This book brings into contact what nevertheless remains distinct, two different conceptions of language, the linguist’s and the non-linguist’s, whether psychoanalyst or poet. A characteristic feature of our recent intellectual history was the conjunction of a universal valorization of theoretical discourse in an array of disciplines, ranging from the so-called ‘human’ sciences to poetics and psychoanalysis, and the simultaneous elevation of linguistics to the status of a model for the construction of theories.