"The signifier is what represents the subject for another signifier". This recursive formula is as much a definition of the subject as of the signifier. It is in its form the key to a system generating an endless web of signifiers which can never exhaust nor fulfill the motives they generate. The system proliferates subject and signifier at the same time, each occupying different phases of an unspeakable momentum. But as well what can be heard in this formula is that it is always directed towards a revelation of the subject in spite of this being ruled out from the first. The system is the system because it searches for the subject and is complex enough that it can never assimilate the knowledge that there is no subject to be found. The idea of the subject is the idea of a grounding outside of the system, but as an idea it clearly belongs to the system, so what the system is is something complex enough as to fail to be able to comprehend itself. However only an outside to the system can enable it to do what it does. The question being whether this outside is above, below or inside the system? The first alternative is gnostic-transcendental, dualistic in the sense of Samkhya. The second is materialistic, in that the non-signifying materiality of the signifier plays the elusive role of the real. There's a lot of cultural investment in this solution, but it is unclear whether it is not just question-begging. The third is the non-dual solution, with its dizzying collapse of ontology. The distinction between these three is itself purely internal to the system.