wakened life. Using Lacan's concept of the letter, we should be able to see how, in Fink's example, the unconscious cleverly produces the censored thought associated with the word "algorithm". (Of course, this does not actually tell us why this particular hypothetical analysand has consciously censored a thought associated with the word "algorithm".) The signifier and the signified Because Lacan's use of the concept "the letter" requires a concept of materiality different from anything previously found in linguistics, Lacan argues that the signifier and signified are separated by a bar: 'the signifier over the signified, "over" corresponding to the bar separating the two stages'. The signifiers can slide over the top of this bar, with the signified elements beneath. This means that there is never an easy correlation between signifier and signified and, as a result, all language and communication is actually produced by the failure to fully communicate. The asymmetrical relationship between signifier and signified is further complicated by the fact that the bar between them cannot itself be signified: 'the S and the s of the Saussurian algorithm are not on the same level, and man only deludes himself when he believes his true place is at their axis'. Phallus Such a formulation enabled Lacan subsequently to assert that 'the phallus is a signifier...not a phantasy...[and] even less the organ, penis or clitoris, that it symbolizes'. Theorists such as Slavoj Žižek have frequently pointed out this fact in order to defend Lacan against his feminist critics. Metonymy and desire, metaphor and the subject Lacan aligns desire with metonymy and the slide of signifiers above the bar, 'indicating that it is the connection between signifier and signifier that permits the lesion in which the signifier installs the lack-of-being in the object relation...in order to invest it with the desire aimed at the very lack it supports'. This produces a situation in which desire is never satisfied, 'being caught in the rails - eternally stretching forth towards the desire for something else - of metonymy' Partly for this reason, one's desires can never be identified in a statement along the lines of: 'I desire x, y and z'. Instead, desire is slippery and metonymical. Lacanian theorists often note that capitalist consumerism is predicated upon this fact about desire: because desire is never satisfied and yet, always sliding from one signifier to the other, the capitalist subject finds him or herself