, and implanted by the seduction of adult caregivers in the baby, who direct enigmatic messages that remain latent within the infant’s psyche as desires, unconscious fantasies or phobias; the second is geared by biology towards reproduction. According to this re-reading of Freud, gender is also defined as one of those enigmatic messages addressed to the infant by its environment and conditioned by the expectations of family and friends. Gender is therefore defined as a conscious or preconscious process, as opposed to sexuality, which is implanted by adults, since it is a message that the infant must assume, identifying himself as a boy or a girl, being able to reject or confirm this identity later on. In conclusion, when the sexual instinct arrives with puberty (instinctive sexuality), the psychic space already contains unconscious sexual fantasies; therefore, according to this reinterpretation of Laplanche, the so-called "sexual deviation" would not be an individual disorder (since sexuality always deviates from the norm), but a social issue.