We must be careful here, however. the “excess’ attending signification is not merely the fact that the signifying system never closes in on a signified, as Derrida would have it. Rather, Lacan is working out the consequences of the fact that every utterance has two parts. One part consists of the content of what is said … the level of the enunciated. The other part consists of the fact that something is being said, level of the enunciation. 41
The gap between these two levels is where the subject as excess is located.
In other words, excess arises not because the signifier does not have a stable signified, nor because the signifier as materiality can be taken up and used (even nonsensically) in ever-changing contexts. Rather, the excess is located at the point where the subject is split between the level of enunciation and the level of the enunciated.
Where excess emerges in the utterance is also the point at which the speaking subject appears.
The excess in the utterance corresponds to the excess in the subject, that minimal self-difference that makes a subject (which, after all, is a meaningful object), emerge from the state of being (42).