Existence

   existence (existence)              The term 'existence' is employed by Lacan in

   various ways (see éiûek, 1991: 136-7):

   e    Existence in the symbolic      This sense of existence is to be understood in

    the context of Freud's discussion of the 'judgement of existence', by which the

   existence of an entity is affirmed prior to attributing any quality to it (see

    Freud, 1925h; see BEJAHUNG). Only what is integrated in the symbolic order

    fully 'exists' in this sense, since 'there is no such thing as a prediscursive

    reality' (S20, 33). It is in this sense that Lacan argues that 'woman does not

    exist' (Lacan, 1973a: 60); the symbolic order contains no signifier for femi-

    ninity, and hence the feminine position cannot be fully symbolised.

       It is important to note that, in the symbolic order, 'nothing exists except on

    an assumed foundation of absence. Nothing exists except insofar as it does not

   exist' (Ec, 392). In other words, everything that exists in the symbolic order

    only exists by virtue of its difference to everything else. It was Saussure who

    first pointed this out when he argued that in language there are no positive

    terms, only differences (Saussure, 1916).

   e    Existence in the real       In this sense, it is only that which is impossible to

   symbolise that exists: the impossible Thing at the heart of the subject. 'There is

   in effect something radically unassimilable to the signifier. It's quite simply

   the subject's singular existence' (S3, 179). This is the existence of the subject

   of the unconscious, S, which Lacan describes as an 'ineffable, stupid exis-

   tence' (E, 194).

       This second sense of the term existence is exactly the opposite of existence

   in the first sense. Whereas existence in the first sense is synonymous with

   Lacan's use of the term BEING, existence in the second sense is opposed to

   being.

       Lacan coins the neologism ex-sistence to express the idea that the heart of

   our being (Kern unseres Wesen) is also radically Other, strange, outside (Ec,

    l1); the subject is decentred, his centre is outside of himself, he is ex-centric.

   Lacan also speaks of the 'ex-sistence (Entstellung) of desire in the dream' (E,

   264), since the dream cannot represent desire except by distorting it.