Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: New York, 2007.
Butler does not, as far as I am aware, ever say anything like “the subject is language,” and I do not believe her theory ever suggests such an equation. In fact, at some points Butler seems to suggest that a subject is not identical to its identity. If identity is discursively constructed, then this might lead one to think that the subject is also something other than discourse. One could have an identity constituted by language and a subject who is not entirely absorbed by this identity (142).
I have been arguing that when Lacan makes the subject something separate from identity, he also means that the subject is not reducible to language or discourse. This is because he also takes the event of sexuality into account when describing the subject’s genesis. Lacan’s theory is an example of a nontranscendental view of the subject that does not reduce the subject to language or any other of its elements (the real, or jouissance). Neither transcendental to the field that constitutes it, nor immanent in that field, the subject according to Lacan is a function that results from language’s effects on the body.
Instead of understanding the subject in terms of a function or effect, Butler opts for an immanent view of the subject. 142
But equally essential to Lacan’s theory is the idea that the subject is neither reducible to nor immanent in language. This means that an outside of discourse, an outside found in the body, the real, or jouissance, is a necessary component of Lacan’s theory of the subject (143).