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The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge

Jacques Lacan

by Jacques Lacan

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Synopsis

Lacan's Seminar XX (Encore, 1972–1973), translated by Bruce Fink as On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, advances a sustained argument that the sexual relationship does not exist as a symbolically articulable fact, and that the entire edifice of love, jouissance, knowledge, and truth must be reconstructed around this structural non-existence. Beginning from the question of jouissance—specifically the impossibility of "jouissance of the Other" as a sign of love—Lacan develops his tables of sexuation, distinguishing phallic jouissance (subject to the logic of the all and the exception) from a supplementary feminine jouissance that is "not-all" within the phallic function and therefore exceeds it, pointing toward an Other jouissance testified to by mystics. The seminar systematically recasts knowledge as grounded in the Other as locus of the signifier, positions the analyst uniquely as the one who installs objet petit a in the place of semblance so as to investigate truth-as-knowledge, and introduces lalangue as the primary stratum of enjoyment from which "language" is merely a scientific lucubration. Topology—culminating in the Borromean knot—emerges not as illustration but as the very structural logic that ties together the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary in the absence of any metalanguage. The seminar's wager is that mathematization, analytic discourse, and the writing of the sexual non-rapport in logical formulas constitute the only pathways to a Real that is not fantasy.

Distinctive contribution

Seminar XX is unique in the Lacanian corpus for being the site where the logical formalization of sexuation is fully deployed and defended for the first time as a completed schema. Nowhere else does Lacan so systematically argue that the two sides of the sexuation table—the masculine "all" grounded in the phallic exception, and the feminine "not-all" that produces only indeterminate existence without a grounding exception—follow from the modal logic of necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility as applied to the phallic function. This gives the seminar a quasi-axiomatic character: the non-existence of the sexual relationship is not merely a clinical finding but a logical theorem from which the structure of love, of the transference (Subject Supposed to Know), of mystical experience, and of the analyst's position are all systematically derived.

The seminar is also distinctive for its elaboration of lalangue as a concept irreducible to language as studied by linguistics. By introducing this stratum—the maternal tongue as a mass of equivocations, jouissance-charged residues, and primary knowing-how-to-do-things with words—Lacan makes a decisive move away from the structuralist linguistics he had leveraged since the 1950s (and explicitly against Jakobson) while preserving the claim that the unconscious is structured like a language. The concept of lalangue, paired with the claim that the Real is the "mystery of the speaking body," opens a new theoretical space that Seminar XX bequeaths to subsequent elaborations (notably around Joyce, the sinthome, and the Borromean knot in Seminars XXI–XXIII). The topology of the Borromean knot, introduced here as an operational formalization rather than a metaphor, is a further distinctive contribution: it offers an alternative to dimensional topology and allows Lacan to identify the "inner eight" as the symbol of the subject and the simple ring as object a, grounding the theory of the cause of desire in a non-imaginary spatial logic.

Main themes

  • The non-existence of the sexual relationship as the structural ground of love, jouissance, and knowledge
  • Phallic jouissance vs. Other (feminine) jouissance and the logic of the not-all
  • The tables of sexuation: masculine universality grounded in exception vs. feminine not-all without exception
  • Lalangue as the primary stratum of jouissance exceeding linguistic communication
  • The analyst's discourse: objet petit a in the place of semblance, knowledge in the place of truth
  • Love as what makes up for (sans rapporter) the non-existent sexual relationship
  • Topology of the Borromean knot as a formalization of the RSI registers without metalanguage
  • The mi-dire (half-saying) of truth and the structural limits of avowal under the phallic function
  • Mystical experience and feminine jouissance as testimony to what exceeds the phallic order
  • The impossibility of metalanguage and the ex-sistence of the symbolic with respect to the act of speaking

