Other Jouissance

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (114)

1. #01

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.120

   The Act and Evil in Literature > The case of Valmont

   Theoretical move: The passage uses the literary case of Valmont and Merteuil in *Les Liaisons dangereuses* to dramatize the Lacanian thesis that there is no sexual relation — that love (identification, the formula of One) and jouissance (always partial, never whole) are fundamentally incompatible — while also arguing that the path to autonomous subjectivity, in eighteenth-century ethical thought, runs through Evil as a deliberate project rather than mere knowledge.

   In this mythical relationship the antinomy of love and enjoyment is — or, rather, was — thus abolished.

2. #02

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.170

   Between the Moral Law and the Superego > The sublime and the logic of the superego > The second passage is from the Critique of Judgement.

   Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that Kant's theory of the sublime can be read as a theory of the logic of fantasy, in which the subject's safe observation of its own annihilation through the 'window of fantasy' reveals the superego structure latent in Kantian ethics — while simultaneously opening the question of whether a non-superego ethics (Lacanian ethics) is conceivable.

   It is precisely this jouissance of the Other, a jouissance that does not serve any (real or apparent) purpose, that is so fascinating about the sublime.

3. #03

   Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.158

   Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > The Abyss of Freedom

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that the radical Christian ethic of love—grounded in freedom, unknowing, and relation to das Ding beyond the law—is systematically betrayed by orthodox Christian dogma, which functions as a defensive, compensatory reinvestment in the symbolic big Other against the anxiety produced by that original abyssal encounter; the psychoanalytic transference is offered as a structural parallel to this dynamic of supposed knowledge arising from a void of unknowing.

   'she's coming. There's no doubt about it. What is she getting off on? It is clear that the essential testimony of the mystics consists in saying that they experience it, but know nothing about it.'

4. #04

   Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.204

   Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > Conclusions > Sex and the Sacred

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that the two sides of the religious phenomenon—opening onto das Ding versus symptomatic defense—are gender-relative, mapped onto Lacan's formulas of sexuation: the masculine logic of exception underwrites phallic jouissance and doctrinal/hierarchical religion, while the feminine logic of the non-all underwrites Other jouissance and a radical, kenotic Christianity; this allows a gendered re-reading of das Ding and a reinterpretation of divinity as unknowing, loving, and structurally aligned with the feminine.

   a feminine jouissance that Lacan calls the 'jouissance of the Other'... Lacan intimately links the divine with the feminine. 'Why not interpret one face of the Other, the God face, as based on feminine jouissance,' he asks.

5. #05

   Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.179

   I > Th e Appeal of Sacrifi ce > From Enjoyment to Pleasure

   Theoretical move: By accepting the logic of female sexuation — that enjoyment is constitutively tied to loss rather than impeded by it — subjects can dissolve the envy that drives social antagonism, because a 'nothing' that can only be lost admits no hierarchy of possession and thus enables an authentic social bond.

   The other is perhaps enjoying, but this is not an enjoyment that occurs in spite of loss

6. #06

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part20.xhtml_ncx_99"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part20.xhtml_page_0117"></span>***J***

   Theoretical move: The passage traces the conceptual development of jouissance in Lacan's work from a simple Hegelian notion of enjoyment to a complex articulation of the paradoxical "painful pleasure" beyond the pleasure principle, culminating in the distinction between phallic jouissance and the Other (feminine) jouissance, while anchoring the concept in the prohibition inherent to the symbolic order, castration, and the death drive.

   in 1973 Lacan admits that there is a specifically feminine jouissance, a 'supplementary jouissance' (S20, 58) which is 'beyond the phallus' (S20, 69), a jouissance of the Other. This feminine jouissance is ineffable.

7. #07

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part32.xhtml_ncx_214"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part32.xhtml_page_0245"></span>***W***

   Theoretical move: The passage traces the theoretical development of the concept of "woman" across Freud and Lacan, arguing that Lacan's key move is to displace the question of femininity from a biological or universal essence to a structural position in the symbolic order defined by the logic of the not-all, feminine jouissance beyond the phallus, and woman as symptom of man.

   Lacan advances the concept of a specifically feminine jouissance which goes 'beyond the phallus' (S20, 69); this jouissance is 'of the order of the infinite', like mystical ecstasy (S20, 44). Women may experience this jouissance, but they know nothing about it

8. #08

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_9"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_page_0025"></span>***A*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_16"></span>**algebra**

   Theoretical move: Lacan's algebraic formalisation of psychoanalysis is theoretically motivated by three interlinked aims: scientific legitimacy, integral transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge, and the prevention of imaginary (intuitive) understanding in favour of symbolic manipulation — the mathemes and associated symbols thus function as epistemic and pedagogical devices, not mere notation.

   JA = the *jouissance* of the other

9. #09

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part28.xhtml_ncx_164"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part28.xhtml_page_0186"></span>***R*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part28.xhtml_ncx_169"></span>**religion**

   Theoretical move: The passage maps Freud's and Lacan's shared atheist alignment of psychoanalysis with science against religion, while showing how Lacan reframes religion's theoretical content—redefining God as unconscious, as a metaphor for the big Other, and grounding the Name-of-the-Father and feminine jouissance in theological metaphors even as he argues for religion's structural opposition to psychoanalytic truth.

   compares feminine jouissance to the ecstasy experienced by Christian mystics such as St Teresa of Avila (S20, 70–1)

10. #10

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.359

    **xx** > **Notes** > Chapter XVIII The Voice of Yahweh > Chapter XXII From Anal to Ideal

    Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index section from Seminar X, listing proper names, concepts, and bibliographic references alphabetically with page numbers; it contains no independent theoretical argument.

    jouissance in the Other 292, 313 the Other's jouissance 54, 57, 61, 152, 163, 177, 190,268,303,313 woman's jouissance 183-4, 190, 2645, 304

11. #11

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.202

    **x** > **WOMAN, TRUER AND MORE REAL**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses clinical material and the figure of Don Juan to argue that feminine jouissance is structurally distinct from masculine desire: whereas man's anxiety is tied to the (–φ) and the lost object, woman's relation to jouissance is mediated by the desire of the Other rather than by lack, making her "truer and more real." Women's masochism is consequently reframed as a male fantasy, and the male "imposture" is contrasted with the female "masquerade."

    the occultation, by the Other's jouissance, or by the jouissance that looks to be alleged of the Other, of an anxiety that it's incontestably a matter of awakening

12. #12

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.213

    **x** > **xv**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that "men's business" designates a structural asymmetry in desire: what lacks for the man is (-φ), primary castration as something he must actively mourn and detach from narcissism, whereas for the woman lack is pre-castratively constituted through demand and the object a in its relation to the mother — this asymmetry reframes the debate on female phallicism and reorganizes the clinical vignette of Lucia Tower's countertransference around the distinction between the Other and the object a.

    I have in mind, in a normal register, the kind of tough fucker of which Saint Teresa of Avila gives us the noblest example…the a as such, having been singled out perfectly, is brought to the fore and offered her as the object elect of her desire.

13. #13

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.279

    **xx** > **WHAT COMES IN THROUGH THE EAR**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the phallus functions as a "deceptive might" — never present where expected — such that anxiety is the truth of sexuality, and the subject-Other relation (S→A) is primordial over communication, with the subject first receiving his own message in broken, inverted form via the Other, a structure confirmed by the infant's pre-mirror-stage monologue.

    she can only take the phallus for what it isn't… which only gives her an approximate jouissance in relation to what she imagines of the Other's jouissance, in which doubtless she can share through a kind of mental fantasy, but only by straying from her own specific jouissance.

14. #14

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.315

    **xx** > **FROM ANAL TO IDEAL**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the anal object (excrement as objet petit a) achieves its subjective function not through the mother's demand alone, but through its structural articulation with castration (- φ): excrement symbolizes phallic loss, grounds obsessional ambivalence, and prefigures the function of the object a as territorial/representative trace — yet this still falls short of explaining how the concealment of the object founds desire as such.

    woman's jouissance is crushed, to take up a term borrowed from the phenomenology of breast and nursling, crushed under phallic longing, implies that woman is thenceforth required... to love the male Other only at a point situated beyond what halts her.

