Femininity Freud refused A feminine [[structure]], on the [[other]] hand, is defined by a different [[relationship]] to the Other and [[jouissance]] - what [[Lacan]] calls [[Other jouissance]]. The problem with talking [[about]] this Other jouissance, however, is that it cannot be spoken about. [[Speech]] is related to put forward a the [[symbolic]] [[order]] and is therefore [[phallic]]. If we could talk about this Other jouissance then it would, by definition of femininity: "In conformity with its peculiar nature, psychoanalysis be phallic, as [[the symbolic]] order is phallic. Other jouissance is precisely something that one can [[experience]] but say [[nothing]] about and thusit is [[impossible]] to define. Now clearly this does not get us very far in an introduction to Lacan, so let us try to describe say what we can about this [[particular]] [[form]] of [[enjoyment]]. Fink points out that the [[notion]] of Other jouissance in Lacan is rather ambiguous and offers a woman [[number]] of possible readings: it could mean 'the jouissance the Other gets out of us', or 'our enjoyment of the Other', or 'our enjoyment as the Other' (2002:38). All are possible readings of Lacan's [[formula]]. Fink also remains unclear why this Other jouissance should be defined as feminine (2002:40). The most well-known example of Other jouissance from [[seminar]] XX is of the statue 'The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa' by the Italian Baroque sculptor Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). This piece shows St Teresa swooning in ecstasy while pierced by an arrow from an angel poised above her. Lacan comments:<blockquote>[I]t's like for Saint Teresa - you [[need]] but go to Rome and see the statue by Bernini to immediately [[understand]] that she's coming. but sets There's no [[doubt]] about enquiring how it. What is she comes into being" getting off on? It is clear that the essential testimony of the mystics consists in saying that they experience it, but [[know]] nothing of it.<ref>1998 [1975]: 76</ref></blockquote> This experience of unspeakable ecstasy is what Lacan calls Other or [[feminine jouissance]]. The [[idea]] of Other jouissance is seen to mark an advance over the [[phallocentrism]] of [[Freud]], in that Other jouissance is 'more than' [[phallic jouissance]]; it is beyond the symbolic and the [[subject]] and therefore '[[outside]] the [[unconscious]]' (1933a Soler 2002:107). Both men and [1932[women]] can experience phallic, or Other, pjouissance and what defines whether or not a person has a [[masculine]] or a feminine structure is the type of jouissance they experience. 116There is one crucial [[difference]], according to Lacan, between men and women, however, and that is that women can experience both forms of jouissance while with men it is either one or the other (see Fink 2002:40-1). He posits For Lacan, it is not the [[case]] that women are defined negatively in relation to men; a [[woman]] is not a man and therefore [[lacks]] something that men have - a [[penis]]. Rather, women have access to something more than men - a primary bisexuality as the starting point for this process[[surplus]] jouissance.
In Freud's view, the genesis of femininity differs from the genesis of masculinity because its linearity is interrupted. In the pre-oedipal phase, the girl's libido, instead of taking the opposite-sex parent as its object, as the boy...