Chapter outline

  • Preface by Bruce Fink — p.vii-x
  • I: On Jouissance — p.1-13
  • II: To Jakobson — p.14-37
  • III: The Function of the Written — p.26-50
  • IV: Love and the Signifier — p.38-50
  • V: Aristotle and Freud: The Other Satisfaction — p.51-63
  • VI: God and Woman's Jouissance — p.64-77
  • VII: A Love Letter (une lettre d'amour) — p.78-99
  • VIII: Knowledge and Truth — p.90-113
  • IX: On the Baroque — p.104-117
  • X: Rings of String — p.118-140
  • XI: The Rat in the Maze — p.137-159

Chapter summaries

Preface by Bruce Fink (p.vii-x)

Fink's preface situates the translation as a long-overdue corrective to the misrepresentation of Lacan in English-speaking academic discourse—both by former students like Kristeva and Irigaray whose views diverge substantially from Lacan's, and by Anglo-American critics who have reduced his positions to pat phrases derived from secondary commentaries. Fink describes his translation strategy as one of making the text 'clean and flowing' while remaining open to surprises in Lacan's formulations, relying as a frame on the full breadth of Lacan's seminars and Écrits rather than on any single interpretive thesis.

Key concepts: Translation methodology, Misrepresentation of Lacan, Lalangue, Secondary commentary critique Notable examples: Julia Kristeva; Luce Irigaray; Seminar III (Russell Grigg translation)

I: On Jouissance (p.1-13)

The opening chapter begins by establishing analytic discourse's peculiar relationship to 'not wanting to know anything about it'—Lacan positions himself and his audience as sharing a refusal of knowledge from different starting points, with the analyst's 'not-knowing' being structurally different from the analysand's. He then introduces the foundational proposition that the Other's jouissance—jouissance of the body of the Other who symbolizes the Other—is not the sign of love. Love is exposed as fundamentally narcissistic: its apparently object-directed substance turns out to be objet petit a, the remainder in desire, that which sustains desire through its lack of satisfaction.

The chapter deploys topology to articulate feminine sexuality. The 'not-whole' (pas-toute) structure of the sexed feminine being is grounded not in bodily substance but in logical exigency: the requirement of the Other produces a 'one by one' (une par une) structure illustrated by the Don Juan myth, where what is essential is not fusion with all women but their enumeration one by one. This compactness of sexual jouissance at the feminine pole is contrasted with the One of universal fusion. The chapter closes by insisting that analytic discourse proceeds without reference to any substance or being, and that its topology converges with clinical experience precisely because it 'breaks with everything smacking of philosophy.'

Key concepts: Jouissance, Not-all (pas-toute), Objet petit a, Love, Narcissism, Topology Notable examples: Don Juan myth; Parakeet-Picasso fable (jouissance of the body)

II: To Jakobson (p.14-37)

Lacan pays homage to Jakobson while simultaneously carving out 'linguistricks' (linguisterie) as a domain distinct from linguistics proper. His claim that 'the unconscious is structured like a language' does not fall within linguistics' jurisdiction: the consequences that follow for the foundation of the subject—'thoroughly renewed and subverted by Freud'—require a separate field. The signifier is reintroduced not as a phonemic entity but through topological insistence on the bar between signifier and meaning-effect ('signifierness,' signifiance), which fans out from proverbs to locutions. The chapter pivots to the question 'What is a signifier?' and moves immediately to the problem of the One (Un): the indeterminate article before 'signifier' already assumes that signifiers can be collectivized, but there is no predicate to ground this collection. The 'enjoying substance' (la substance jouissante) is introduced: the body is that which enjoys itself, and jouissance is always of a part of the Other's body—a one-body-enjoying-a-part structure irreducible to totalization.

The chapter also introduces 'There's such a thing as One' (Y a d'l'Un) as the serious problem to which Seminar XIX had been devoted, distinguishing it from the One of universal fusion. The signifier introduces the One into the world, and the subject is the effect that slides between signifiers; love aims at this subject as such, while desire is aroused by the sign of the subject. This distinction of sign from signifier and their differential relation to jouissance lays the groundwork for the subsequent theorization of love as compensation for the absent sexual relationship.

