Feminine Jouissance in Horror Cinema (London)

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan spoke about the possibility of an unlocatable feminine enjoyment that exists outside of the common discourse. He claimed that feminine subjectivity has access to an unsymbolised pleasure, which he contrasted to masculinity being bound to conditions of rising and falling. Female eroticism, within this theoretical framework, is foreclosed by the male due to her surplus of gratification. Women’s sexual autonomy forces them to occupy the paradoxical position of being both alluring and threatening. As a result, female sexuality is expelled to the forbidden realm of the inexpressible and death.

In this course, we will investigate representations of feminine jouissance in three films: Possession (1981) dir. Andrzej Żuławski, Paranormal Activity (2007) dir. Oren Peli, and Kiss of the Damned (2012) dir. Alexandra Cassavetes. The proposition is that women are capable of a transgressive and excessive bodily pleasure that reaches outside of the phallocentric order (male created discourse). This supplementary enjoyment causes women to be pushed out of a conscious collective reality; functionally it produces an (at best) ambivalent and most often fearful response within a culture that happens to confront female sexual power. In this context, reference will also be made to the psychoanalytic structure of hysteria, specifically to interpret the violent physical component of women in these films.