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==="Woman Does Not Exist"===
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>{{L}} (1973a) ''Télévision'', Paris: Seuil, 1973 [''Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment'', ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson, New York: Norton, 1990]. p.60</ref> which he here rephrases as "there is no such thing as Woman" (''il n'y a pas La femme'').<ref>{{S20}} p.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.
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 [[bar]]red [[Other]], for like [[woman]], the [[Other]] does not [[exist]].
To press home the point, [[Lacan]] speaks of [[woman]] as "[[not-all]]" (''[[not-all|pas-toute]]'');<ref>{{S20}} p.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>{{L}} (1973a) ''Télévision'', Paris: Seuil, 1973 [''Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment'', ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson, New York: Norton, 1990]. p.64</ref>
