courtby means of a sublation of lack. To return to our original question: S (A
barred) is both different from other signifiers S2 insofar as it represents the miss-
ing signifier, and not separated from them insofar as this missing signifier is
counted withinthe set of signifiers as −1. As Muller and Richardson correctly re-
mark, S (A barred) “must be somehow insidethe universal set and conceived of as
a lack (−1) within it. In this sense it is the complement of the universal set, i.e. an
‘empty,’ or ‘null’ set.”^65
But this is not the whole story. If, with respect to the signifiers S2, the missing
signifier can be counted phallically as the “one-less,” with respect to the Real this
same lack can be counted phallically as the “one-more.” Although this point re-
mains implicit in “Subversion of the Subject,” it is clear that Lacan, having assumed
that there is no Other of the Other, considers S (A barred) as both − 1 and+1. The
empty set which is complementary to the universal set is empty,yet it isstill a set.Let
us analyze this more closely.
Φ, S (A barred) is not only the signifier of the real lack in the symbolic Other
(−1), it is also the signifier of the fact that this lack isreal (+1) or, even better, that
it is the Real tout court.In other words, S (A barred) as +1 is the signifier of the fact
that the Real as lack is nothing but the consequence of the fact that the signifier as
such originally holed the primordial Real, that language “killed the Thing,” and
that before the advent of the signifier such a Thing was exactly no-thing. While the
phallus as −1 is the signifier of the fact that the Real holes the Symbolic, the phal-
lus as +1 is the signifier of the fact that the Real as 0 was primordially holed by the
Symbolic, and that this 0 is now retroactively postulated as an absolute 1. This last
point, a cornerstone of the Lacanian logic of the signifier, was elucidated by Miller
in his seminal article “Suture” as early as 196 6; S (A barred) is nothing but the su-
ture of the Symbolic. “There is 0, and 0 counts for 1 [compte pour 1 ].... That which
in the real is pure and simple absence finds itself... noted as 0 and counted as 1
[compté pour 1 ].”^66
It is now important to distinguish between the retroactive mirageof a primordial
1 created by the disruptive emergence of the signifier out of a homeostatic zero
(the primordial Real) from the actualfact that such an emergence is necessarily as-
sociated with a +1. In other words, one has to distinguish the mythical 0 which
the symbolic order makes us deceptively perceive as a Whole, as a lost 1, from the
concrete presence of what remainsof that 0 in the domain of signifiers in the guise
of a +1 (as lack). This is nothing but the difference between the primordial Real
(the mythical 1) and its remainder, which Lacan calls object a(+1). To be perfectly
clear, however, it should be emphasized that, strictly speaking, object ais not+1:
rather, it is the real lack in the symbolic Other (A barred), which logically, if not
chronologically, precedes its quantification as +1 by means of the signifying action
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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