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According to [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan]], the lesson of [[psychoanalysis]] is that the [[subject]] is inherently [[divided ]] and can never be [[satisfaction|satisfied]]. We are plagued as [[subject]]s by the [[anxiety]] that our ''[[jouissance]]'' - our [[pleasure]] or [[enjoyment]] - is never enough. In other [[words]], we are driven by an inherent [[dissatisfaction ]] and [[sense ]] of insufficiency.

We constantly have the sense that there is something ''more''; we do not [[know ]] what this is, but we have the sense that it is there, and we [[want ]] it. This is the [[form ]] of jouissance that Lacan [[identifies ]] as [[phallus|phallic]] [[jouissance]].

[[phallus|Phallic]] [[jouissance]] is that form of [[enjoyment]] that most of us [[experience ]] most of the [[time]]; that is to say, just when we [[think ]] we possess our [[object]] of [[desire]] - be that [[another ]] person, a new possession or even a difficult [[idea ]] we have been struggling to get hold of - we are still dissatisfied; we are disappointed and have a sense that our [[desire]] has not been fully [[satisfied]]. This sense of (dis)[[satisfaction ]] that always leaves something wanting is precisely what [[Lacan]] calls [[phallus|phallic]] [[jouissance]] and defines the [[masculine]] [[structure]].

A [[masculine]] [[structure]] is characterized by turning the [[Other]] into an [[objet a]], and mistakenly [[thinking ]] that the [[object]] can fully [[satisfy]] our [[desire]]. It is essential to keep in [[mind ]] here, though, that [[phallic]] [[jouissance]] is not [[male]] in the sense that only [[men]] can experience it; it is experienced by both [[men]] and [[women]] and is defined as [[phallus|phallic]] insofar as it is characterized by failure.

The [[Lacanian ]] '[[formulae ]] of [[sexuation]]" make up a crucial part of Žižek's thinking: one way of characterizing the overall trajectory of his [[work ]] is as a movement from a masculine [[logic ]] of the [[universal ]] and its exception towards a [[feminine ]] logic of a [[not-all]]' without exception. Everything in Žižek can ultimately be [[understood ]] in [[terms ]] of these two formulae. As Žižek asks: 'What if [[sexual ]] [[difference ]] is ultimately a kind of zero-institution of the [[social ]] [[split ]] of humankind, the naturalized, minimal zero-difference, a split that. prior to signalling any determinate social difference, signals this difference as such? The [[struggle ]] for [[hegemony ]] would then, onceagain, be the struggle for how this zero-difference is overdetermined by other [[particular ]] social differences." (p. 338)

* [[Non-all]]