Joissance

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 [ [http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html Introduction to Cixous ] ] .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 [ [http://www.uoregon.edu/~crwrweb/Kidd/ameelloi.htm Creative Writing at the University of Oregon ] ] .

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 [ [http://www.lunadonna.net/agrestepensieri.htm Barbara Agreste ] ] . 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) [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 in "The Pleasure of the Text" 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.

References

Understanding Popular Culture - J. FiskeRoutledge 1989