Key concepts: Linguistricks (linguisterie), Signifier, Signifierness (signifiance), Enjoying substance, The One, Love vs. desire Notable examples: Jakobson's talks at the Collège de France; Paulhan on Madagascan proverbs; Sade on partial enjoyment of the Other's body

III: The Function of the Written (p.26-50)

This chapter makes a fundamental distinction between the written (l'écrit) and the signifier, and argues that analytic discourse is defined by reading beyond what speech produces: 'the unconscious is what is read.' Letters—a, A, $—are not signifiers in the ordinary sense but names of loci and functions; they are radically effects of discourse (the Phoenician letters on Egyptian pottery as manufacturers' marks, prior to any phonological use). The letter precedes the signifier historically and functionally. Joyce's work is invoked as the limit case where the signifier 'stuffs the signified,' producing a reading that exceeds signification.

Lacan also takes up the ontological pretensions of the master's discourse, which illegitimately hypostatizes the copula 'to be.' Aristotle's expression for essence (to ti ên einai—'what it would have been if that which was to be had come to be') is read as preserving a subjunctive trace that reveals the master's discourse as fundamentally a relation of command: 'what would have been if you had understood what I ordered you to do.' Every dimension of being is produced in the wake of the master's discourse. Against this, analytic discourse reads beyond ontology. The chapter closes by distinguishing the algebra of letters from set theory and insisting that mathematical formalization represents the ideal of analytic discourse insofar as letters reach something real without referring to being.

Key concepts: The written (l'écrit), Letter, Ontology, Master's discourse, Reading vs. signifying, Matheme Notable examples: Flinders Petrie and Phoenician alphabet; Joyce (signifier stuffing the signified); Aristotle's to ti ên einai

IV: Love and the Signifier (p.38-50)

This chapter develops the claim that the signifier is characterized by contingency rather than eternity. The Copernican revolution, properly understood, is not a change of center but the shift from 'it turns' to 'it falls'—from celestial routine to the real subversion of the signified's imaginary hold. Analytic discourse breaks with the cosmological fantasy of a world correlate with eternal being. In its place, Lacan argues that love makes up for the absence of the sexual relationship, a relation accessible only through the function of the phallus—articulated on the basis of absence. The 'para-being' (para-être) is introduced: not being itself but something alongside being that language constantly smuggles in.

The chapter also establishes the foundational move of the seminar with respect to the sexual relationship: language functions precisely as that which 'makes up for the absence of the sole part of the real that cannot manage to be formed from being, namely, the sexual relationship.' Mathematical writing is proposed as the compass reading toward which analytic practice should orient, since it alone can produce from the practice of language something that reaches the real without hypostasizing being. The 'Logical Time' article is mentioned as an early index of objet a's structuring function in intersubjective situations.

Key concepts: Contingency of the signifier, Love, The phallus, Para-being, The sexual non-relationship, Mathematical writing Notable examples: Copernicus and Newton ('it falls'); Lacan's 'Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty'

V: Aristotle and Freud: The Other Satisfaction (p.51-63)

Opening with the pivotal formulation—'All the needs of speaking beings are contaminated by the fact of being involved in an other satisfaction that those needs may not live up to'—this chapter argues that jouissance is constitutively deficient with respect to the sexual relationship. Reality, in analytic discourse, is approached through 'apparatuses of jouissance,' namely language; this is the corrective to Freud's pleasure principle, which Lacan redefines as 'satisfied by blah-blah.' Development (the Lust-Ich/Real-Ich schema) is dismissed as a hypothesis of mastery, modeled on the ego as a 'flower of rhetoric' grown in the pot of the pleasure principle.

Lacan draws on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to articulate a notion of jouissance as 'inappropriate' (non decet) to the sexual relationship. Repression is not primal but secondary: it is produced because jouissance, by speaking, attests that it is not fitting to be spoken—precisely because qua jouissance it does not meet the requirements of the sexual relationship. Primal repression (Urverdrängung) is thus secondary in chronological order but marks the point where speaking begins to generate metaphor. The chapter closes by distinguishing the masculine manner of making the sexual relationship fail (the epithalamion, the love letter, courtly love) from a feminine manner yet to be theorized, establishing the chiasm between the two poles of sexuation.

