This paper presents a reflection on semiological overlay and repression of the image in conceptualizing the linguistic sign. After Freud, a Lacanian reading - and a rereading of Lacan - allows reconsidering the relations between word, image and thing. Based on these three registers, the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, one may think of the functioning of the image as a sign, provided that it calls for the articulation of a text in regard to which the image can, at a given moment, become the signified. The image, however, retains a fundamental freedom with respect to what the text cannot say. This reflection concludes with some considerations on the unstable boundaries between word and image: processes where the signifier is treated as an image, where the image approaches the signifier without becoming it, or where the image defeats the signifier to release it, to remotivate it, and to represent it.
Key words:
Subject; symbolic; imaginary; real
