Joissance
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The term Joissance is derived from the writing of French feminist writer Hélène Cixous. She coined the term in order to describe a form of women's pleasure, or sexual rapture that combines mental, physical and spiritual aspects of female experience, bordering on mystical communion. Cixous maintains that joissance is the source of a woman's creative power, and the suppression of joissance prevents women from finding their own fully empowered voice [1]. The idea of female expression as necessarily containing a physical, non-verbal element has been criticized as essentialist, in that it confines women to physicality in an oppressive manner [2].
Other feminists have argued that Freudian 'hysteria' is joissance distorted by patriarchal culture and claim that through joissance women can attain a level of expression and communication that transcends all dualities [3]. This transcendent state represents freedom from oppressive linearities, "to escape hierarchical bonds and thereby come closer to what Cixous calls joissance., which can be defined as a virtually metaphysical fulfillment of desire that goes far beyond [mere] satisfaction... [It is a] fusion of the erotic, the mystical, and the political" (Gilbert xvii) [4]
[edit] References
Understanding Popular Culture - J. Fiske Routledge 1989
- ^ Introduction to Cixous
- ^ Creative Writing at the University of Oregon
- ^ Barbara Agreste
- ^ Gilbert, Sandra M. Introduction. The Newly Born Woman. By Hilhne Cixous and Catherine Clement 1975. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986
Joissance is also a term used in the study of popular culture. Roland Barthes used the term to describe the moment of the breakdown of culture into nature. It is a loss of self, usually the act of losing oneself in physical bliss; the pleasure gained from evading forces of subjugation by temporarily escaping socially constructed identities.
