Introduction

Jacques Marie Emile Lacan (1901–1981) was a highly influential French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, best known for his original interpretations of Sigmund Freud. His work paved the way for the development of post-structuralist psychoanalytic thought. This article examines his book On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge (Encore), its ideas, reception, and the broader impact of Lacanian ideas on feminist theory. I focus on three chapters—On Jouissance (I), Love and the Signifier (IV), and God and Woman’s Jouissance (VI)—to outline Lacan’s conceptions of femininity and feminine sexuality as they appear in this work.

What Lacan Says in Encore

Encore opens with Lacan’s emphatic reassertion: “jouissance of the Other (‘s body) is not a sign of love.” He seeks to construct femininity and feminine sexuality through their relations to jouissance and the signifier of the phallus. For Lacan, women and femininity are symbolic positions within the Symbolic Order rather than biological categories. Feminine subjectivity is marked by an inscription on the “feminine side,” which lies partially outside the phallic function and has access to a jouissance—a form of intense, overflowing experience—linked to mysticism (Moi 2004).

In Chapter I, Lacan distinguishes various forms of jouissance beyond biology: the body’s jouissance is “secondary” and does not determine the lover’s bond. Love relates to the One—a signifier of identity—rather than the mechanics of sexual bodies. Lacan asks whether love aims at making a unity (“faire un”) and emphasises that desire points toward the gap where “the One is based… on the essence of the signifier.” Chapter I foregrounds jouissance (pleasure beyond the pleasure principle) and its entanglement with the signifier. The impossible sexual relationship is implicit: love must contend with lack. Lacan shows that love, like truth, is approached through what is not directly said.

In Chapter IV, Love and the Signifier (Encore 1988), the unit of analysis is love itself. Lacan explores love’s meaning and its implications for sexuality, positioning love as the “linchpin of everything,” yet illusory when confronted with the failure of the sexual relationship. Men and women are framed as signifiers, incarnations of sexual difference, with the Other signifying the other sex. Love thus becomes a signifying act—a test of courage at the edge of sexual impossibility.

In Chapter VI, Lacan turns to femininity, positing that “there is no chance for a man to have the jouissance of a woman’s body… without castration”—men can only approach that jouissance through lack. Here, he formulates the logical conditions of sexuation: any subject identifying as “woman” must be not-whole (¯W). In Lacan’s schema, the “masculine” and “feminine” sides correspond not to biological sex but symbolic positions. The masculine side follows the universal phallic function (∀xΦx), meaning all subjects are subject to castration, except for a single exception (∃x¬Φx), which supports the fantasy of mastery. The feminine side, however, lacks such an exception: there is no subject not subject to the phallic function (¬∃x¬Φx), yet not all of the subject is caught within it (¬∀xΦx). Thus, the woman is “not-all” (pas-toute), not wholly within the phallic logic. Woman (capital W) is barred—there is no universal Woman, only particular incompleteness. Feminine sexuality becomes the locus of the Real. Lacan declares, “there is no such thing as Woman, Woman with a capital W indicating the universal” (1975 [1998: 72]). In asserting that “The Woman” does not exist, Lacan suggests that something of the psyche escapes castration, limitation, and the Law of the Father (Zakin et al. 2023).

What Feminists Say on Encore (and Lacan)

Lacanian ideas have been central to feminist debates, notably among Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Hélène Cixous. Butler critiques Lacan’s account of the phallus as heteronormative and patriarchal (Rae 2020). Irigaray and Cixous reject the binary sexual differentiation produced by Lacan’s concept of the Phallus (Anand 14). However, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan (1982) criticises Irigaray for misreading Lacan and failing to exploit his theories’ potential to transcend his own limits. Ragland-Sullivan argues that Irigaray’s misunderstanding of the phallus and its fixation on sexual identity blinds her to what is most important for feminist theory—that Lacan’s epistemology comes closest to demystifying the causes and differences of sexual personality. Lacan’s framework thus occupies an ambivalent space in feminist theory. While some feminists regard the phallic order as a reproduction of patriarchy, others read Lacan’s Symbolic Order as a tool for exposing the structures of subjection that produce gender itself. Julia Kristeva, for instance, reworks Lacan’s Symbolic and Imaginary registers to theorise female subjectivity through the maternal semiotic. Cixous, through her concept of écriture féminine, turns Lacan’s emphasis on language toward the liberation of feminine expression. Butler’s Gender Trouble extends Lacanian insights into performativity, suggesting that the “Law” of gender can be subverted precisely because it is discursively constructed.

Despite differential readings, feminist scholars converge on Lacan’s importance in tracing how sexual identity and language intertwine. As Leland (1989) notes, Lacanian psychoanalysis and French feminism together suggest that the subject’s entry into language entails both repression and the possibility of rearticulation. Even in critique, feminist theorists have used Lacan’s terms—jouissance, the phallus, and the Real—to rethink subjectivity beyond essentialist models. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory has therefore been a site of critical engagement that profoundly shaped poststructuralist gender theory.

Notes:

1. Many of Lacan’s other best-known ideas, not dealt with here, warrant a lengthy discussion. However, no attempt at that exercise has been made here, as it would be far beyond the scope of this article.
2. Here, Lacan seems to be referring to sexual or phallic jouissance.
3. The symbolic, empty signifier that organises desire and meaning within the symbolic order, not a biological penis. This signifier represents a universal lack, prompting subjects to desire fulfilment they can never fully attain. Men and women are positioned differently: men desire to “have” the phallus (power) and women to “be” the phallus (the object of desire).
4. Lacan says that it is impossible to have a pure sexual relationship because the Symbolic order inherently mediates sexuality through language, fantasy, culture, and desire.

References:

Anand, R. (2025, September 22). Feminism and psychoanalysis: Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, spectre of Lacan. E-Adhyayan. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/engp10/chapter/feminism-and-psychoanalysis-helen-cixous-luce-irigaray-spectre-of-lacan/

Daniel, K. (2009). Dialogues between feminists and Jacques Lacan on female hysteria and femininity. Duquesne Scholarship Collection.

Lacan, J., Miller, J.-A., Mitchell, J., & Rose, J. (1988). On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge, 1972–1973 (The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX). Polity Press.

Leland, D. (1989). Lacanian psychoanalysis and French feminism: Toward an adequate political psychology. Hypatia, 3(3), 81–103.

Moi, T. (2004). From femininity to finitude: Freud, Lacan, and feminism, again. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29(3), 841–878.

Mykyta, L. (1983). Lacan, literature and the look: Woman in the eye of psychoanalysis. SubStance, 12(2), 49–57.

Rae, G. (2020). Questioning the phallus: Jacques Lacan and Judith Butler. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 21(1), 12–26.

Ragland-Sullivan, E. (1982). Jacques Lacan: Feminism and the problem of gender identity. SubStance, 11(3), 6–20.

Zakin, E., & Leeb, C. (2023, December 5). Psychoanalytic feminism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-psychoanalysis/

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Abhijay Rambabu is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in the Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad.