Abstract

The article deals with Lacan’s notion of “subject” by distinguishing it from any reference to identity. It takes up the question “Who speaks?” posed by Michel Foucault in 1969 and finds an answer with Lacan. In psychoanalysis, it is not a matter of negation of the subject but rather of the subject’s dependence on the signifier. Lacan questioned the “privileges of the self”, but saved the dimension of the subject by conceiving a subject of the unconscious. Identity in psychoanalysis is not determined by social norms. It is an identity at the level of the speaking and suffering subject. Finally, the article shows that the Lacanian subject is both a subject marked by the signifier and one articulated to the drive. The experience of psychoanalysis leads us to question identifications, thereby making it possible to comprehend the traumatic mark at the level of the Real.