Eve Watson – An-Other Jouissance – Unmasking the Vamp-ire and Marilyn Monroe
 
THE LETTER 33 (Spring 2005) pages 61-71
 
According to Lacan, there is a fissure, an irreducible gap in the unconscious in the place of the absent signifier of woman and this is where feminine puissance is located. Lacan also says that there is only one libido and that therefore there is no psychical representative of the opposition masculine/feminine. If woman functions as the Other and finds herself representing the phallic value, she comes to figure as the object of puissance. The woman can be said to have access to ‘an-Other’ enjoyment. However, it is elsewhere that she poses the question of her own jouissance. How is it that we can know about the operation of ‘an-other’ enjoyment? It is by means of its failures that the phallic is revealed to be ‘not-all.’ Analytic experience indicates that the ‘no!’ of the hysteric is informed by a rejection of phallic enjoyment. The symptom of the hysteric often points to a denial of the role of the phallus.