ABSTRACT
Within the broader context of exchanges between psychoanalysis and linguistics, this chapter will focus on the significant influence of structuralist linguistics on Jacques Lacan’s work, focusing especially on his use and modification of Saussure when trying to draw out some of the implications of the fact that psychoanalysis, already in Freud’s time, is designated as a talking cure. For political thinkers, the most relevant concepts to emerge from this period of Lacan’s career are those of metonymy, metaphor, and the button tie or quilting point. Close attention will be paid to how Lacan understands these. The chapter then discusses the uses of these concepts in political thought and ideology critique in Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek.
