Zupančič, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. New York: Verso, 2000.
The subject cannot choose herself as subject without having first arrived at the point which is not a forced choice but an excluded or impossible choice.
This is the ‘choice’ of S, of unfreedom, of radical subordination to the Other, of the absolute determination of one’s actions by motives, interests and other causes.
The subject first has to reach the point where it becomes impossible to articulate statements such as ‘I act’ , or ‘I think’.
Passage through this impossible point of one’s own non-being, where it seems that one can say of oneself only ‘I am not’, however, is the fundamental condition of attaining the status of a free subject.
Only at this point, after we have followed the postulate of determinism to the end, does the ‘leftover’ element that can serve as the basis for the constitution of the ethical subject appear.
… this experience of radical alienation at the basis of freedom … 32