15. #15

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.196

    **x** > **WOMAN, TRUER AND MORE REAL**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that woman's relation to jouissance is structurally superior to man's because her bond with desire is looser — she is not knotted to the phallic negative (-φ) in the same essential way — and uses mythological (Tiresias), philosophical (Sartre/Hegel), and topological (the pot/void) resources to articulate how the real is not lack but fullness, while the hole/void that structures desire is specifically man's burden.

    Women's jouissance is greater than men's... It depends only, in sum, on the limitation that man's relation to desire imposes on him

16. #16

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.270

    **Seminar 21: Wednesday 8 June 1966**

    Theoretical move: Lacan inverts the Hegelian master/slave dialectic by arguing that jouissance remains with the slave, not the master, and uses this to reframe castration as the operation that introduces a negative sign onto the phallus—making possible the (always asymmetric) encounter between masculine and feminine jouissance. He then previews the tripartite RSI framework and the 'logic of fantasy' as the conceptual architecture needed to account for the subject's relation to desire, jouissance, and the real.

    the prohibition of jouissance, the jouissance of the Other, in so far as it is what is involved in sexual jouissance, namely, that of the feminine other.

17. #17

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.259

    **Seminar 21: Wednesday 8 June 1966**

    Theoretical move: Lacan inverts the Hegelian master/slave dialectic by locating jouissance on the side of the slave, then uses this inversion to ground a critique of Freudian obscurantism around feminine jouissance, the phallic function as negativity, and the three registers (imaginary/symbolic/real) as orientating instruments for a forthcoming 'logic of phantasy'.

    the homosexual bond, precisely in its relationship to the prohibition of jouissance, the jouissance of the Other, in so far as it is what is involved in sexual jouissance, namely, that of the feminine other.

18. #18

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.280

    there are normal perverts,

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Oedipus complex is insufficient to ground sexuality unless it is re-articulated as the foundation of desire through the phallic function, and that feminine jouissance is structurally located at the place of the big Other (O), while the minus-phi (−φ) serves as the mediating organ-as-object between male and female jouissance — against any naïve notion of genital maturation or "oblativity" as explanatory.

    the relationship that it is a matter of establishing in sexual union to a jouissance, precisely gives precedence to feminine jouissance, which would not have this importance at all, if it did not come to be situated, precisely, at the place that I have marked here with an O, the locus of the Other.

19. #19

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.280

    there are normal perverts,

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Oedipus complex is insufficient to ground sexuality unless articulated through the phallic function and the (-phi), and that sexual jouissance must be mapped through the structure of the Other — locating feminine jouissance at the place of the Other (O) while exposing "Hegel's error" of placing jouissance on the side of the master.

    the relationship that it is a matter of establishing in sexual union to a jouissance, precisely gives precedence to feminine jouissance, which would not have this importance at all, if it did not come to be situated, precisely, at the place that I have marked here with an O, the locus of the Other.

20. #20

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.270

    **Seminar 21: Wednesday 8 June 1966**

    Theoretical move: Lacan inverts the Hegelian master/slave dialectic by locating jouissance on the side of the slave, then reframes castration not as a prohibitive structure but as the operation of negativing the phallus so that desire and jouissance can be articulated across sexual difference — a move he introduces as preliminary to the 'logic of phantasy' and organises around three registers (imaginary, symbolic, real/torsion).

    the prohibition of jouissance, the jouissance of the Other, in so far as it is what is involved in sexual jouissance, namely, that of the feminine other.

21. #21

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.259

    **Seminar 21: Wednesday 8 June 1966**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Hegelian master/slave dialectic fails to explain social cohesion, whereas Freud's account grounds it in the homosexual bond and the prohibition of feminine jouissance; this leads to a recasting of castration not as prohibition but as the operation by which the phallus receives a negative sign, enabling the (non-)relationship between masculine and feminine jouissance — a problem Lacan frames as requiring a logic of fantasy and introduces through three registers (imaginary/symbolic/real) oriented around negativity and torsion.

    the prohibition of jouissance, the jouissance of the Other, in so far as it is what is involved in sexual jouissance, namely, that of the feminine other

22. #22

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.244

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 22: Wednesday June 7 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the sexual act installs the subject precisely at the disjunction between body and jouissance: the body of the woman becomes the metaphor for masculine jouissance, while the phallus (distinguished from the penis) functions as the symbol of a withdrawn jouissance that underlies social exchange — yet this structural arrangement leaves feminine jouissance unresolved and adrift, mirroring the slave's displaced jouissance in the Hegelian master/slave dialectic.

    And it remains that for him, as for what I am questioning in the sexual act, there is another jouissance which is adrift.

23. #23

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.221

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 20: Wednesday 24 May 1967**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the sexual act is structured around a constitutive gap—the castration complex—such that jouissance beyond the pleasure principle is only oriented negatively, through the suspense (detumescence/castration) of the phallic organ; there is no phallic object, only its absence, which is the very condition of possibility for the sexual act, and feminine jouissance can only be oriented from this same reference point of castration.

    That it is the person, in any case, may make anyone who has had a little glimpse of feminine jouissance smile a little!… the question of feminine jouissance does not seem to be really going to be studied in the near future

24. #24

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.142

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 1 March 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the golden number (φ, "small o") and the mathematics of the mean and extreme ratio to theorise the sexual relation: the subject enters genital union as a "product" (objet petit a), and the irreducible remainder generated by the division of the subject by the Other (the small o that cannot be eliminated) both limits jouissance and founds the "phantom of the gift" that constitutes feminine love.

    what constitutes its subjective originality … the ideal of the jouissance of the other … the radical heterogeneity of male jouissance and female jouissance

25. #25

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.116

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 11: Wednesday 15 February 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topological figure of the double loop (inverted eight/Möbius strip) provides the structural model for both repetition and alienation, showing how the "additional One" (Un-en-plus) generated by the retroactive return of repetition fractures the Other and the subject alike, and that the act emerges precisely at the point where the passage à l'acte of alienation and repetition intersect on these non-orientable surfaces.

    nothing else, except this point which, from jouissance, ensures the jouissance of the Other.

26. #26

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.260

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 23: Wednesday 14 June 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that masochism exemplifies the fundamental economy of perversion: the masochist's identification with the rejected o-object and his demonstrative capture of jouissance reveals that sadism is not the reversal of masochism but its naive counterpart—the sadist, believing himself master, unknowingly occupies the masochistic position of the o-object, enslaved to jouissance from the outside.

    this pure - but detached jouissance of the feminine body… this Other absolute but completely enigmatic jouissance, can give pleasure, as I might say, to the woman! This indeed is the least of the masochist's worries!

27. #27

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.198

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that there is no sexual relation by showing that the field between the small o (objet petit a) and the big Other is structured as a hole — not a unifying One — and that identification (ego ideal/ideal ego) operates in this gap; the Oedipus myth is then mobilised to demonstrate that jouissance itself is constitutively bound to rottenness and the hole, not to any unitive fullness.

    What ocean of feminine jouissance, I ask you, was necessary for the ship of Oedipus to float without sinking?

28. #28

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.221

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 20: Wednesday 24 May 1967**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the sexual act cannot be grounded in the pleasure principle or in any imaginary phallic object; rather, jouissance-beyond is structurally evoked by detumescence as its negative limit, and castration means precisely that there is no phallic object — which is the condition of possibility, not the obstacle, for the sexual act. Feminine jouissance can only orient itself through the same castration reference-point as masculine jouissance, making the 'sexual relation' constitutively non-existent except as good intention.

    That it is the person, in any case, may make anyone who has had a little glimpse of feminine jouissance smile a little! … feminine jouissance itself can only pass by way of the same reference point!

