[Praetorian]

In our conscious life we tend to assume that we are unified, autonomous selves: and without this, action would be impossible. But there is for no autonomous, selfconscious subject. The ego is instead the function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself -- the individual is produced as a symptom of this signifying process which forms the symbolic order. The subject of enunciating can never represent him- or herself fully. There is no noun which will sum up my whole being. I can only designate myself in a language with a convenient pronoun.
The pronoun I stands in for an ever-elusive subject. I am not where I think and I think where I am not.