language (parlêtre);for the parlêtrethere is nothing beyond the parlêtre.Hence the cal-
culation of the duration or length of the asymptotic curve does not make sense: no
parlêtrewitnessed the passage from the ape to the parlêtre,and no parlêtrewill be able
to count the precise day, month, and year when the last atomic bomb explodes. As
Lacan observes, the points of creation and destruction (of history) are a strict log-
ical “necessity,” but they can be posited only through either retroactive or antici-
patory mythical speculations. This is how the finitude of man as parlêtreengendered
by creation ex nihiloopens a “limited” space of infinity, the “absoluteness of de-
sire,”^157 that must be opposed to the eternal immortality of the undead—that is to
say, the primordial Real, pre- or postsymbolic “nature” as not-One.the subject of the real (other)