Considering the term "childhood" as a "signifier always lacking signification" enables us to establish an argumentative network supported by the psychoanalytical discourse. According to Giorgio Agamben, childhood is related to language, and this is the starting point for the following thesis: childhood - as a signifier - stands for language as desire stands for law. It was, is and will be a signifier always in lack of signification, establishing itself by language and in the field of language. The statute of the subjective legality must be distinguished from the judicial code enabling the enactment of a possible tension between them. The meaning given to the term institution must be cleared up: it should be distinguished from the legal sense it has been given and still retains, proposing a retrieval of its value in terms of the writing of law as subjective constitution, an epistemic landmark raised by psychoanalysis.
Childhood; Language; Institution