Greeks Bearing Gifts
Language is a gift
as dangerous to humanity
as the horse was to the Trojans:
it offers itself to our use
free of charge,
but once we accept it,
it colonizes us.
The symbolic order
emerges from a gift,
an offering,
that marks its content as neutral
in order to pose as a gift:
when a gift is offered,
what matters is not its content
but the link between giver and receiver
established when the receiver
accepts the gift.
—excerpt from How to Read Lacan
by Slavoj Zizek
