The Uncanny Feminine

Lacan was able to lift the veil of familiarity from feminine jouissance, which—unveiling objects of their familiarity—Shelley considered a function of poetry. Lacan makes the feminine into an inhuman littoral, affording an unadorned glimpse into jouissance itself; leading to the paradoxical conclusion that feminine jouissance is neutral and can be experienced by any speaking subject. However, women are but the tip of the iceberg in what we call feminine jouissance: Today, feminine jouissance conjures up the experience of a body resisting symbolic representation. Freud considered this occurrence of the senses to be uncanny—Unheimlich. This is an experience in which Freud discerned a perpetual infancy. In Lacan’s later work, the concept of a littoral between the symbolic and the real offers an alternative approach to Freud’s oft-quoted question: “What does a woman want?”.