Key concepts: Jouissance, Other satisfaction, Pleasure principle, Repression, Development as mastery, Sexuation Notable examples: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Freud's Lust-Ich / Real-Ich; Freud's Urverdrängung

VI: God and Woman's Jouissance (p.64-77)

This chapter theorizes feminine jouissance as 'beyond the phallus'—a jouissance that is the woman's own (à elle), about which she herself perhaps knows nothing except that she experiences it when it occurs. The feminine sexed being is not wholly absent from the phallic function (she is 'not not at all there') but there is 'something more' (en plus) that cannot be assimilated to phallic jouissance. Mystical testimony—St. Teresa of Ávila, Hadewijch of Antwerp—is cited as the privileged witness to this Other jouissance: these women clearly experience something, they just can't say what.

The chapter also situates God in the structure of human love as a necessary third party, not as theological claim but as structural position: woman's Other jouissance relates to the face of the big Other that is not barred. The reading of Le titre de la lettre (Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe) is recommended precisely because its hostile close reading of Lacan's 'Instance of the Letter' inadvertently demonstrates the difference between reading and understanding, and between the Subject Supposed to Know and the structure of love/transference. Courtly love is treated as the 'elegant' masculine solution to the non-existence of the sexual relationship, historically conditioned by the discourse of feudal loyalty rather than by any natural femininity.

Key concepts: Other jouissance, Not-all, Feminine sexuality, Mysticism, Subject Supposed to Know, Courtly love, God Notable examples: St. Teresa of Ávila; Hadewijch of Antwerp; Le titre de la lettre (Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe); Don Juan myth; Courtly love poets (Jaufré Rudel)

VII: A Love Letter (une lettre d'amour) (p.78-99)

Chapter VII presents the completed table of sexuation with commentary on all four propositional formulas. On the masculine left side: ∀x.Φx (all men are subject to the phallic function) grounded in ∃x.¬Φx (there is one—the father—who is not subject to it); this exception founds the universal. On the feminine right side: ¬∀x.Φx (woman is not-wholly in the phallic function) and ¬∃x.¬Φx (there is no exception to the phallic function). The upper halves of the table connect the barred subject ($) and Φ (the phallic signifier) on the masculine side to S(Ⱥ) (the signifier of the lack in the Other) and objet a on the feminine side. The Lustprinzip is diagnosed as based on the 'coalescence of a with S(Ⱥ).' The analyst writes 'a love letter' to the analysand in the sense that analytic discourse puts these formulas into play against the imaginary of sexual meaning.

The chapter then considers the question 'Does the Other know?'—whether the Other term woman relates to in her jouissance, designated A, has knowledge. Empedocles (via Aristotle, via Freud) is introduced to establish that God, knowing no hatred, equally knows no love: a man who lets a woman confuse him with God thereby loves less, since there is no love without hate. This structural co-dependency of love and hate (hainamoration) is the depth analytic discourse introduces against idealization of pure love. The question of whether Woman can say what she knows of her jouissance remains open: she is subjugated to the Other just as man is, but asymmetrically.

Key concepts: Sexuation formulas, Phallic function, Barred subject, S(Ⱥ), Objet petit a, Hainamoration, Lustprinzip Notable examples: Empedocles on God and hatred (via Aristotle and Freud); Lacan's blackboard schema of the four discourses

VIII: Knowledge and Truth (p.90-113)

This chapter opens with 'hainamoration' as the proper analytic name for what the bastardized term 'ambivalence' had tried to capture. It then addresses the relation of knowledge to truth through the grammar of analytic discourse: in the discursive schema, objet a occupies the upper-left position (semblance/agent) supported by S2 (knowledge in the place of truth). The analyst, uniquely among those who sustain a discourse, places objet a in the place of semblance and is therefore best positioned to 'investigate the status of truth as knowledge.'

