The Promise of Consent: Exploring the Limits of Consent Culture Through Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Consent has become the dominant paradigm for promoting ethical sexual interactions. While feminists and queer theorists have developed critiques of this discourse, it remains undertheorized from a psychoanalytic perspective. By bringing Lacanian psychoanalysis into conversation with consent culture, I argue that by denying the constitutive unconscious, consent culture promotes a narrow framework for self-knowledge, leading to unnecessary psychic pain and social harm. I address significant gaps in consent literature concerning transactional sex and psychological abuse, focusing on the role of consent frameworks in exacerbating conflict between sex workers and anti-sex trafficking advocates, and stigmatizing psychological abuse victims. I propose deviating from consent culture when necessary by engaging with key Lacanian concepts—extimacy, objet petit a, the sinthome, Other jouissance, and the sexual and political impasse. I argue that creating knowledge spaces outside of consent culture is crucial for challenging injustice and imagining alternative sexual futures.