If, on the one hand, it is clearly possible to divide Lacan’s examination of the
subject into three consecutive stages (imaginary subjectivity in the 193 0s and
1940 s; symbolic subjectivity in the 195 0s; real subjectivity in the 196 0s and
197 0s), on the other hand, this book is mainly interested in emphasizing the con-
tinuityunderlying these seemingly incompatible phases. Each “old” theory of the
subject is recuperated within the framework of a “new” elaboration, and its fun-
damental tenets are retroactively reassessed—often without being refuted—from
the perspective of a general psychoanalytic discourse which becomes increasingly
complex.
Thus, the centrality of the so-called mirror stage in the formation of the sub-
ject’s alienated imaginary identity (treated in Part I) is later subsumed under the
linguistic reinvention of Freud’s Oedipus complex as the precondition for the sub-
ject’s symbolic identification (analyzed in Part II). Similarly, as we shall examine in
Part III, the prevalence of the symbolic subject of the signifier is in turn both pre-
served and reevaluated when it begins to be measured against the stumbling block
of the Real as that which is irreducible to the Symbolic. The same may be said for
the role of otherness with respect to the subject: the function of the imaginary
other is progressively subsumed under that of the symbolic Other, and the self-
sufficiency of the Other is itself rethought in terms of a necessary interaction
between symbolic and real otherness; yet, at the same time, these new contextual-
izations do not prevent the imaginary other and the symbolic Other from retain-
ing most of their original characteristics.
“‘So what about the subject? Where is he?’... Since it was a philosopher who
asked this question... I was tempted to answer: ‘I return the question to you, on
this point I give the floor to philosophers. After all, it’s not fair that all the work
should be up to me.’ The notion of the subject surely demands revision starting
from the Freudian experience.”^9
On the basis of Freud’s discoveries, Lacan outlines a revolutionary theory of the
subject and, despite his relentless attacks against philosophy, repeatedly invites it
to collaborate with psychoanalysis in order to build on his groundbreaking inves-
tigations. Unfortunately, such a call has largely gone unheard. Derrida’s reaction is,
in this case, paradigmatic; although he mistakenly criticizes Lacan for promoting
a reactionary “phallogocentric” subject which supposedly reintroduces the meta-
physics of presence, and unhesitatingly calls Lacan’s thought a “system,” he never-
theless deems it unnecessary to expose such a system.^10 This book moves from
the opposite premise according to which, especially in light of the recent and
widespread debate over a return of the subject in contemporary European phi-
losophy, Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of subjectivity must be reconsidered as an