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Lacan's most important contributions to the debate on femininity come, like Freud's, late in his work. In the seminar of 1972-3, Lacan advances the concept of a specifically feminine [[jouissance]] Which goes 'beyond the phallus';<ref>S20, 69</ref> this jouissance is 'of the order of the infinite', like mystical ecstasy.<ref>S20, 44</ref> Women may experience this jouissance, but they knoW nothing about it (S20, 71). It is also in this seminar that Lacan takes up his controversial formula, first advanced in the seminar of 1970-1, 'Woman does not exist' (la femme n'existe pas<ref>Lacan, 1973a: 60</ref>), which he here rephrases as 'there is no such thing as Woman' (il n'y a pas La femme<ref>S20, 68</ref>). As is clear in the original French, what Lacan puts into question is not the noun 'woman', but the definite article which precedes it. In French the definite article indicates universality, and this is precisely the characteristic that women lack; women 'do not lend themselves to generalisation, even to phallocentric generalisation'.<ref>Lacan, 1975b</ref> Hence Lacan strikes through the definite article whenever it precedes the term femme in much the same way as he strikes through the A to produce the symbol for the barred Other, for like woman, the Other does not exist (see [[bar]]). To press home the point, Lacan speaks of woman as 'not-all';<ref>pas-toute; S20, 13</ref> unlike masculinity, which is a universal function founded upon the phallic exception (castration), woman is a non-universal which admits of no exception. Woman is compared to truth, since both partake of the logic of the not-all (there is no such thing as all women; it is impossible to say 'the whole truth'.<ref>Lacan, 1973a: 64<./ref>