Ed Pluth is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico.

"Pluth reviews Lacan's definitions of the trace, the sign, and the signifier, and provides formulations of metaphor and metonymy that nicely underscore the gap between signifier and signified." — Philosophy in Review"This highly original volume will leave an indelible mark on the rapidly developing field of Lacanian studies. Pluth has an excellent knowledge of both published and unpublished Lacanian sources, and he manages to integrate Lacanian theory and current philosophical thinking without sacrificing discursive clarity and scholarly rigor. Apart from demonstrating the ongoing relevance of Lacan's work for a wide variety of topical debates, Pluth also succeeds in showing how influential philosophical paradigms such as those formulated by Deleuze, Badiou, Nancy, and Zðizûek cannot be understood without reference to Lacan." — Dany Nobus, author of Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1. Lacan’s Subversion of the Subject2. The First Thesis3. Identity, or the Subject-as-Meaning4. The Second Thesis5. The Fundamental Fantasy6. How Acts Use Signifiers7. Badiou and Zizek on Acts and Subjects8. An Act beyond Recognition ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex