And precisely when this language emerges in all its nudity, yet at the same time eludes all signification as if it were a vast and empty despotic system, when Desire reigns in the wild state, as if the rigour of its rule had levelled all opposition, when Deathdominates every psychological function and stands above it as its unique and devastating norm then we recognize madness in its present form, madness as it is posited in the modern experience, as its truth and its alterity.