29. #29

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.174

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 16: Wednesday 12 April 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the concept of 'jouissance-value' as structurally homologous to exchange-value in Marx's commodity analysis, arguing that castration operates as the subtraction of penile jouissance that transforms woman into the 'object of jouissance' (the homme-elle), thereby grounding the sexual act in a logic of value equivalence that founds the social/symbolic order.

    she disposes of her own jouissance in a way that totally escapes this ideological grasp... Where she remains impregnable, impregnable as a woman, is outside the system described as the sexual act.

30. #30

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.143

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 1 March 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan deploys the mathematical structure of the golden ratio (objet petit a as mean and extreme ratio) to theorize sexual difference and genital satisfaction: the irreducible remainder (small o / objet petit a) produced in the subject's confrontation with the maternal unity of "one flesh" is what structures jouissance, phallus, and love as the gift of what one does not have — with detumescence as the illusory elimination of remainder, and feminine love as causa sui arising from giving what one lacks.

    if something comes to be founded around the jouissance of the Other, it is in so far as the structure that we have stated today gives rise to the phantom of the gift

31. #31

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.243

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 22: Wednesday June 7 1967**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the sexual act is constitutively structured by the disjunction between body and jouissance, with the subject emerging precisely at that gap; the woman's body functions as a metaphor for masculine jouissance, while the phallus (distinct from the penis) marks the withdrawal of jouissance into exchange value — yet feminine jouissance remains radically unresolved and adrift, beyond any structural accounting.

    And it remains that for him, as for what I am questioning in the sexual act, there is another jouissance which is adrift.

32. #32

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.209

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 19: Wednesday 10 May 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that "masochism" as a clinical label obscures the logical structure of neurotic desire (specifically the "wish to be refused"), and that grasping the full range of satisfactions implied by the sexual act requires logical articulation—not moralistic or adaptive frameworks—culminating in the claim that the sexual act necessarily implies a third element (the prohibited mother, the phallus) and that feminine jouissance remains fundamentally unarticulated by sixty-seven years of psychoanalytic practice.

    sixty seven years of psychoanalytic surgery have not resulted in us knowing more about what is involved in feminine jouissance

33. #33

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.260

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 23: Wednesday 14 June 1967**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that masochism—not sadism—reveals the naked economy of perversion: the masochist's frantic identification with the rejected object (objet petit a) as the locus of jouissance is itself a demonstration that constitutes his jouissance, while the sadist, thinking himself master, unknowingly occupies the masochistic position as slave of the drive. Both perversions share the same logic as fantasy, linking perversion to neurosis.

    this pure - but detached jouissance of the feminine body… this Other absolute but completely enigmatic jouissance, can give pleasure, as I might say, to the woman! This indeed is the least of the masochist's worries!

34. #34

    Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.116

    the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 11: Wednesday 15 February 1967**

    Theoretical move: The passage establishes that the topological figure of the double loop (inverted eight) is the structural ground of both repetition and alienation, and uses this topology to argue that the Other is inherently "fractured" (barred), that the subject's division is ineradicable from truth, and that the Act emerges as the logical consequence of alienation's passage through the topology of repetition.

    a point of jouissance is essentially locatable as jouissance of the Other; a point without which it is impossible to understand what is at stake in perversion. A point, nevertheless, which is the only structural referent that can account for what in the tradition is grasped as Selbstbewusstsein.

35. #35

    Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.119

    **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Oedipus complex functions as a mythical frame that psychoanalysis uses to contain and regulate the irreducible gap between male and female jouissance, while the 'o-object' (objet petit a) — not castration itself — is the structural operator through which subjectification of sex is accomplished, with castration being merely the elegant sign of a remaining outside jouissance that psychoanalysis cannot access.

    We do not know a single word more about what is involved in feminine enjoyment... it is left completely out of consideration.

36. #36

    Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.119

    **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Oedipus complex functions as a mythical framework that contains and limits psychoanalytic operations rather than explaining masculine enjoyment, and that the structural logic of the analytic act culminates in the relation $◇a — where castration is the sign of an irreducible gap between male and feminine enjoyment that psychoanalysis cannot close.

    We do not know a single word more about what is involved in feminine enjoyment... But for masculine enjoyment, at least as regards analytic experience, it is a strange thing, no one has ever seemed to notice that it is very precisely reduced to the Oedipus myth.

37. #37

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.273

    Seminar 15: Wednesday 19 March 1969 > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 23 April 1969**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the structure of desire—grounded in the impossibility of the sexual relation and the barrier jouissance poses to Other jouissance—is homologous to formal logical flaws (the undecidable, Gödelian incompleteness), and that psychoanalytic stagnation consists in analysts becoming hypnotized by the patient's demand rather than dissolving the neurotic knot at its structural root.

    The enjoyment of the instrument creates a barrier to the enjoyment that is the enjoyment of the Other in so far as the Other is only represented by a body

38. #38

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.206

    Seminar 12: Wednesday 26 February 1969 > Seminar 13: Wednesday 5 March 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the argument that jouissance functions as an absolute Real, and that it is hysteria—not androcentric theory—that logically unveils the structure of desire as lack-of-the-One; the drive already implies knowledge, but this knowledge is marked by a constitutive lie (proton pseudos), forcing the displacement from sign to signifier as the properly psychoanalytic move beyond metaphysics.

    This enjoyment as such is such that originally only the hysteric puts it in order logically... she posits it as an absolute, that is why she unveils the logical structure of the function of enjoyment.

39. #39

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.225

    Seminar 12: Wednesday 26 February 1969 > Seminar 13: Wednesday 5 March 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the absence of a sexual signifier means Woman is irreducibly unknown, accessible only through representatives of representation (Vorstellungsrepräsentanz); sublimation is then theorised as the objet petit a functioning as what "tickles das Ding from the inside," linking drive topology (edge-structure, vacuole) to the production of art and courtly love.

    All the enigmas that appear, we do not know why, when people study feminine sexuality, the enigma the sensitivity of the vaginal wall presents... limitrophe to feminine enjoyment is something that will find itself much more easily in agreement with the topology that we are trying to approach here

40. #40

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.389

    Seminar 25: Wednesday 25 June 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan formalizes the subject's constitution through the fantasy ($◇a) and the Four Discourses schema, arguing that knowledge born from the slave serves the master, that the objet petit a as surplus-jouissance is the structural stake in the Master/Slave dialectic, and that the Discourse of the University is the hommelle (alma mater) whose subjection effects on students mirror the hysteric's truth-telling function—making the political question of revolution inseparable from the psychoanalytic question of knowledge and the subject.

    what concerns this relationship of the woman to her Other enjoyment, as I articulated it earlier. The woman who becomes cause of desire is the subject of whom it must be said...

41. #41

    Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.83

    *[A porter appears]*

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the logic of material implication and the 'A child is being beaten' phantasy to argue that truth cannot be isolated as an attribute of propositional knowledge, that the subject is constitutively divided by jouissance, and that University discourse inevitably reinstates the transcendental I as master-signifier, whereas analytic discourse must attend to the truth that only emerges from the effects of language including the unconscious.

    his own enjoyment in the form of the enjoyment of the Other. This indeed is what is at stake when the phantasy finds itself, in the first place, linking the image of the father to another child.

42. #42

    Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.116

    *[A porter appears]* > Seminar 7: Wednesday 18 February 1970

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Dora case to demonstrate the structural logic of the Discourse of the Hysteric: the hysteric maintains an alienated relation to the master-signifier (the idealised father) precisely by refusing to surrender knowledge and by orienting desire around the Other's enjoyment rather than her own, thereby unmasking the master's function while remaining in solidarity with it.

    at that moment the enjoyment of the Other is offered to her, and she wants

43. #43

    Seminar XVIII · On a Discourse That Might Not Be a Semblance · Jacques Lacan · p.69

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 17 February 1971**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that language occupies the gap left open by the phallus in the place of the sexual relationship, substituting a law of desire/prohibition for any mathematical relation between the sexes; this move is theoretically grounded in Peirce's logical schema to establish that there is no universal of Woman (not-all), while the phallus-as-instrument is posited as the "cause" (not origin) of language, and the truth—like the unconscious—sustains contradictory positions that only become paradoxical when written.

    it is possible that there is a knowledge of the enjoyment that is called sexual which is attributable to this particular woman.

