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ESTHER : And now that we’ve arrived at feminist thought, let’s look at things from outside of Lacanian theory. Lacan’s theory is very acceptable in the intellectual world we live in. Many philosophers study it, and its influence is widespread. And there, in a way, a woman remains outside of the theory, saying, hang on, please, this theory is appealing and impressive in its power to explain, but it’s a man’s theory, and there’s a good chance this man is looking at women from within the Imaginary order. This isn’t my argument, it’s the starting point of Luce Irigaray’s criticism of Lacanian theory. Irigaray is a Lacanian psychoanalyst who attended Lacan’s seminars, and one of his best-known feminist critics. According to her, the psychoanalytic theory in general has always viewed women as flawed men (which is the origin of the concept of penis envy) – those who are not signified, because they lack. To this criticism I would like to add my own: the concept of feminine jouissance expresses more than anything else, in my opinion, the Imaginarymasculine view of women: the Real, death, female jouissance – these are concepts that greatly overlap in Lacanian theory, and if something is missing, God can quickly be brought into the picture. Supposedly, there is something beyond words, including women, and all of this is shrouded in the mist of mystification. Moreover, Lacan himself speaks in Seminar 20 about female jouissance as something beyond words, comparing it to the mystical-spiritual experience. And of course, how could he not bring up the mystic Teresa of Avila – “You have only to go and look at Bernini’s statue in Rome to understand immediately that she’s coming.” (This quote even appears on the cover of the Hebrew translation of his book.) Lacan only failed to remember that Teresa of Avila, the eternal orgasmer, is a statue, a statue of a climaxing woman that a male named Bernini made. Whether or not she is coming is evidence of nothing but the male imagination.

YEHUDA : Lacan himself agrees that he is limited to the male perspective. He has said it explicitly. He approached female psychoanalysts and asked them to speak from experience about female sexuality. He complained that women wouldn’t talk about it, but certainly acknowledged his limitation as a man discussing the female experience. What you’re arguing with regards to female jouissance – this concept is a result of Lacan’s attempt to step outside of male fantasy. There is an imaginary male phantasm of what a woman is and what female jouissance is. He referred to this as The Woman. The feminine ideal, the jouissance ideal – he signified this with a strikethrough of the article “the” to emphasize that the woman as an ideal does not exist. That there is no prototype of the perfect woman as men imagine her. The phallic approach, which Lacan views as limited, divides the world into two: we men know who we are; the woman is everything else.

ESTHER : And therefore, if language is part of the Symbolic order, which is identified with the man (the father’s name) than I, as a woman, remain outside of language, or, rather, fated to speak a language that is not my own.

YEHUDA : But this isn’t about men and women. All women are part of the male field, and some men are part of the female field. The Oedipal drama, according to Freud, is in the transition of focus the child makes from his mother to his father. Lacan sees this as a myth, while the thing beneath the myth, to which the myth refers – is entrance into language. That’s why the transition from mother to father, from femininity to masculinity, is a transition from the Real to the Symbolic. In this sense, the Symbolic is identified with the man, and the Real is identified with the woman. As soon as children become socialized and enter the Symbolic field, one could say they are in a phallic field regardless of their individual anatomy or their gender. The gender division, which is symbolic, is already a conceptualization that is by nature within the phallic field. This is just as relevant to men as it is to women. It reminds me of the difference between the lawful-rabbinical and the mystical aspects of religion. The rabbinate deals with laws, with permissions and prohibitions, with right and wrong. Meaning, it is in the phallic field. While mystics, whether male or female, seek what is beyond that field, beyond what can be defined through language. According to Lacan, mysticism is fundamentally based on female jouissance. Female jouissance, that is the name Lacan gives the mystical experience. That is the oceanic experience, like that of a fetus in the womb. Before entering language. Before Oedipus.

ESTHER : But why is it necessarily feminine? This distinction assumes that the essence of being female is in the “beyond,” in that which has no words.

YEHUDA : I’ll give you two reasons. One is female jouissance as a primordial state preceding the separation of the baby as an organ castrated from the mother’s body. The second is a consequence of anatomical difference. Phallic nature is castration. Phallization is the name Lacan gave to entering language. Language dissects body and world. And there’s another aspect to the reason that non-phallic jouissance is recognized as female jouissance: precisely because the body, without the distinction of a penis, without castration, represents a non-binary jouissance. A woman symbolizes the absence of castration. Lacan discusses male, or phallic jouissance as opposed to female or “Other” jouissance. It’s a jouissance that exists among men and women, both anatomically and in terms of gender. A man can experience female jouissance and a woman can experience male jouissance. The reason Lacan tagged limited jouissance as “phallic” and limitless jouissance as “female” or “Other” is that this is the way things occur in patients’ unconscious. For example, the psychoanalytic expression of limits is castration because this is how limits appear in the unconscious; in patients’ dreams.

 ESTHER : But neither men nor women would have words to describe an orgasm, so what’s the difference?

 YEHUDA : By virtue of being outside of words, an orgasm can be described as female jouissance.

ESTHER : So we have a loop here. We’re back again at our starting point: everything outside of language is female jouissance. That’s what you’re saying. And I’m asking why everything “beyond” should be called “female.”

 YEHUDA : One could say that female jouissance is everything outside the bounds of patriarchy.

ESTHER : That’s exactly the problem. If there is a patriarchy that refers to everything outside of its bounds as “woman,” then language isn’t neutral. That’s the central argument of feminist criticism.

YEHUDA : If jouissance was tagged as being either “green” or “blue,” would that solve the problem?

ESTHER : Yes!

YEHUDA : I think I understand. On the one hand, Lacanian theory quotes the unconscious of both men and women, which tags jouissance as either male or female. On the other hand, and especially since Lacanian theory has significant influence in our time, it also maintains a status quo. The gender conceptualization works as an interpretation that simultaneously describes and creates a reality. I think a feminist updating of Lacan’s ideas would be most welcome not only for women.

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