From No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis
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"There exists an x determined by its saying no to the function of castration."
Lacan equates this at-least-one (au-moins-un) who says no to castration with the mythic father-jouisseur of Totem and Taboo.
In effect, for this exception to fulfil its totemic function, it must be something non-human; it must not be a speaking subject, which by definition would be constitutively divided--castrated--by the signifier by the signifier--reduced to what is represented by a signifier for another signifier.
But for this exceptional existence, or ex-sistence, to "be something other than a myth," we must conceive of it terms of a structural logic in which it serves as "the inclusive function: . . . this existence plays the role . . . of the complement, or to speak more mathematically, of the edge" to the contradictory universality of the possible.
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"All are subject to the law of castration."
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"No x exists which is determined as subject by the saying-no (dire-non) to the phallic function."
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"Not all are subject to the law of castration."
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The divided subject (subject of lack).
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The Phallus.
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The object a.
In his Seminar at Barcelona, Jacques-Alain Miller states, "The object a is only the elaborated part of jouissance, it is the fantasmatic or semantic part of jouissance, the part of jouissance already drawn into the fantasy . . . Object a is a false real."
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The signifier of the barred Other.
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The Phallus.
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"The woman does not exist."
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