In feminist theory, jouissance describes a form of women's pleasure or sexual rapture, which is a fusion of mental, physical, and spiritual aspects bordering on mystical communion.
English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan have generally left jouissance untranslated in order to help convey its specialised usage.
[citation needed] Jane Gallop has noted that "it is impossible to give an adequate translation of jouissance", adding that it is crucial "not to assimilate it, but to retain its foreignness.
"[6] The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a known Lacanian theorist, has adopted the term in his philosophy; it also plays an important role in the work of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes.
[10][11] The concept of jouissance is explored by Cixous and other authors in their writings on Écriture féminine, a strain of feminist literary theory that originated in France in the early 1970s.