Wittgenstein, Lacan and the ‘Toothache’: Production of Subjectivity and Limits of Language

Abstract

ABSTRACT The following article is a short reflection on the production of the subject as an effect of significant and language in general. Miller, the disciple of Lacan, uses the image of the dentist as a metaphor for this kind of production: the extraction of a tooth. We use a dreamlike association with Wittgenstein’s example of toothache to explain the limitations of empirical language. The fundamental absence of the object can be translated as the effect of the production of private sensation by linguistic games. Furthermore, this model of explanation of subjectivity is radically different from the classical way of thinking about subjectivity, such as the cognitive psychological model. The production of reality results from a process of extraction of the object, of separation between subject and object as an effect of language.