Abstract
This chapter shows that Jacques Lacan combines insights from Saussurean linguistics with an innovative reading of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to account for the ways in which meaning is generated from the differential relations between signifiers. Lacan does not offer a theory of evil per se; prior to doing so, he argues that we needed to account for how meaning is created and accounted for this by introducing the three registers of the imaginary, symbolic, and real. By suggesting that ‘evil’ is found at the intersection of what he calls the real and the symbolic, Lacan argues that it needs to be understood as the signifier that aims, but, due to the nature of the Lacanian real, always fails, to designate the non-signifiable real within the symbolic order. ‘Evil’ is then the symbol that stands at the liminal point between the symbolic and the real and designates the ineffable excessive aspect of existence that, because it cannot be comprehended within the symbolic order, is strange, indescribable, and beyond comprehension.
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