One could propose that, for Lacan, all different “non-deceptive elements” tac-
itly presuppose the universal Name-of-the-Father insofar as this ultimately stands
for the Law of sexuation that prohibits incest and, in so doing, distinguishes any
culture—the Symbolic as such—from nature. The basic Law of the prohibition of
incest is what one discovers at the root of any historically determined Other of the
Other.
From a slightly different angle, we could suggest that, for Lacan, the firstmyth-
ical emergence of the universalOther of the Other—the birth of the Symbolic as
such—should be regarded as being homologous with what we now know hap-
pens at the individuallevel of the child who resolves the Oedipus complex thanks to
the Law of the Name-of-the-Father. The first basic Law of/in history, the beginning
of history itself, should thus be associated with the conclusion of an explicitly phal-
lic prehistorical period (the universal correlate of the phallic phase). Lacan cer-
tainly hints at this in Seminar IV, when he describes the importance of the phallic
Gestaltenat the level of the subject’s individual entrance into the Symbolic together
with the importance of “erected stones” (taken as gigantic phallic Gestalten) at the
dawn of history.^46 We are therefore entitled to infer that successive basic Laws
presuppose this first basic Law in the same way as the child’s increasing ability to
symbolize (or “learn”) presupposes the presence and effectiveness of the Name-
of-the-Father. I do not think I am forcing Lacan’s own words in suggesting that the
individual child’s symbolic apprenticeship somehow makes him go through the
phases of the universal “evolution of human thought.” At this stage, one should
also be able to demonstrate that Lacan’s theory of the Symbolic is characterized by
the interplay of three levels of retroaction: ( 1 ) the level of the sentence uttered by
individuals: the first word of a sentence acquires a signification only retroactively,
after the sentence is completed; ( 2 ) the level of the subject’s individual (active)
entrance into the universal Symbolic: pre-Oedipal life is retroactively signifierized
by the resolution of the Oedipus complex; ( 3 ) the level of the first establishment
of a universal symbolic Law thanks to which prehistory is retroactively posited
from the standpoint of history. As I have just suggested, this first basic Law quauni-
versal Name-of-the-Father is, by definition, at the same time the Law that prohibits
incest and thus retroactively symbolizes (on the universal level) all the protosym-
bolic activities of the species that preceded this moment—in simply terms, the al-
legedly phallic culture of menhirs.^47
This having been said, in Seminar XVII Lacan candidly admits that the Oedipus
complex is, after all, simply Freud’s “dream,” his own myth.^48 On similar lines, we
might suggest that the Name-of-the-Father is simply Lacan’s own mythical rein-
terpretation of Freud’s own discoveries filtered through the tradition of modern
philosophy and the history of science. It must, however, be stressed that, in Lacan’sthe subject of the real (other)