subject of the fantasy as the subject of the Real. In “Subversion of the Subject”
(196 0)—which is, significantly, the first article in which the formula appears—
Lacan clearly says that the signifier (S1, the Master-Signifier) for which all other
signifiers (S2) represent the subject is nothing but the phallic signifier, S (A
barred).^11 As I explained above, Φis precisely the signifier that brings about the
formation of the fundamental fantasy Sa,—which in its turn is responsible for the
foundation of the unconscious and, in parallel, self-consciousness—and, what is
more, it does so only by entering into contact with and “domesticating” the real
lack of the object a.Lacan’s formula is not simply telling us that the fading subject
S is continuously represented in the diachronic dimension of conscious discourse,
that of demand, by any signifier that, in place of the unconscious subject of the
enunciation, the “speaking I,” relates to other signifiers—the latter being con-
scious signifiers in the sentence as well as unconscious signifiers located in various
synchronic signifying chains, as a result of double inscription. What is really at
stake is that the unconscious subject of enunciation is himself represented in the
unconsciousby all signifiers S2 only if the S2s represent him for the phallic signifier
S (A barred): “In the absence of this signifier, all the other signifiers represent
nothing,” there is no subject (of the unconscious).^12 S1 and S (A barred) are then
one and the same thing; however, strictly speaking, they are not to be identified
with the subject.^13 A similar argument is valid with regard to the fundamental fan-
tasy: although S1 is that which links S and ain the fundamental fantasy, the latter
begins to function retroactively only when it becomes the stage on which any sig-
nifier S2 represents the subject for S1.How are we to understand the fundamental fantasy as the locus in which the sub-
ject emerges as a consequence of the knotting together of the three orders of the
Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real? First of all, the fundamental fantasy should
be regarded as a “compromise formation” par excellence:indeed, it is both the con-
sequence of and a reaction (a defense) against the fact that the symbolic Other of
the signifiers is a structurally lacking order.
In other words, the fantasy has two basic interconnected functions: it both re-
lates the barred subject to the real lack in the Symbolic, that of the real object a,
and, at the same time, “veils” this lack in the unconscious through the imaginary
dimension of the object a.Two points must immediately be elucidated: ( 1 ) the Real
of the object ais only retroactively actualized for the subject of the unconscious by
the imaginarization of the object a;( 2 ) the Real of the object amust itself be un-
derstood at two different, though inextricable, levels: the object aas real hole in
the Other is both the hole as the presenceof a residual Real—and, as we shall later
examine, of a related residual jouissance—andthat same hole as the absenceof thethe subject of the real (other)