44. #44

    Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.12

    Seminar 1: Wednesday 8 December 1971

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the phallus is the signified of sexual discourse (not the signifier), that transsexualism and the common error both mistake the signifier for the organ, and that the non-existence of the sexual relationship requires a new logic built on the 'not-all', existence/quantification, and modality rather than naturalist or Aristotelian categories.

    this makes the discourse of love easy for her. But it is clear that that excludes her from psychoanalytic discourse

45. #45

    Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.89

    Seminar **6:** Wednesday **8** March 1972

    Theoretical move: Lacan develops the formulas of sexuation—specifically the not-all (pas toute) and the logic of the at-least-one exception—to articulate woman's mode of presence as "between centre and absence," a jouissance that exceeds the phallic function without negating it, while diagnosing Hegelian dialectics and Marxist discourse as structurally blind to the surplus-jouissance drawn from the real of the Master's discourse.

    her part, to leave that through which she does not participate in it, in the absence which is no less enjoyment by being jouis-absence.

46. #46

    Seminar XIX bis · The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst · Jacques Lacan · p.86

    The Psychoanalyst's Knowledge > I ASK YOU TO REFUSE WHAT I AM OFFERING YOU.

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the formulas of sexuation cannot be read through standard propositional logic (negation, conjunction, disjunction) because the phallic function governs both sexes asymmetrically: the masculine side is structured by a universal ('All x') grounded in an exception ('there exists an x that negates φx'), while the feminine side is 'not-all' within the phallic function, which opens onto a dual, properly feminine jouissance irreducible to phallic jouissance—and it is precisely this asymmetry that marks the non-existence of the sexual relationship.

    she conceals a different enjoyment to phallic enjoyment, enjoyment that is described as properly feminine which in no way depends on it. If the woman is 'not all', it is because here enjoyment, for its part, is dual.

47. #47

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.147

    **¹⁰⁷x** > The rat in the maze

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that llanguage is primary and precedes language (which is merely scientific knowledge's "harebrained lucubration" about llanguage), that the unconscious is a knowing-how-to-do-things with llanguage that exceeds what any speaking being can articulate, and that the Lacanian hypothesis — that a signifier represents a subject to another signifier — is structurally necessary to the functioning of llanguage itself.

    I began with a formulation that seemed a tad trivial to me, that the Other's jouissance is not the sign of love.

48. #48

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.76

    **II** > God and Woman's jouissance

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the argument that the non-existence of the sexual relationship is the ground from which its supplements (love, phallic jouissance, courtly love) must be theorised, and uses the distinction between reading and understanding—illustrated by commentary on *Le titre de la lettre*—to reframe the Subject Supposed to Know as the very structure of love/transference.

    no relationship gets constituted between the sexes in the case of speaking beings, for it is on that basis alone that what makes up for that relationship can be enunciated.

49. #49

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.99

    **VII** > A love letter *(une lettre d'amour)* > **Does the Other know?**

    Theoretical move: Through a detour via Empedocles (as cited by Aristotle and used by Freud), Lacan argues that love and hate are inseparable: a God who knows no hatred equally knows no love, and a man who believes a woman confuses him with God (i.e., with what she enjoys) thereby loves less—because there is no love without hate. This establishes a structural co-dependency of love and hate against any idealization of pure love.

    a woman confuses him with God, in other words, what she enjoys

50. #50

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.48

    **II** > Love and the signifier

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the signifier is characterized by contingency rather than eternity, and that this contingency (figured through creationism, the *ex nihilo*, and the Copernican/Newtonian revolution) grounds his central claim that love compensates for the absence of the sexual relationship — a relation only accessible through the function of the phallus as that which is articulated on the basis of absence. The "revolution" Lacan values is not a change of center but the shift from "it turns" to "it falls," marking the real subversion of the signified's routine.

    Jouissance of the Other... is not a sign of love.

51. #51

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.16

    On Feminine Sexuality The Limits of Love and Knowledge > On jouissance

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sexual jouissance is structurally defined by an impasse—the impossibility of the sexual relationship—and uses topological concepts (compactness, open sets, finity) to articulate how phallic jouissance constitutes an obstacle to jouissance of the Other, while the Not-all marks the female pole's irreducible remainder. Love is revealed as narcissistic, and its object-like substance is in fact the objet petit a as remainder in desire.

    jouissance of the Other, of the body of the Other, is promoted only on the basis of infinity (de infinitude)

52. #52

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.26

    **II** > To Jakobson

    Theoretical move: Lacan carves out "linguistricks" (linguisterie) as a domain distinct from Jakobson's linguistics proper, arguing that the consequences of "the unconscious is structured like a language" exceed linguistics and belong to a separate field grounded in the psychoanalytic discourse; he then deploys the Four Discourses to show that love—as opposed to jouissance of the Other—is the sign of a shift between discourses, with the emergence of analytic discourse marking every such transition.

    What is not a sign of love is jouissance of the Other, jouissance of the Other sex and, as I said, of the body that symbolizes it.

53. #53

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.83

    **II** > God and Woman's jouissance

    Theoretical move: Lacan theorizes a feminine jouissance that is "beyond the phallus" — experienced but unknowable even to women themselves — and uses mystical testimony (St. Teresa, Hadewijch) as its privileged witness, then links this Other jouissance to the God-face of the big Other and the paternal/castration function, arguing these do not resolve into either one God or two.

    There is a jouissance that is hers (à elle), that belongs to that "she" (elle) that doesn't exist and doesn't signify anything. There is a jouissance that is hers about which she herself perhaps knows nothing if not that she experiences it

54. #54

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.33

    **II** > To Jakobson > **What is the signifier?**

    Theoretical move: Lacan defines the signifier as both the cause of jouissance (its material and efficient cause, enabling access to a part of the Other's body) and simultaneously what brings jouissance to a halt (its final cause), thereby grounding the signifier not in Aristotelian physics or Cartesian extended substance but in a new ontological category: 'enjoying substance' (la substance jouissante).

    what I, strictly speaking, call 'jouissance of the Other,' insofar as it is merely symbolized here, is something else altogether - namely, the notwhole that I will have to articulate.

55. #55

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.98

    **VII** > A love letter *(une lettre d'amour)*

    Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes analytic discourse from both Aristotelian cosmology and scientific discourse by locating the speaking being's reality at the level of fantasy and the unconscious, then pivots to the question of feminine jouissance and its relation to the Other, arguing that woman—like man—is subjected to an Other that may or may not "know" the jouissance she experiences beyond the phallic game.

    the term she gets off on (dont elle jouit) beyond all this 'playing' (jouer) that constitutes her relationship to man - the term I call the Other, signifying it with an A

56. #56

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.13

    On Feminine Sexuality The Limits of Love and Knowledge > On jouissance

    Theoretical move: Lacan grounds Seminar XX's inquiry by defining jouissance as "what serves no purpose," distinguishing it from love (which is always mutual and demands more), positioning the superego as the imperative of jouissance ("Enjoy!"), and asserting that jouissance of the Other's body is not the sign of love — thereby opening the problem of what, beyond necessity or sufficiency, can answer with jouissance.

    "Jouissance of the Other," of the Other with a capital O, "of the body of the Other who symbolizes the Other, is not the sign of love."

57. #57

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.96

    **VII** > A love letter *(une lettre d'amour)*

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances that analytic discourse emerges from scientific discourse precisely to reveal that speaking of love is itself a jouissance, and that the soul—far from being a psychological presupposition—is an effect of love ('hommosexual' elaboration), while feminine jouissance points toward the question of the Other's knowledge, which scientific discourse forces us to think without recourse to any Supreme Being's supposed knowledge of the Good.

    What we want to know - in what constitutes feminine jouissance insofar as it is not wholly occupied with man, and even insofar, I will say, as it is not, as such, at all occupied with him - what we want to know is the status of the Other's knowledge.

