The argument of the \u201cWAP\u2019s Great International Online Conversation 2022\u201d begins with a metaphor: \u201ca wind has arisen\u201d. Indeed, \u201cWoman does not exist\u201d lifts a veil, we are questioned and we question, analysts have pledged to converse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the plurality of the \u201cnot-all argument\u201d, a detail oriented my reading, the existence of five subheadings; in each one is read a clinical-political impasse and at the same time, a way to get out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pathway of the symptom as I understand it appears as the main road. For Christiane Alberti the symptom is “the way that feminises us”. Yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where will these winds carry us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contemporary life, the new appears according to the modes by which the signifier collectivises, by its value of imaginary-narcissistic plug. The use of language “that consists therein and is separate, having been constituted over the ages [\u2026]i<\/sup><\/a>” is not promoted today in a symptomatic link. What consequences can we draw from these master signifiers, in their pretention of numbing and eclipsing lalangue<\/em> lodged in a symptom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will orient myself from the tripod: speech, jouissance and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Living in Speech<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This interrogation of Jacques Lacan is foundational: “Why not posit here that the fact that everything that is analyzable is sexual, does not mean that everything that is sexual is accessible to the analysis?\u201dii<\/sup><\/a> The “woman part” in the sexual, was already on its way. Language has always functioned as a supplement for sexual jouissance, as a framework faced with the intrusion of jouissance in- the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Where it speaks, it enjoysiii<\/sup><\/a>” is a radical axiom, the signifier is considered “[\u2026] at the level of enjoying substance (la substance jouissante<\/em>)”.iv<\/sup><\/a> It is no longer reduced to a remainder of jouissance but is the cause of it. For this reason it is well suited to “feminine jouissance”, it relates to a “corporeal substance”. From there the logic and the incidence of speech appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Logical Exigency of Speech<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is just as feminist discourse reaches its peak that Lacan opens his own impasse<\/em> on the question of feminine sexuality. At the age of 70, he addresses himself especially to women analysts! Supported by their Not-all saying, he will say that the cause is “related to the structure of the apparatus of jouissancev<\/sup><\/a>” in the jouissance proper to each sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The language that agitates the speaking body is presented in the man as a finite, jouissance \u2013 complete – designated as phallic jouissance, whereas in the woman it is an infinite jouissance, less localised. That is to say that it is a jouissance that is difficult to grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the logical impossibility of making “women” a whole One-All [Un-Tout<\/em>], the “sexed being” of these not-all women, does not pass through the body, “but by what results from a logical exigency in speech”.vi<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a decisive turning point! It is still relevant today, it teaches us “the logical exigency in speech”. The syntagm partner-symptom<\/em> proposed by J.-A. Miller opens the perspective of this exigency in the relation of the speech of love with feminine jouissance. A difficult paradox to untangle! It presents itself between the delocalised infinite and a not-all saying, represented by the bar of the signifier that falls back on The Woman.<\/em> On the feminine side, the relation with finitude is contingent, it depends on the encounter “of lovevii<\/sup><\/a>“, under the erotomanic form. And so…<\/p>\n\n\n\n To know Oneself as a Woman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “There is something concerning love which fails when love is confronted with jouissance”.viii<\/sup><\/a> For the man, being as complete makes One, he does without speech in his satisfaction, it “remains out of play”.ix<\/sup><\/a> For a woman on the other hand, “the speech of the Other is an intrinsic element to jouissance”.x<\/sup><\/a> In her, love and jouissance are articulated, she needs an Other who speaks to her so that she can recognise herself as an object of desire. An Other incarnated “as a sexed beingxi<\/sup><\/a>“, which requires this “one by one”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How then can we catch this “something” of the signifier, which is the material cause of jouissance? The answer is categorical, “the signifier is what brings jouissance to a haltxii<\/sup><\/a>“, it is the foundation of the Signifier of the barred Other. This jouissance – of the barred Other – presented as an supplementary jouissance, has two faces. J.-A. Miller situates them as follows: one is “the jouissance of the body insofar as it is not limited to the phallic organxiii<\/sup><\/a>“, it is infinite. The other is situated in “the jouissance of speech”.xiv<\/sup><\/a> It seems to me that it is in this direction that we can answer the paradox between the infinite and the Not-all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In feminine jouissance, love is linked to the Other without being dominated by the drive. It is linked to the Other, as inconsistent, incomplete. “To know oneself as a womanxv<\/sup><\/a>” does not involve her in a knowledge of her jouissance, but it is by her Otherness that she knows herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our rendez-vous<\/em> with “Woman does not exist” indicates that there is no Other who responds as a partner<\/em> more than a jouissance. This is the reason why Lacan will later specify that there is “a sinthome<\/em> he and a sinthome<\/em> she, what remains of the sexual relation”.xvi<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n .<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translation by Joanne Conway<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n i<\/a> Lacan, J., On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Encore<\/em>. The Seminar, Book XX,<\/em> transl. B. Fink, Norton & Co., New York, 1999, p. 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ii<\/a> Lacan, J., Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality, \u00c9crits. The First Complete Edition in English, <\/em>Transl. B. Fink, Norton & Co., New York, 2006, p. 614.<\/p>\n\n\n\n iii<\/a> Lacan, J., On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Encore<\/em>. The Seminar, Book XX,<\/em> Transl. B. Fink, Norton & Co., New York, 1999, p. 115.<\/p>\n\n\n\n iv<\/a> Ib\u00edd.,<\/em> p. 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n v<\/a> Ib\u00edd<\/em>, p. 58.<\/p>\n\n\n\n vi<\/a> Ib\u00edd<\/em>, p. 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n vii<\/a> Miller, J.-A., Course of the Lacanian Orientation, The partner -symptom<\/em>, session of the 1st<\/sup> of April 1998. Unpublished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n viii<\/a> Ib\u00edd<\/em>. Session of the 14th of January, 1998. Unpublished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ix<\/a> Ib\u00edd. <\/em>Session of the1st of April, 1998. Unpublished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n x<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n xi<\/a> Ib\u00edd.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n xii<\/a> Lacan, J., On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Encore<\/em>. The Seminar, Book XX,<\/em> Transl. B. Fink, Norton & Co., New York, 1999, p. 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n xiii<\/a> Miller, J.-A., Course of the Lacanian Orientation, The partner-symptom, <\/em>Session of the 1st<\/sup> of April 1998.Unpublished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n xiv<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n xv<\/a> Miller, J.-A., Course of the Lacanian Orientation. Pi\u00e8ces d\u00e9tach\u00e9es<\/em>. Session of the 1st of June, 2005. Unpublished [Intervention of \u00c9ric Laurent].<\/p>\n\n\n\n