ABSTRACT
Early on, the signifier and the letter were close allies. If the signifier is a building block of the unconscious and constitutes the principle of difference in it, the letter is what offers a material support. The letter is the materiality of language, its reality if this term denotes things that exist. A letter signifies unequivocality, that there is an agreement between what is said and meant. The letter, then, is how the experience that bears the name of a trauma becomes inscribed in the body by the unconscious. The material support Jacques Lacan speaks about is already premoulded and affected for a particular subject before he enters the pathway of speech. With Rene Descartes the subject of knowledge establishes itself as a subject of certainty. Lacan took up the Cartesian subject of certainty to explore the ubiquitous relation of the love of knowledge.
