“Take the dominant in the Master’s Discourse, whose place is occupied by S1. If we called it ‘the law’ we would be doing something that has great subjective value and that would not fail to open the door to a number of interesting observations. It is certain, for example, that the law – I mean the law as articulated, that very law within whose walls we are finding shelter, this law that constitutes the law – must certainly not be taken as a homonym for what may be spoken of elsewhere under …the heading of justice. On the contrary, the ambiguity and the trappings that this law adopts by virtue of the fact that it derives its authority from justice is very precisely a point on which our discourse can perhaps give a better sense of where its real resources are, I mean those that make the ambiguity possible and bring it about that the law remains something that is, first and foremost, inscribed in the structure. There are not thirty-six ways to make laws, whethermotivated by good intentions, justice, or not, for there are perhaps laws of structure that make it the case that the law will always be the law located in this place that I am calling dominant in the master’s discourse.” Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVII, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, page 43