Knowledge is then radically recast: prior to Descartes and then to Freud, the question 'What is it that knows?' had not been properly raised. Analytic discourse reveals that knowledge is in the Other—the locus of the signifier—and that its acquisition and exercise share the same identity of jouissance ('getting off on knowledge'). The chapter introduces the crucial distinction between 'not-all' in the finite and 'not-all' in the infinite: in the finite domain, 'not-all' implies a particular exception; in the infinite, it produces only an indeterminate existence that cannot be constructed, grounding the claim that 'Woman' cannot be written (barred Ⱥ) and that feminine jouissance exceeds the phallic function. The phallic function is re-situated as contingent rather than necessary: it has 'stopped not being written' through analytic experience, placing it in the register of contingency rather than of necessity or impossibility.

Key concepts: Knowledge, Truth, Hainamoration, Contingency of the phallic function, Finite vs. infinite not-all, Analyst's discourse, Objet petit a Notable examples: Saussure's anagrammatic research; Freud's 'charity' in announcing the unconscious; Jean-Claude Milner's linguistics presentation

IX: On the Baroque (p.104-117)

The chapter opens with a reformulation of the unconscious: not 'the fact that being thinks' (traditional science's assumption) but 'the fact that being, by speaking, enjoys, and wants to know nothing more about it.' This is not a cosmology: psychoanalysis does not produce a model of the world, and the unconscious reveals nothing about physiology or the nervous system. The 'baroque' is invoked as the aesthetic and ethical mode that sides with the sleeve rather than the winning hand of classical thought—the body's enjoyment rather than the soul's elevation.

Lacan then tests every wisdom tradition—Taoism (withholding jouissance), Buddhism (renunciation of thought, with Zen as its best form), Mediterranean mythology, and Christianity—against the standard of whether they can satisfy 'the thought of being' without the price of castration. All fail. Analytic discourse is positioned as a contingent, non-mathematical pathway that can approach an economy of jouissance that science and religion alike cannot reach. The closing claim—'Where it speaks, it enjoys' (Là où ça parle, ça jouit)—encapsulates the chapter's thesis: jouissance is constitutive of the speaking body's structure, not a secondary affect. The matheme is introduced as what is 'integrally transmitted' without necessarily being understood, in contrast to language which always requires further language and thus cannot fully transmit itself.

Key concepts: Unconscious, Jouissance, Baroque, Matheme, Wisdom traditions, Speaking body, Science vs. psychoanalysis Notable examples: Taoism and sexual practice; Buddhism / Zen; Heraclitus oracle fragment; Christianity and God's love; Behaviorism

X: Rings of String (p.118-140)

Lacan begins by stating 'There's no such thing as a metalanguage'—not simply that there is no language of being, but that any formalization must be made in language and thereby cannot fully stand apart from language. Mathematical formalization subsists only as ex-sistence with respect to the act of speaking; the symbolic 'ex-sists' rather than being. The Borromean knot is introduced as an alternative foundation for topology: rather than beginning with dimensional cuts (point, line, plane, space—'the characterology of a saw technique'), one begins with rings of string whose mutual wedging produces a non-localizable crossing that is the initial phenomenon of topology. If one ring is cut, all three are freed.

The chapter then pursues the topology at length: Lacan shows how three, four, and arbitrarily many rings can form a general Borromean chain, closing it to produce a homogeneous chain of bent rings that leaves a trace in the strand-juxtaposition pattern. The object a is identified with the simple ring; the 'inner eight' produced by collapsing the Borromean knot is identified as the symbol of the subject. The demand 'I ask you to refuse what I offer you' is motivated by 'that's not it'—objet a is the void presupposed by demand, and desire has no other substance than that assured by the knots themselves. The chapter closes by asking: what is written? The conditions of jouissance. What is counted? The residues of jouissance. Mathematization alone reaches a real that has nothing to do with fantasy; this real is identified as 'the mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious.'

