Carolyn J. Dean

“At the same time, because the phallus is a signifier, that is, because it is part of a relational linguistic (i.e., Saussurian) system, it is not the “truth” about sexual difference. Instead, it represents a truth about the constructedness of sexual difference that is always, in Lacan’s word, “veiled.”111 For Lacan, patriarchy no longer functioned as the foundation of truth but became instead an anchor of cultural fictions.112 That is, the father is both authentic and a charlatan, a man who doesn’t know he is also always other.”
― Carolyn J. Dean, The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject

“What does it mean that we find victims who suffer with dignity more attractive than victims who don’t? What does it mean that we don’t mind it when perpetrators, torn apart by their own experiences, weep openly—but we are rendered uncomfortable when victims do the same? I don’t mean that each and every person has this experience: many of us feel like weeping when we see the carnage created by a suicide bombing and the grieving and shocked faces of the survivors. I mean instead that in all I have read, I detect a strong cultural bias toward aversion when confronted with victims who act as if they have suffered.
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“Fragile, powerless, and helpless victims make us uncomfortable, evoke complicated responses in us, and make it hard for us to empathize with the humiliation they underwent.
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one claim I make in different ways in the book—and very explicitly in chapter 3—is that to be really credible, a victim has to appear to have mastered his or her suffering.”
― Carolyn J. Dean