58. #58

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.82

    **II** > God and Woman's jouissance

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the sexuation formulas by arguing that woman's structural not-wholeness with respect to the phallic function entails a supplementary jouissance irreducible to phallic jouissance, while simultaneously grounding 'being' not in ontology but in the jouissance of the body marked by signifierness—thereby opposing his project to both philosophical idealism and vulgar materialism.

    being not-whole, she has a supplementary jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouissance. You will notice that I said 'supplementary.' If I had said 'complementary' what a mess we'd be in!

59. #59

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.92

    **VII** > A love letter *(une lettre d'amour)*

    Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the formulas of sexuation by showing how masculine and feminine sides of speaking beings relate differently to phallic jouissance, fantasy, and the barred Other — culminating in the claim that the dissociation of *a* (imaginary) from S(Ⱥ) (symbolic) is the task of psychoanalysis, distinguishing it from psychology, and that woman's radical Other jouissance places her in closer proximity to God than any ancient speculation on the Good could reach.

    It is insofar as her jouissance is radically Other that woman has more of a relationship to God than anything that could have been said in speculation in antiquity

60. #60

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.44

    **II** > **The function of the written¹**

    Theoretical move: There is no prediscursive reality — every reality is founded by discourse — and the non-existence of the sexual relationship is the negative foundation on which all writing (and analytic discourse specifically) rests; the bar in the Saussurean formula is the graphic index of this impossibility, marking that the written is precisely what cannot be understood, while man and woman exist only as signifiers articulated through the phallic and not-all positions respectively.

    Writing will not object to this first approximation since it is in this way that writing will show that woman's jouissance is based on a supplementation of this not-whole.

61. #61

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.69

    **II** > Love and the signifier > Aristotle and Freud: the other satisfaction

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the sexual relationship necessarily fails, and that this failure is not incidental but constitutive—the object itself is failure—and uses modal logic (the necessary as "what doesn't stop being written") to show that phallic jouissance is the only jouissance, with the 'other' (feminine) jouissance marking the not-whole that cannot be fully articulated.

    Were there another jouissance than phallic jouissance, it shouldn't be/could never fail to be that one.

62. #62

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.95

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the "Copernican revolution" as a foil to argue that genuine subversion lies not in changing a centre but in substituting a new formal principle ('things fall', expressed as Newton's law of gravity written down) — an argument that privileges the function of the written over imaginary, sphere-centred thinking, while reframing the phallus, the Other, love, and the sign as the year's key compass-points.

    the enjoyment of the Other, which I said was symbolised by the body, is not a sign of love.

63. #63

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.216

    J.Lacan-... of this?

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the 'not-all' logic governing Woman cannot be read through finite Aristotelian particularity (which would imply an exceptional existence), but only through the infinite—where no determinate exception can be constructed—grounding Lacan's claim that Woman is properly half-said, and that her enjoyment is of the order of the infinite rather than the phallic universal.

    a supplementary, feminine enjoyment, a privileged relationship to the Other, a personal enjoyment of God.

64. #64

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.12

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 21 November 1972**

    Theoretical move: Lacan deploys topological concepts of compactness and open sets to demonstrate that the impossibility of the sexual relationship is what structures all discourse, and that feminine sexuality is characterized by the 'not-all'—women taken 'une par une'—rather than by phallic jouissance or universal fusion, grounding sexuation in a logical rather than anatomical requirement.

    cannot something be reached which would tell us how what up to now is only a flaw, a gap in enjoyment, might be realised?

65. #65

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.73

    What is the signifier? > What is a signifier?

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the signifier cannot be collectivised through semantic or lexical predication alone, and that its proper "substance" is Jouissance — the body enjoys itself only by corporalising itself in a signifying way, making enjoyment-substance the third term beyond thinking substance and extended substance, and reframing the subject of the unconscious as the one who speaks stupidities rather than thinks.

    ecstatic, suggestive which says that, in short, it is the Other that enjoys.

66. #66

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.260

    (3) Naturally since I made a small mistake

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean knot topology to ground the asymmetry between the One and the Other (woman as "less One"), arguing that mathematisation alone accesses the Real—defined as the mystery of the speaking body and the unconscious—while distinguishing the Real from both fantasy and traditional reality.

    what she has in terms of more enjoying at being the Other, of being only able to be said Other

67. #67

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.127

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses Bentham's utilitarianism and Stoic logic (material implication) to articulate the modal structure of jouissance—that enjoyment 'does not cease not to be written' (the impossible)—and to show that repression is secondary to a primal non-suitability of jouissance for the sexual relationship, with metaphor as repression's first effect; he then aligns this with Aristotle's energeia-pleasure (sight, smell, hearing) to locate the objet petit a as the male-side substitute for the missing partner, constituting fantasy.

    Except that about which the woman does not breathe a word. Perhaps because she does not know it. That which makes her not-all in any case.

68. #68

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.209

    J.Lacan-... of this?

    Theoretical move: Recanati's intervention uses Berkeley's semiotics and Kierkegaard's relation to Régine to interrogate whether 'supplementary feminine jouissance' can be anything other than the signifier of masculine quest/fatum, deploying the not-all and the barred Other to show that the Woman's relationship to the big Other resists masculine perspectival capture, while the Kierkegaard example maps the masculine dilemma (exclusion vs. mediated relation to God) onto the Splitting of the Subject, from which the woman is structurally exempt.

    my initial question, that I am maintaining, was about the supplementary feminine enjoyment and the father function from the point of view of /he Woman

69. #69

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.64

    **Seminar 3:** Wednesday **19 December 1972**

    Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the neologism *linguisterie* to mark the irreducible difference between linguistics (Jakobson's domain) and what psychoanalysis does with language—specifically the claim that "the unconscious is structured like a language"—while simultaneously arguing that psychoanalytic discourse is the foundational condition of possibility for all four discourses and that love is the sign of a change of discourse, not of the Other's jouissance.

    the enjoyment of the Other, with a capital O that I underlined on this occasion, is properly that of the other sex and - I commented of the body that symbolises it.

70. #70

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.162

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973** > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 20 February 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the structural connection between the barred Woman (not-all), the barred Other S(Ø), and Other jouissance, arguing that what ancient metaphysics designated as the Supreme Good (Aristotle's unmoved mover) is in fact a mythical placeholder for the enjoyment of the Other—and that psychoanalysis must dissociate the imaginary small o from the symbolic barred O to accomplish what psychology has failed to do: the splitting that reveals the sexual non-relationship at the foundation of all knowledge.

    it is at the place of the enjoyment of this Other that there is designated this mythical being, manifestly mythical in Aristotle, of the Supreme Being, of the unmoved sphere

71. #71

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.202

    **Seminar 10: Wednesday 10 April 1973 ..**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that linguistics is in a state of epistemic crisis because its foundational model of the symmetrical locutor/interlocutor subject (shared from Saussure through Chomsky) is being dissolved by linguistics' own positive syntactical exploration, which encounters phenomena (heterogeneous subjects, power relations) it cannot account for — ultimately forcing linguistics toward psychoanalysis, and opening onto Lacan's logic of the not-all and feminine jouissance.

    this will be related to everything that Lacan has developed recently in connection with the *not-all (pastoute)* and feminine enjoyment

72. #72

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.203

    **Seminar 10: Wednesday 10 April 1973 ..**

    Theoretical move: The passage articulates the structural asymmetry between the masculine (phallic) universal—grounded in the paternal exception (∃x.¬Φx)—and the feminine not-all (∄x.¬Φx), arguing that both the father function and the "virgin function" constitute existence in an eccentric, decoupled position with respect to the phallic function Φ, such that their radical incommensurability is what grounds the inexistence of the sexual relationship.

    the supplementary feminine enjoyment that is pinpointed by this — the S(Ø) constituting what one could call the universality or rather the inexhaustibility

73. #73

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.171

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973** > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 20 February 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the sexual non-relationship is irreducible: love operates in a 'hommosexual' (soul-to-soul) register that bypasses sex, courtly love was a historically singular meteor rather than a dialectical synthesis, and the question of woman's enjoyment opens onto whether the barred Other itself knows — with the conclusion that attributing omniscience to the Other (or to God/woman) actually diminishes rather than enriches love.

    whether this limit at which she enjoys beyond all this ploying that constitutes her relationship to the man, if this term that I am calling the Other, signifying it with the barred O - 0 - whether this term, for its part, knows something.

