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Lacan’s concept of jouissance discloses the intricate interdependence between sexuality and the symbolic order; this interdependence subjects the biological body to a traversal by the signifier. Because the body is necessarily mediated by language, and the libidinal drive remains in excess of the limits of representation, jouissance tends to manifest itself symptomatically in the body as a kind of surplus meaning that resists symbolic mediation. In consequence, the subject tends to apprehend jouissance only in the Other’s body, and therefore as something beyond its grasp, something of which it has been deprived. Because jouissance for the subject is marked by such a lack, sexual relations between two subjects are always structured in relation to a missing third element—the phallus—that disallows the formation of a harmonious, complementary relationship. It was for this reason that Lacan made the notorious claim in his seminar Encore that "there is no sexual relation." The lack of relation between the sexes—or between any two subjects of either biological sex—distinguishes human sexuality from the instinctual satisfaction presumably at work in the animal realm. In the later stages of his career Lacan attempted to shed light on Freud’s notoriously unclear theories of femininity and sexual difference by introducing his concept of "sexuation." Lacan claimed that every neurotic subject experiences symbolic castration in one of only two possible ways. Though he qualified the modes of sexuation as "masculine" and "feminine," Lacan made clear that a subject’s sexuation need not correspond to its anatomical sex. This is so, for Lacan, because sexuation exposes a fundamental impasse or contradiction characteristic of human sexuality that results from the properly structural lack of adequation of the symbolic order with respect to the real.
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'''''Jouissance''''' is a [[French language|French]] term which translated means "[[enjoyment]]" and is contrasted with ''[[plaisir]]''. In every sense of the word it is whatever "gets you off". Something that gives the [[subject]] a way out of its [[normative]] subjectivity through [[transcendent]] [[Bliss (feeling)|bliss]] whether that bliss or [[orgasmic]] [[rapture]] be found in [[text]]s, [[film]]s, works of [[art]] or [[sexual]] spheres; [[excess]] as opposed to [[utility]]. It is a popular term in [[postmodernism]] and [[queer theory]] used by [[Roland Barthes]], [[Jacques Lacan]], [[Judith Butler]], and others. [[Leo Bersani]] considers jouissance as intrinsically self-shattering, disruptive of a 'coherent [[self]]'.
