The Ascendancy of the Symbolic and the New Signifier

In a first phase, Lacan refers to jokes to introduce the prevalence of a third party who is not imaginary, but symbolic. The symbolic gains the upper hand over the imaginary and the real. At the end of his teaching, he does not stress what “resounds” through jokes, but on what sounds. What resounds concerns what was already there; what sounds is something absolutely new. It is a matter of the possibilities of creating a signifier that is not contained in unconscious memory.