The subverted, the foreclosed and the sutured: a history of the subject from Lacan to Badiou

Abstract

This article recalls crucial moments of a history of the subject that goes from Jacques Lacan to Alain Badiou. After the Lacanian division and subversion of the subject, reactions that try to reverse it in various authors are reviewed. These reactions are contrasted with Badiou’s idea of the split of the subject between the splace and the out-of-place. The structuralist absolutization of the structural space is illustrated with Jacques-Alain Miller’s action of the structure, is connected with the argument of the structures that descend to the street with which Lacan defended the structuralist position against Lucien Goldmann and is explained by the foreclosure of the subject in structuralism, in the capitalist system and in science in general. Regarding the scientific field, it is shown how it was defined first by foreclosure and then by suturing of the subject in Miller, simultaneously by foreclosure and suturing in Lacan, and only by the foreclosure in Badiou, who will begin by denying and end up accepting the existence of a subject of science, but different from that of Lacan and Miller.