74. #74

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.149

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973** > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 20 February 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that feminine sexuality is constituted by the not-all (pas-toute) in relation to the phallic function, producing a supplementary jouissance beyond the phallus, while grounding this in the claim that castration is the condition of possibility for male enjoyment of the woman's body, and opposing an ontology of 'being of significance' (signifiance) to any ontology grounded in thinking or enjoyment of being.

    There is an enjoyment...beyond the phallus...An enjoyment beyond the phallus, huh!

75. #75

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.208

    **Seminar 10: Wednesday 10 April 1973 ..**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the structural asymmetry between masculine and feminine sides of sexuation means that woman is neither One nor Other but occupies an undecidable relation to the barred Other, grounding man's imaginary construction of woman as the signifier of the barred Other through the procession of objet petit a objects—making the sexual relation structurally impossible.

    The woman becomes the signifier of the barred Other as barred, of the barred Other qua barred, namely of this infinite cursus.

76. #76

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.150

    Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973** > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 20 February 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the claim that feminine (Other) jouissance is an enjoyment that is experienced but known nothing about, linking mystical experience to the structural position of the not-all and to the impossibility of the sexual relationship; he then introduces the sexuation formulas and explains how the barred subject's only access to the Other is via the fantasy ($ ◇ a), which also constitutes the reality principle.

    There is an enjoyment, let us say the word, of her own (à elle), of this her who does not exist, who does not signify anything. There is an enjoyment, there is an enjoyment for her of which perhaps she herself knows nothing, except that she experiences it.

77. #77

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.7

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 21 November 1972**

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XX by grounding the impossibility of the sexual relation in the structural gap between jouissance (phallic enjoyissance) and love: love aims at making One but can only produce narcissistic identification, while enjoyment of the Other's body is neither necessary nor sufficient as a response to love, with the Not-all (pas-toute) marking woman's asymmetrical position relative to phallic jouissance.

    the enjoyment of the Other, of the body of the Other that symbolises it, is not the sign of love.

78. #78

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.74

    What is the signifier? > What is a signifier?

    Theoretical move: The signifier is repositioned as a fourfold Aristotelian cause of jouissance: it is simultaneously the material cause (it centres and signifies the body-part that is the material cause of enjoyment), the final cause (it brings enjoyment to a halt, as its limit), and the efficient cause (it limits enjoyment's trajectory); this reframes the signifier not as a bearer of meaning but as the very operator that produces, bounds, and divides the enjoying subject — culminating in the claim that love, not sex, is at stake when one loves.

    what I am properly calling the enjoyment of the Other, in so far as here it is only symbolised, is again something quite different, namely, this *not-all* that I will have to articulate

79. #79

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.90

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 9 January 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that ontology is a product of the accentuation of the copula "to be" within philosophical/master discourse, that there is no pre-discursive reality (all reality is grounded in discourse), and that the sexual relationship cannot be written — a claim sustained by the bar in the Saussurean algorithm and the letter as a radical effect of discourse.

    The enjoyment of the woman. Namely, that she will find in this enjoyment that she is not all, namely, that somewhere, makes her absent from herself, absent as subject

80. #80

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.48

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 3: Tuesday 14 January 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the Borromean knot topology as the minimal structure of existence (ek-sistence), arguing that Freud's Oedipus complex functions as a fourth term (psychical reality) needed to knot the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real because Freud lacked the three-ring Borromean solution; analysis itself operates by making the Real surmount the Symbolic at two crossing points, rendering the fourth term (Oedipus complex / Name-of-the-Father) superfluous.

    I should have put the third knot here, the third field of ek-sistence, namely, the enjoyment of the Other.

81. #81

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.68

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 5: Tuesday 11 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses an anecdotal tour through Nice, Strasbourg, London, and his reading of Strachey's *Queen Victoria* to advance the theoretical claim that the sexual non-relationship is confirmed by historical-biographical evidence, while elaborating the resistance of different *lalangues* to the unconscious and reiterating that "The woman does not exist" but that women (as not-all) have a privileged, unmeasured relation to liberty and to the unconscious.

    by putting there a J followed by a capital O, that I translated in short, that I tried to state as designating the enjoyment of the Other, not a subjective but an objective genitive

82. #82

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.40

    So then what is this lack?

    Theoretical move: The passage maps a four-moment dialectical circuit of the drive (using music as its privileged illustration) in which the subject's repeated failure to encounter the objet petit a gradually confirms its radical impossibility, ultimately enabling a leap "through the fantasy" toward an ecstatic, desexualised Other jouissance that Lacan identifies with sublimation – and which constitutes the terminal point of the analytic process beyond ordinary surplus-jouissance.

    the point of enjoyment which appears to me to be what Lacan articulates as being the enjoyment of the Other, is precisely the point of maximum desexualisation

83. #83

    Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.196

    **XIV** > **Love of one's neighbor**

    Theoretical move: Lacan, reading Freud's *Civilization and Its Discontents* and *Beyond the Pleasure Principle*, argues that jouissance remains forbidden even after the death of God, and that the commandment to love one's neighbor is ethically explosive precisely because the neighbor harbors the same "fundamental evil"—the same proximity to das Ding—that I harbour in myself; altruism and utilitarianism are exposed as frauds that allow us to avoid confronting the malignant jouissance at the heart of the ethical problem, which only Sade (and Kant) begin to articulate honestly.

    my neighbor's jouissance, his harmful, malignant jouissance, is that which poses a problem for my love.

84. #84

    A Voice and Nothing More · Mladen Dolar · p.66

    chapter 2 > Shofar

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the object voice — paradigmatically embodied in the shofar — is not simply opposed to logos but is its hidden support: the paternal voice that founds the Law is structurally identical to the "other" voice it ostensibly persecutes, and both are organized around an ineradicable lack (S(A/)) that links voice, jouissance, femininity, and the impossible foundation of the Other. The voice is further theorized as the missing link between bodies and languages, connecting Lacanian object-theory to Badiou's ontology.

    why not interpret one face of the Other, the God face, as supported by feminine jouissance?

85. #85

    A Voice and Nothing More · Mladen Dolar · p.59

    chapter 2 > A brief course in the history of metaphysics

    Theoretical move: Dolar argues that the history of metaphysics is not simply phonocentric but is structured by a compulsive attempt to subordinate voice to logos; the voice harbors an irreducible alterity and ambivalent jouissance that escapes sense and presence, and it is precisely this excess that constitutes the properly Lacanian 'object voice.'

    What is at stake is an enjoyment beyond the signifier, something that opens the perspective of the Lacanian problem of feminine enjoyment (which Lacan himself also tackled precisely through the women mystics).

86. #86

    A Voice and Nothing More · Mladen Dolar · p.204

    Notes > Chapter 2 The Metaphysics of the Voice

    Theoretical move: This is a notes/endnotes section providing bibliographic citations, clarificatory remarks, and brief theoretical asides for Chapter 2 on the metaphysics of the voice; substantive theoretical content is minimal and mostly cross-referential, touching on the mirror stage/objet a distinction, the voice-castration structural tie, and the voice's role in jouissance and sexuation.

