The foregoing exposition of Lacan's theory of metaphor and metonymy would seem to put to rest the notion that ‘metaphor dominates, founds and precedes metonymy’. On the contrary, the account of the relation between the two tropes given in the seminar on the psychoses and reprised in ‘Agency’ leaves no doubt that, and how, metonymy ‘is there from the start’, forming the basis of the ‘double-triggered mechanism’ of metaphor. Lacan's assertion that it is language which creates the presupposition of something before and something beyond itself would seem to sweep the ground from under the claim that the ‘hole’ or the ‘bar’ forms the centre around which Lacan's system revolves. The idea that the place of the centre is created by the system rather than being defined in advance as its origin, ground and truth apparently eliminates any remaining metaphysical or essentialist connotations.

Yet it also seems doubtful that so many careful and intelligent readers of Lacan would simply have misread his conception of the relation between the two tropes and that between language and reference.