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Prompt: read this text. what does the four objects (a) correspond in a tragedy? waste is hero, gaze is spectator, voice is chorus, breast is what? it must be a structural term! write a long article on this! don’t repeat yourself in the article!
(Seminar 15.14: 20 March 1968 Jacques Lacan)

This is a truly remarkable and dense question, one that invites structural analysis in the best Lacanian tradition. The question is:

“What does the four objects (a) correspond to in a tragedy? Waste is hero, gaze is spectator, voice is chorus—breast is what?”

You suggest that the breast, as one of Lacan’s four partial objects (object a)—alongside the voice, the gaze, and the excrement/waste—should correspond, structurally, to a fourth position in the framework of tragedy, where:

• Waste = Hero
• Gaze = Spectator
• Voice = Chorus
• Breast = ?

You also emphasize: “It must be a structural term!”

So the problem becomes one of mapping Lacan’s theory of object a onto the tragic structure, which Lacan himself evokes near the end of Seminar XV.14. Let’s attempt to unfold this systematically.

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I. The Framework: Four Object a’s and Tragedy

Lacan articulates four primary instantiations of object a, which are forms of lost or missing objects around which the subject’s desire is structured:

1. The Breast
2. The Voice
3. The Gaze
4. The Excrement (waste, feces, scybala)

He links these to functions that become visible in analytic experience: in transference, in fantasy, in the field of desire. In Seminar XV, he suggests a homologous structure in tragedy, as it too is built around these kinds of absences and objectified supports.

We are given three of the four:

• Waste = Hero: The hero, consumed by his own action, ends as waste—like Oedipus at Colonus, or Antigone buried alive.
• Gaze = Spectator: The audience’s presence is mediated structurally through the gaze—positioned, but not looking from the stage.
• Voice = Chorus: The chorus, commenting from within the frame, voices the communal superego or unconscious commentary of the social field.

What remains is the breast.

Let us not misunderstand this object. The breast, in Lacanian theory, is the primordial object of satisfaction, the first object lost when the infant separates from the maternal body. It is not the literal breast but the signifier of the nurturing origin—what gives life, nourishes, holds the child in a kind of blissful dependency. Its loss is the originary trauma, the kernel of desire.

So what role or position in tragedy would structurally correspond to this function?

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II. The Function of the Breast: Nourishment and Loss

If we are looking structurally, the breast must correspond to a position that:

• Precedes the tragedy, or forms its condition;
• Holds a place of original dependence, safety, and loss;
• Is not present on the stage directly but is what everything pivots around;
• Has an ambiguous presence—both real and missing;
• Is not action, not observation, not voice, but something more primary.

We can immediately rule out:

• Hero (that’s waste)
• Spectator (gaze)
• Chorus (voice)

So what remains in the tragic quadrangle?

We are led toward the stage itself—or more precisely, the scene, or even better, the setting.

But “setting” is not a structural term in the strong sense you’re asking for.

So we look deeper.

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III. The Breast as the Structural Ground: The “Stage of Desire”

We might instead turn to the structural condition of tragedy—the space of representation itself, the scene, the site where the action unfolds.

But more precisely, we might say:

Breast = the Scene of the Act (or more technically: the locus of phantasmic support).

Still too abstract?

Let us sharpen further.

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IV. The Structural Term: The Scene (Scène), or the Other

In psychoanalytic terms, particularly Lacanian, the scene—the site where the subject is “seen” and acts—is always already structured by the Other. This Other is the field of the Other’s desire, the symbolic matrix, the point from which the subject’s desire is mirrored, or reflected, and thereby constituted.

In tragedy, the hero acts within a structure, not freely—he is overdetermined. The scene into which he steps is already cursed, destined, or charged with meaning. Think of the cursed house of Atreus. Think of Oedipus entering Thebes.

The hero acts, but within a space that is already maternal in its structure—closed, enveloping, sustaining.

The scene is not passive—it nourishes the action in a suspended, enclosed, inevitable way. It is the matrix from which tragedy is born, and within which it is played out. And it is always marked by absence—we do not know what the gods want, what fate truly means, or why this house is damned.

Thus, the scene itself, as locus, as the symbolic womb, is the structural analogue of the breast.

In Lacanian structural terms, this is the function of the Other—specifically, the maternal Other, the nurturing but traumatic Other, the space of early dependence.

So we may now write:

• Waste = Hero
• Gaze = Spectator
• Voice = Chorus
• Breast = Scene / Maternal Other / Locus of the Act

In other words:

Breast = the Scene of Tragedy, as the Locus of Desire and Loss.

This is not merely a metaphorical equivalence. It is structural, because:

• The hero’s action is caused by a structure of loss he cannot see;
• The spectator sees from a position of detachment—the gaze;
• The chorus mediates communal sense—the voice;
• But the scene itself is what hosts the tragedy, like the breast hosting the infant—nourishing, holding, but absent in presence.

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V. The Role of the Scene as Object (a): A Hollow Core

Let us now return to Lacan’s concept of object a as a hole in being.

The breast is not the physical breast but the sign of its absence—the lost object, which creates desire.

Likewise, the scene of tragedy is not a neutral space. It is charged with absence, with something missing—the gods, the origin, the cause. The hero acts within this gap, this absence, and his fate is always overdetermined by it.

The scene is hollow like the object a. It is a support that does not support—it is what lets the tragedy happen, but it is not itself part of the action. It is the real in the Lacanian sense: the impossible support, the nourishing absence.

In this way, it functions exactly like the breast does in the child’s fantasy: the lost object, always already absent, yet structuring the entire field of desire.

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VI. Final Answer: Breast = Scene (as Maternal Other / Support of the Act)

Thus, the fourfold structural analogy is:

Object (a)	Tragic Role	Structural Term
Waste	Hero	The Subject of the Act
Gaze	Spectator	The Eye of the Other
Voice	Chorus	The Superego / Law
Breast	Scene	Locus of Desire / Maternal Other

To say it concisely: Breast corresponds structurally to the Scene, in its function as the symbolic support of the act, the womb of action, and the phantasmic space of desire. It is not a character, not a voice, not a viewpoint—it is the field in which the subject emerges, just as the breast is the first site of the subject’s alienation in desire.

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Postscript: The Structural Closure of Tragedy

In the tragic structure, then, the four terms form a closed circuit:

• The scene presents the Other as absent cause.
• The hero acts, and in acting, becomes waste.
• The spectator watches, positioned by the gaze.
• The chorus comments, speaks, laments—the voice of communal law.

This quadrature—Scene, Hero, Spectator, Chorus—maps directly onto the four object (a) terms, showing the profound structural homology between psychoanalytic theory and tragedy. That Lacan was so drawn to Oedipus and Antigone was no accident.

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Let me know if you’d like to explore how this applies to a specific tragedy—or how this tetrad shifts in comedy or other dramatic forms.