    The woman relates to S(A/), which means that she is already doubled, and is not all...the supreme Being . . .is situated in the place,the opaque place of the jouissance of the Other—that Other which, if she existed, The Woman might be

87. #87

    Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.226

    LetbalJouissance and the FemlDe Fatale > The Phallic Function

    Theoretical move: Copjec argues that the Lacanian formulas of sexuation theorize sexual difference not as a positive attribute of the subject but as two distinct modes of failure of the phallic function—mapped onto Kant's mathematical and dynamical antinomies—thereby grounding a necessarily sexed universal subject and distinguishing psychoanalysis from deconstruction's collapse of difference into indistinctness.

    the male side embraces a similar undecidability: the inclusion of all men within the domain of phallic rule is conditioned by the fact that at least one escapes it... what sort of a 'man' is it whose jouissance is not limited to the male variety

88. #88

    Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.235

    LetbalJouissance and the FemlDe Fatale > The Female Side: Mathematical Failure

    Theoretical move: Copjec argues that Lacan's "not-all" formula for woman functions as an indefinite judgment in the Kantian sense — affirming a negative predicate rather than negating a copula — which means woman's ex-sistence is neither denied nor confirmed, her non-collectibility into a whole stems from an internal limit (the failure of castration's "no"), and she is ultimately the product of lalangue, a symbolic without the guarantee of the Other.

    he leaves open the possibility of there being something-a feminine jouissance- that is unlocatable in experience, that cannot, then, be said to exist in the symbolic order.

89. #89

    Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.224

    **Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason** > **The Female Side: Mathematical Failure**

    Theoretical move: Copjec argues that Lacan's "not-all" with respect to Woman must be read as an indefinite judgment (following Kant's mathematical antinomies), not as an external limitation: Woman's non-existence within the symbolic is not a denial of her ex-sistence but an internal limit constitutive of reason itself, and this structure—where no metalanguage can anchor a judgment of existence—culminates in Woman as the product of lalangue, a symbolic without an Other.

    he leaves open the possibility of there being something—a feminine jouissance—that is unbeatable in experience, that cannot, then, be said to exist in the symbolic order.

90. #90

    Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.115

    **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > Sex as Our Brush with the Absolute > [Antinomies of Pure Sexuation](#contents.xhtml_ahd7) > The Dymamical Antinomies > The fourth antinomy (of necessary being or not)

    Theoretical move: Žižek argues that Lacan's "Kant with Sade" reverses the common reading: Sade is the closet Kantian, not vice versa, because jouissance—like the moral law—operates beyond the pleasure principle and beyond pathological self-interest. This homology between drive/desire and the ethical act grounds a "critique of pure desire" that re-reads the Kantian sublime as immanent to sexuality itself, identifying feminine jouissance with the mathematical sublime's non-all structure and masculine sexuality with the dynamic sublime's constitutive exception.

    this is the immanent tension that characterizes what Lacan calls jouissance feminine… jouissance feminine is limitless and therefore traversed by an immanent deadlock that may push it towards self-renunciation

91. #91

    Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek

    **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > [Index](#contents.xhtml_end2)

    Theoretical move: This is a non-substantive index passage from Žižek's *Sex and the Failed Absolute*, listing alphabetical entries (I–L) with page cross-references; it carries no independent theoretical argument.

    *jouissance feminine* [here](#theorem_ii_sex_as_our_brush_with_the_absolute.xhtml_IDX-1050)

92. #92

    Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism · Russell Sbriglia & Slavoj Žižek (eds.) · p.110

    Intellectual Intuition and *Intellectus Archetypus*: Reflexivity from Kant to Hegel

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Hegelian answer to Schelling's mytho-feminine ontology is not the immediate unity of intellectual intuition (orgasmic One) but minimal reflexivity - the subject's self-distancing gaze that cuts into every immediate enjoyment - thereby framing the chapter's project of tracing reflexivity from Kant through Hegel as the core concept of subjectivity in German Idealism.

    The pivot is woman's enjoyment (staged for the male gaze, of course).

93. #93

    The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.83

    ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > Th e Master Exposed

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that phallic authority (figured as BOB) is structurally dependent on the feminine enjoyment it can never possess, and that Lynch's *Fire Walk with Me* exposes this dependency by centering Laura's perspective rather than the male fantasy—thereby revealing the constitutive failure of phallic power rather than its triumph.

    it is an enjoyment of the Other. According to André, 'That the specifically feminine part of jouissance is articulated at S(A), beyond the phallic contribution made by her partner, means that a woman takes pleasure in herself.'

94. #94

    The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.127

    ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > ² . The Integration of the Impossible Objeet in rhe Elephant Man > 3. Dune ond the Poth to Solvotion

    Theoretical move: This endnotes passage makes several theoretical moves: it deploys Lacanian sexual antagonism as the primary social antagonism underlying Hollywood ideological narrative; it argues that voice-over narration's gaps testify to truth rather than obscure it; and it identifies feminine/mystical enjoyment as an authentic connection with the infinite, elevating Other Jouissance to the level of mysticism.

    This is why Lacan identifies mysticism with feminine enjoyment. Mysticism, like feminine enjoyment, allows subjects to transcend their own finite subjectivity and access the infinite directly.

95. #95

    The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.51

    ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > Voices Unhinged > The Worms and the Spice

    Theoretical move: By reading the spice in Lynch's *Dune* as *das Ding*, McGowan argues that the film uniquely depicts—rather than merely promises—total (feminine) jouissance, showing how the Thing's presence within the fantasmatic world collapses the constitutive exclusion that founds social reality, and thereby reveals the identity of ultimate enjoyment and ultimate horror.

    Lacan has feminine enjoyment in mind in Seminar XX when he claims, 'There is a jouissance ... beyond the phallus.'

96. #96

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.132

    <span id="page-116-0"></span>There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship > *The Formulas of Sexuation*

    Theoretical move: Fink expounds Lacan's formulas of sexuation from Seminar XX, arguing that masculine structure is constituted by universal phallic determination grounded in the exception of a foreclosed primal father, while feminine structure is constituted by the 'not-all' — an incompleteness with respect to the phallic function that opens onto an Other jouissance whose status is ex-sistence rather than existence within the symbolic order.

    The status of the Other jouissance associated with the lower formula of feminine structure (Vx <l>x; see figure 8.2), potentially experienceable by those who come under the category 'Women,' is akin to that of the value of the tangent curve at n/2.

97. #97

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.216

    <span id="page-191-0"></span>*Glossary of Lacanian Symbols* \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_ > There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

    Theoretical move: This endnote cluster clarifies several technical concepts—S(A) as signifier of the barred/lacking Other, sublimation, subjectivity vs. subjectivization, sexuation structures as strict contradictories—while defending Lacan's theoretical innovations against feminist and structuralist misreadings.

    I take up there the connection Lacan draws between the Other jouissance and love: the love of God, 'divine love,' and 'private religions.'

98. #98

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.17

    **THE LACANIAN SUBJECT** > Pour Heloise

    Theoretical move: This passage is a preface/road map for the book, outlining its scope, methodology, and interpretive stance—it is non-substantive theoretical content, serving primarily as an editorial and navigational frame rather than advancing a theoretical argument.

    phallic jouissance, Other jouissance, masculine structure, and feminine structure

99. #99

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.139

    THE PHALLUS: ONE OF W~ S PARTNERS > *Masculine!F eminine-Signifier!Signifierness*

    Theoretical move: Fink argues that sexual difference is grounded in a structural asymmetry between masculine and feminine modes of alienation in language: men are defined by the signifier of desire (Φ) and take the object (a) as partner, while women are defined by "signifierness" (the being of the signifier beyond signification) and take the phallus and S(Ⱥ) as partners—a dissymmetry so radical it forecloses any writable sexual relationship.

    The Other jouissance involves a form of sublimation through love that provides full satisfaction of the drives... According to Lacan, the Other jouissance is asexual (whereas phallic jouissance is sexual), and yet it is of and in the body.

100. #100

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.15

     **THE LACANIAN SUBJECT** > Pour Heloise

     Theoretical move: Fink's preface argues that the Lacanian subject has two faces—fixated symptom and subjectivization—mirrored by two faces of the object (objet petit a as Other's desire and as letter/signifierness), and that this non-parallel, "Gödelian" structure grounds a theory of sexual difference and underwrites psychoanalysis as an autonomous discourse irreducible to science.

     another kind of pleasure ('the Other jouissance')

101. #101

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.134

     THE PHALLUS: ONE OF W~ S PARTNERS

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that S(A)—the signifier of the lack in the Other—functions as Woman's second "partner" in the sexuation table, and that its meaning has shifted in Lacan's work from a symbolic designator of the Other's desire to a real-register signifier of a primordial loss; this asymmetry grounds two distinct paths beyond neurosis (desire/masculine vs. sublimation/feminine) and implies that feminine subjectivity is constituted through an encounter with jouissance rather than through subjection to a master signifier.

