Consequently, we could at least infer that the conscious subject is partially sub-
jected to an unconscious structure (the Other) that appears to be closely related to
language (quaOther).
In parallel, we should recall how everyday conscious experience shows us that
the subject is normally subjected to language: the subject finds himself always-
already immersed in language. In other words, the specular, alienating identifi-
cation of the subject with the imaginary other necessarily presupposes an earlier,
original—and perpetual—alienation in the Otherqua language. This fact does not
obliterate Lacan’s earlier explanation of imaginary alienation: the subject’s imag-
inary alienation is, rather, redoubled by an alienation in language which—logi-
cally, if not chronologically—precedes it. To cut a long story short, the mirror
stage occurs after the baby has been given a name and the persons surrounding
him have started to talk about him (which indeed they do even long before the
child’s birth).^4
Moving from these broad premises, my analysis of the subject of the Other will
proceed as follows: in the present chapter, I shall primarily be concerned with the
exploration of the famous Lacanian dictum according to which “The unconscious
is structured like a language.” In stark contrast to what is implicitly proposed by
those commentators who restrict themselves to a superficial analysis of Lacan’s ap-
propriation of the Jakobsonian linguistic laws of metaphor and metonymy, I will
try to demonstrate that, despite being regularly articulated likelanguage, the un-
conscious is notthe same as ordinary (conscious) discourse. The unconscious “isn’t
a language in the sense in which this would mean that it’s a discourse... but is
structured like a language.”^5 In Chapter 3 , I shall move on to confront in detail the
ways in which Lacan explains the individual subject’s active entry into the Sym-
bolic as the fundamental Law of society. In other words, this will be the place to as-
sess Lacan’s thorough linguistic rethinking of the Oedipus complex.
These two chapters can be said roughly to correspond to the two main axes of
Lacan’s investigations during his so-called “structuralist” period. I shall, for my
part, generally refrain from labeling this phase of his production in such a way. It
is my intention, however, to show by other means how it remains possible to cir-
cumscribe this part of Lacan’s oeuvre. This will be done at the beginning of Chap-
ter 4. Clearly, the notion of structure has a huge importance for Lacan, especially
during the period between 1953 and 1958 , but I believe his militancy in the struc-
turalist movement is, at best, a heterodox one. The reason for this is simple: as
Lacan unambiguously states in Seminar V, precisely at the apex of his alleged in-
volvement with structuralism, “subjectivity is not eliminable from our experi-
ence as analysts.”^6the subject of the symbolic (other)