2.2 The Function of Speech
As a result of the shift in focus from imaginary alienation in the small other to lin-
guistic alienation in the big Other, Lacan is able to propose the thesis that the sub-
ject undergoes a “twofold alienation.”^7 That is to say: “There is the other as
imaginary. It’s here in the imaginary relation with the other that traditional Selbst-
Bewusstseinor self-consciousness is instituted.... There is also the Other who speaks
from my place, apparently, this Other who is within me. This is an Other of a to-
tally different nature from the other, my counterpart.”^8 One could correctly argue
that Lacan deals with the issue of the subject’s alienation in the big Other in two
significantly different manners during the 195 0s. This dissimilarity does not nec-
essarily amount to an incompatibility between two alternative speculations but
should, rather, be regarded as proof of a theoretical evolution in Lacan’s theory of
the subject of the Other. Particularly in his seminal article “Function and Field of
Speech and Language” ( 1953 ), Lacan suggests that alienation in language can suc-
cessfully be overcome; this achievement would also enable the subject to overcome
imaginary alienation and its narcissistically destructive tendencies. According to
this text, the function of so-called “full speech” would consist in actively over-
coming individualalienation in universallanguage through psychoanalytic treatment.^9
The key reference for Lacan here is Hegel’s dialectics as mediated by Kojève. On the
other hand, a few years later, in his article “The Agency of the Letter in the Un-
conscious” ( 1957 )—as well as in Seminars IV and V—Lacan appears to assume that
alienation in language cannot be overcome. In other words, the subject’s individ-
ual speech is irremediably subjected to the universal field of language, and to its
laws. Lacan’s key reference for this second phase—which will be treated in the next
two sections of this chapter—is Saussure’s structural linguistics, largely in the form
of Jakobson’s reelaboration.
It is now important to analyze in greater detail what, according to Lacan, alien-
ation in language consists of. I shall begin by considering this issue from the stand-
point of speech. In the early 195 0s, Lacan is primarily interested in explaining the
relationship between language (langage) and speech (parole). To put it succinctly,
speech (parole) corresponds to the actual execution of a language in an individual
subject. As we have already noted, Lacan believes that the subject is necessarily
alienated in language insofar as language already exists before his birth and inso-
far as his relations with other human beings are necessarily mediated by language.
But how is the fact that language precedes the subject—and, above all, imposes it-
self as an irreducible mediator of the subject’s relation with other subjects—auto-
matically linked to the fact that he is alienatedin language?