If I had to single out the first inflection of speech, the initial moment in which the entire realisation of the truth of the subject was inflected in its trajectory, the initial level on which the captation of the other takes on its function, I would isolate it in a formula given me by someone who is present here and whom I supervise. I was asking him -- _Where has he got to, your subject, in relation to you this week?_ He then gave me an expression which coincides exactly with what I have tried, in this inflection, to pinpoint -- _He called on me to bear witness_. And indeed, that really is one of the most elevated, although already deflected functions of speech -- the call to bear witness.

Anika Lemaire Jacques Lacan (trans. David Macey) London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977 (orig. 1970), p. 50

Greg Pryor