Key concepts: Borromean knot, Topology, Metalanguage, Objet petit a, Real, Ex-sistence, Writing and jouissance Notable examples: Borromean knot diagrams; Sailor's knot; Chain of bent rings (figures 3-6)

XI: The Rat in the Maze (p.137-159)

The final chapter delivers the seminar's culminating claims about lalangue and the Lacanian hypothesis. Lacan distinguishes lalangue from language: language is merely 'scientific discourse's harebrained lucubration' about lalangue, which serves purposes altogether different from communication. Lalangue is what the unconscious is made of—each speaking being's so-called mother tongue as a mass of equivocations and jouissance-residues. Where Bateson thought he was going further than 'the unconscious structured like a language,' Lacan counters that Bateson did not realize the unconscious, insofar as it is lalangue, already exceeds all communication models.

The chapter revisits the Lacanian hypothesis—a signifier represents a subject to another signifier—and grounds it as structurally necessary to lalangue's functioning. The subject is defined as 'always elsewhere, as the predicate shows': never more than fleeting and vanishing, it is a subject only by a signifier and to another signifier. The S1 swarm (master signifier) assures the unity of the subject's copulation with knowledge; it is in lalangue, insofar as lalangue is investigated as language, that the element (stoicheion) can be discerned. The chapter closes by tracing the arc from the seminar's opening—'the Other's jouissance is not the sign of love'—to its conclusion: love proceeds from contingency toward necessity, from 'it has stopped not being written' to 'it will not stop being written,' constituting the formula of the analytic relationship that replaces the mythological narrative of the sexual rapport.

Key concepts: Lalangue, Lacanian hypothesis, Signifier, Master signifier (S1), Subject, Love as contingency-to-necessity, Knowledge as jouissance Notable examples: Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind; The signifying swarm (S1→S2) formula; Stoicheion (Greek element)

Main interlocutors

  • Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
  • Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
  • Aristotle, Metaphysics
  • Aristotle, Physics
  • Roman Jakobson
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
  • Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis)
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis)
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVII (The Other Side of Psychoanalysis)
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVIII
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar XIX (…or Worse)
  • Jacques Lacan, L'Étourdit
  • Jacques Lacan, Écrits
  • Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Le titre de la lettre
  • Gregory Bateson
  • Empedocles (via Aristotle and Freud)
  • Jeremy Bentham, Theory of Fictions
  • Jean-Claude Milner

Position in the corpus

Seminar XX occupies a pivotal position as the culmination of Lacan's 'middle period' theorization of the sexual relationship and the simultaneous inauguration of his late-period turn toward topology and lalangue. It presupposes familiarity with Seminar VII (Ethics of Psychoanalysis) for the backdrop of das Ding and sublimation, Seminar XI (Four Fundamental Concepts) for the account of the unconscious, drives, and objet a, and Seminar XVII (The Other Side of Psychoanalysis) for the Four Discourses schema that structures the chapter on knowledge and truth. It develops the sexuation formulas first sketched in Seminar XIX (…or Worse) into their canonical presentation, and should be read alongside the contemporaneous text L'Étourdit (1972) for the logical underpinning of the mi-dire of truth. Readers approaching Seminar XX without these foundations will find the chapters on jouissance and the Borromean knot difficult to situate.\n\nSeminar XX is the essential reference point for all subsequent Lacanian work on feminine sexuality and the not-all: it is in direct dialogue with Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose's Feminine Sexuality anthology, with the object-relations critiques of phallocentrism (Klein, Winnicott), and with the feminist appropriations and critiques by Irigaray and Kristeva. In the broader corpus, it should be read before Seminar XXIII (The Sinthome), where the Borromean knot and lalangue are developed in the context of Joyce, and before the later work on the Real as the impossible. Within the corpus it is closest in spirit to the Écrits pieces on the mirror stage and the agency of the letter, but represents a decisive break from the structuralist idiom of those texts toward a modal-logical and topological register that defines Lacan's final decade.

Canonical concepts deployed