Here...
I will be talking about my Egeria, who is one of those [a dog walks across the podium].
She is the only person I know who knows what she is speaking—I am not saying, “what she is saying.”
It's not that she doesn't say anything—she doesn't say it in words. She says something when she is anxious—which happens—she puts her head on my knee. She knows that I am going to die, which a number of people also know. She's called Justine, she's my dog, she is very beautiful, and you would have heard her speak ...
The only thing she lacks by comparison with that person wandering around is that she hasn't been to university.
—Jacques Lacan to the students at Vincennes, 3 December 1969