Rothenberg, Molly Anne. The Excessive Subject. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2010. Print.
On page 42 R. starts to define subject of excess in terms of excessive in symbolic. It is the fact that we can’t control our meanings that we release in the symbolic, and also that we can’t control what we mean to others. “The fact that one has become meaningful to others — i.e. been registered in the Symbolic — does not mean that one actually knows what one means to others.
On the contrary, to enter the Symbolic register is to fall under the regime of signification as a signifier, that is, as capable of transmitting meaning, but not capable of coinciding precisely with one’s meaning. A gap remains between the subject who is referred to in the utterance at the level of enunciated (“I am a woman”) and the subject who is making the utterance at the level of enunciation. This gap marks the locus of the minimal difference that keeps the subject from coinciding with itself.
It is as though one were constantly uttering, simply by virtue of being a subject, “Here I am,” without, however, knowing what others make of that message.
The subject does not know what message it is sending, because the subject cannot eliminate the excessive dimension from its utterance. The subject cannot make the subject of which it speaks (“I am a woman”) coincide with the subject which is speaking (“[Here I am saying that]…”). That difference, that excess, is irreducible. So, the inability to control the meaning of oneself for others, this consequence of the difference between the level of the enunciated and the level of enunciation, is the way in which the subject becomes aware of its own non-self-coincidence. It is the way that the subject experiences its excessiveness with respect to itself, its existence as subject*. (43)