physical or intellectual pleasure, delight, or ecstasy; the concept featured heavily in the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan's and was expanded on by Roland Barthes for literary theory, to contrast with mere "pleasure" derived from reading texts that don't challenge the reader as a subject. can also refer to pleasure that devolves into pain
The frantic jouissance of seizing the day, gathering rosebuds, downing an extra glass, and living like there’s no tomorrow is a desperate strategy for outwitting death, one which seeks pointlessly to cheat it rather than to make something of it.