Claude-Noele Pickman – La Femme Donne A La Jouissance D’Oser Le Masque De La Repetition
 
THE LETTER 24 (Spring 2002) pages 84-88
 
Lacan’s phrase can be translated thus: ‘The woman gives to puissance to dare the mask of repetition’. However, this morning during the congress, Jacqueline Rose proposed another more easily understood translation: ‘The woman issues to puissance the challenge of wearing the mask of repetition’. You will find this quotation from Lacan in Seminar XVII, Venvers de la psychanalyse, in the session of 11th February 1970.
In French, it is indeed a very poetic and beautiful phrase since it carries with it the promise of a gift, the gift that the woman should bring to puissance in daring to make use of the semblant as a way to jouir. Of course, the Lacanian woman, as you know, is a woman who is not lacking puissance. This could even oppose her to the Freudian woman. The Freudian woman is riveted to the missing phallus and to the dissatisfaction that this missing phallus leaves her with, unless she finds its equivalence in maternity.