Can I Say Who I Am

‘That one might be saying this second, remains forgotten behind what is said’ is a phrase emphasised andrepeated in L’Etourdit. This paper suggests that, although the above quote is written in 1972 and late in Lacan’s career, he may have laid down the fundamentals for it in a much earlier paper ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language’, written in 1953. Lacan’s writings tell us that the speaking subject who uses language to convey a meaning or sentiment, reveals itself as a subject not equivalent to the one speaking as I, but as a subject which can be detected in the very words or signifiers themselves.…