     S(A) in figure 8.8, which Lacan associates in Seminar XX with specifically feminine jouissance, designates a kind of Freudian sublimation of the drives in which the drives are fully satisfied (this other kind of satisfaction is what is behind Lacan's expression 'Other jouissance')

102. #102

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.210

     <span id="page-191-0"></span>*Glossary of Lacanian Symbols* \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_ > Object (a): Cause of Desire

     Theoretical move: This endnotes passage does substantial theoretical work in clarifying the concept of surplus-jouissance (plus-de-jouir) as structural surplus analogous to Marxian surplus-value — not an end or excess of jouissance but an additional, supplemental jouissance — while also distinguishing imaginary, symbolic, and real registers of the object, and situating objet petit a as the real cause of desire rather than a symbolically constituted object of demand.

     The more sensual sense of being 'overcome' with or 'overwhelmed' by pleasure seems more closely related to the Other jouissance... which has little if anything to do with the plus-de-jouir.

103. #103

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.193

     <span id="page-191-0"></span>*Glossary of Lacanian Symbols* \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_

     Theoretical move: This passage is a glossary of Lacanian mathemes and symbols (barred S, object a, S1, S2, the Other, barred A, S(/A), phallus, phallic function, logical quantifiers, lozenge, fantasy formula, drive formula), followed by non-substantive acknowledgements pages.

     This matheme is often used independently to refer to the Other jouissance that may potentially be experienced by those with feminine structure.

104. #104

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.142

     THE PHALLUS: ONE OF W~ S PARTNERS > <span id="page-140-0"></span>**Existence and Ex-sistence**

     Theoretical move: By distinguishing 'existence' (what can be said) from 'ex-sistence' (what can only be written, standing apart from the symbolic), Fink argues that the Other jouissance and objet petit a ex-sist in a way that renders Lacan's libidinal economy irreducibly open and untotalizable, foreclosing any complementarity between phallic and Other jouissance.

     The Other jouissance is beyond the symbolic, standing apart from symbolic castration. It ex-sists. We can discern a place for it within our symbolic order, and even name it, but it nevertheless remains ineffable, unspeakable.

105. #105

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.236

     <span id="page-231-0"></span>**Index**

     Theoretical move: This is an index passage (pages 235-236) from Bruce Fink's "The Lacanian Subject," listing key concepts and page references. It is non-substantive as a theoretical argument but serves as a navigational guide to the book's conceptual architecture.

     Other jouissance, xiv, 107, 112, 120

106. #106

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.213

     <span id="page-191-0"></span>*Glossary of Lacanian Symbols* \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_ > There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

     Theoretical move: This endnote apparatus consolidates and defends Fink's interpretive positions on Lacan's formulas of sexuation, the non-existence of the sexual relationship, the structure of the signifier, and the Other jouissance—correcting common misreadings while flagging key conceptual distinctions (existence vs. ex-sistence, the bar of negation, the role of the phallus, S1/S2, and object a).

     the Other jouissance would, in some sense, 'hark back'—to a pleasure before the instituting of language (J1), thus 'realizing the symbolic.'

107. #107

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.127

     <span id="page-116-0"></span>There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship > **"There's no Such Thing** as a **Sexual Relationship"**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's formula "there's no such thing as a sexual relationship" is grounded in the claim that masculinity and femininity are defined separately and differently with respect to the symbolic order—not in relation to each other—such that each sex has a distinct mode of alienation by language and a distinct form of jouissance, making any direct complementary relation between them structurally impossible.

     women can experience both that and another kind of jouissance, which he calls the Other jouissance. Not that every subject who can be situated under 'Women' experiences it—far from it, as is so often attested—but it is, according to Lacan, a structural potentiality.

108. #108

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.191

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > The Desublimated Object of Post-Ideology

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the postideological "desublimated" call of jouissance short-circuits the symbolic mediation constitutive of the Other's jouissance, so that the apparent opposition between pure autistic jouissance (drugs, virtual sex) and the jouissance of the Other (language, narrative, remembrance) secretly converges in the Hegelian infinite judgment: the passion for the Real and the passion for semblance are two sides of the same phenomenon.

     we must take a detour through what Lacan called la jouissance de l'Autre—what is this mysterious jouissance?

109. #109

     The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two · Alenka Zupančič · p.190

     <span id="page-186-0"></span>Notes > Part I: Nietzsche the Metapsychologist

     Theoretical move: This passage is a notes/bibliography section for Part I of Zupančič's book, providing scholarly citations to Lacan, Nietzsche, Freud, Badiou, and others. It is non-substantive as a theoretical argument in itself, though several notes gesture toward theoretical moves (e.g., Lacan on God and the dit/dire, the shift from Discourse of the Master to Discourse of the University, and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis).

     Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), p. 45.

110. #110

     The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two · Alenka Zupančič · p.185

     <span id="page-33-0"></span>part i

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that love, conceived as drive rather than desire, operates through a "time warp" logic in which the impossible Real happens rather than remaining structurally inaccessible; this enables love to "humanize jouissance" through a sublimation-as-desublimation that dislocates the sublime object from its source of enjoyment, thereby making jouissance itself an object of desire.

     the more a man allows a women to confuse him with God (i.e. with what gives her enjoyment), the less he loves.

111. #111

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · p.218

     Žižek Responds! > [On Žižek’s Theory of the Subject](#contents.xhtml_ch9)

     Theoretical move: Bou Ali reconstructs Žižek's theory of the subject as a non-ontological point of negativity that is extimate to symbolic structure, correlative to the objet a as object-cause of desire, and grounded in the retroactive (Nachträglichkeit) constitution of the Real as cause—arguing further that this account of subjectivity is inseparable from Lacanian sexuation, read against both Hegelian dialectics and Kantian antinomies.

     insofar as the sensuous is overcome here, it is not overcome into another, higher dimension but from within, caught into its own inconsistency—this is the immanent tension that characterizes what Lacan calls jouissance feminine.

112. #112

     What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.63

     Contradictions that Matter > Sexual Division, a Problem in Ontology

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that Lacan's formulas of sexuation are not about anatomical or cultural difference but about two distinct logical configurations of the same constitutive minus (castration/phallic function) intrinsic to the signifying order, such that sexual difference is ontological rather than secondary—and that feminine jouissance marks precisely the place where the Other's lack is inscribed in the Other itself, functioning as the signifier of missing knowledge rather than as an obstacle to the sexual relation.

     by S(Ⱥ) I designate nothing other than woman's jouissance… the enjoyment at stake essentially belongs to the unconscious (and to its 'gap'): not as repressed, but as the very substance of the missing signifier which, as missing, gives its form to the unconscious.

113. #113

     What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.38

     <span id="page-29-0"></span>… and Even Stranger out There > The Anti-Sexus

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the antagonism between signifier and enjoyment, and between the Other and jouissance, arises not from heterogeneous origins but from their co-origination in the same locus; the Other and enjoyment are 'extimately' related such that any attempt to purify one of the other rediscovers what was expelled at the very heart of the purified term, producing a structural twist rather than a symmetrical relation.

     if we remove enjoyment from the Other, we find enjoyment at the very heart of the (most spiritual) bond with the Other

114. #114

     What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.64

     Contradictions that Matter > Sexual Division, a Problem in Ontology

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that sexual division maps onto an ontological asymmetry between masculinity as belief (reliance on the phallus as signifying support to repress castration) and femininity as pretense (masquerade as constitutive deception), and further that this same ontological minus—the bar between signifier and signified transposed into the signifier itself—grounds Lacan's theory of the subject of the unconscious as a "with-without" inherent to the signifying order, moving beyond Saussurean structuralism.

     This S(Ⱥ), the other's jouissance as the signifier of the 'Other as barred,' is thus not to be confused with the signifier of castration (Φ, or the phallic function)