“A bath of language”. The aquatic ethology of Lacan

Abstract

The Lacanian approach can be described as “ethological” because its hypotheses never start from what happens “inside” the head of human beings, on the contrary, at the beginning there is always the outside, there is the signifier. This, in fact, is the “material” face of the sign, the only one measurable with scientific instruments. The signifier is there, it is a material entity (in the case of the verbal signifier it is a vibration of the air) that precisely because it is a “thing” can enter the human body, in this case through the ear.