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This paper explores the evolving definition of the term ‘unconscious’ in late twentieth century French psychoanalysis: structuralist, real, and enunciative. Each hypothetic definition of the unconscious employs a rather different reading of Freud’s discovery of the divided nature of subjective reality, adopting different approaches to the question of trace permanence and strangeness. The paper argues that an assessment of the sequence of Lacanian theories of the unconscious should be understood against the backdrop of discontinuous progress as conceptualised by French historical epistemology.