apes ofthe Freudian School of Melbourne 19.
46
How LACAN INVENTED THE
Osjecr (a)
Jean Allouch”
Strange as it may seem, despite the quantity - kilo upon kilo of glosses
+ of introductions to Lacan and other dictionaries which are supposed to
ease access to his work (but end up getting readers lost on the way), no-
one has as yet, at least as far as I know, accurately defined what the
invention of the object (a) consisted of, how it came about or when it
took place exactly."
‘The lost “veinte” of speech closed
Lacan invents the object (a). Given its strangeness, something must first
be said of what this object might be. Instead of the unending course of
lectures that would be necessary here but, dealing with an unmarkefable
object, would not be especially appropriate, here is a tum of phrase
which could indicate what we are dealing with. It is a quite common
Mexican Spanish expression, often uttered as an exclamation: “ Me