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→The Symbolic Network
He or she will be able to leave the universe of the mother to take on a place in the larger universe of the symbolic world. The imaginary object must take on the value of a gift, and hence the crucial time of the Oedipus complex will involve establishing this new signification. ''The phallus will be the object promised to the child for use in the future'', it will become the object of a pact. (Some day, this will all be yours...) This promise supposes, of course, that what will be returned in the future has been taken away first. Assuming a sexual position thus supposes an initial loss or subtraction. Lacan's theory of the Oedipus complex will be reformulated later on his his work, as we shall see.
=====Is Lacan a Structuralist?=====
By the late 1950s, Lacan's work shifts its focus from the problem of speech to the problem of language. Speech is an act, involving subject and other. [[Language]], however, ''is a [[structure]]'': as such, it does not supposed a [[subject]]. There is nothing [[human]] about a [[language]], if it is seen as a ''[[formal]] [[system]] of [[difference]]s'' and distinguished clearly from [[speech]]. (The problem is exactly this. If language is an abstract structure, what kind of [[subject]] can be conceived for it? How does the [[human]] find a place in a [[structure]] which is intrinsically [[alien]] to it?)
[[Lacan]] is thus hardly a [[structuralist]]. [[Structuralism]] aimed to do away with the [[subject]] and the notion of [[subjective]] [[agency]], putting in its place the [[autonomy]] of [[linguistic]] [[structures]]. As [[Jacques-Alain Miller]] has pointed out, although [[Lacan]] shares this conception of the [[autonomy]] of the [[symbolic]], he is deeply concerned at the same time, to find a place for the [[subject]] here.
((Try writing a small ad. What you write is different from you. It may represent you, but in being represented, you have to confront the fact that words are not there to help you. ''They have no been designed for you'', and yet you have to find your way around in the world of language in order to survive. (Words represent me, but are not for me...))) There is thus a new theory of [[alienation]] in [[Lacan]]. The early work referred to [[alienation]] in the [[register]] of the [[image]], and now ''[[alienation]] is situated in the [[register]] of [[language]]''. If [[speech]] was first seen as giving the [[subject]] some sort of [[identity]], now ''[[language]] has the role of blocking identity''. This is the difference between [[Lacan]]'s conception of [[language]] in 1953 and that of 1958: the [[subject]] is no longer recognized but abolished.
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