What does iterative interaction with conversational agents mean for the chain of discourse which manifests phenomenologically during the writing process? How do the formal structures of language at scale (the LLM) intersect with the formal structures of language in the subject (the Lacanian unconscious) in the context of ongoing interaction?
Certain words and expressions present themselves to us while we are speaking or writing-not always the ones we want-sometimes so persistently that we are virtually forced to speak or write them before being able to move on to others. A certain image or metaphor may come to mind without our having sought it out or in any way attempted to construct it and thrust itself upon us so forcibly that we can but reproduce it and only then try to tease out its meaning. Such expressions and metaphors are selected in some Other place than consciousness. Lacan suggests that we view the process as one in which there are two chains of discourse which run roughly parallel to each other (in a figurative sense), each “unfolding” and developing chronologically along a timeline, as it were, one of which occasionally interrupts or intervenes in the other.
The Lacanian Subject by Bruce Fink, loc 14,420
Mark Carrigan 