jouissance

English

Etymology

From Middle French jouissance, from jouir (“to enjoy”).

Noun

jouissance (countable and uncountable, plural jouissances)

1. (obsolete) Enjoyment, delight, pleasure.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, The Essayes […], London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     friendship is enjoyed according as it is desired, it is neither bred, nor nourished, nor increaseth but in jovissance, as being spirituall, and the minde being refined by use and custome.

2. (poststructuralism) A transgressive, excessive kind of pleasure linked to the division and splitting of the subject involved.
   • 2013, Benjamin Noys, Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism, Zero Books, →ISBN:

     Instead Lyotard suggests that the worker experiences jouissance, a masochistic pleasure, in the imposed ‘mad destruction’ of their body.

Usage notes

• The sexual connotation (i.e. orgasm) is lacking in the English word enjoyment, and therefore the word is left untranslated in English editions of the works of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

French

Etymology

From jouir +‎ -ance.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʒwi.sɑ̃s/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

Noun

jouissance f (plural jouissances)

1. (law) use, possession, enjoyment
2. enjoyment, deep pleasure
3. sexual pleasure, sensual delight; orgasm, climax
   • 1785, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Les 120 journées de Sodome, ou l'École du libertinage:

     Il est taillé comme une femme et en a tous les goûts; privé par la petitesse de sa consistance de leur donner du plaisir, il l’a imité, et se fait foutre à tout instant du jour. Il aime assez la jouissance de la bouche; c’est la seule qui puisse lui donner des plaisirs comme agent.

     He is built like a woman and has all their tastes; limited by the smallness of his ability to give them pleasure, he has imitated them, and gets fucked at any time of day. He quite enjoys pleasuring by the mouth; it is the only way he is able to give pleasure as the active agent.

Descendants

• Haitian Creole: jwisans

Further reading

• “jouissance”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle French

Noun

jouissance f (plural jouissances)

1. Alternative form of iouyssance