The gap that separates Lacan from Heidegger is here clearly discernible precisely on account of their proximity, i.e., of the fact that, in order to designate the symbolic function at its most elementary, Lacan still uses Heidegger’s term “being”: in a human being, desires lose their mooring in biology, they are operative only insofar as they are inscribed within the horizon of Being sustained by language; however, in order for this transposition from the immediate biological reality of the body to the symbolic space to take place, it has to live a mark of torture in the body in the guise of its mutilation.

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