The concept of the parade of signifiers was formulated by Jacques Lacan in relation to his thesis that "the unconscious is structured like a language" and more specifically to his conception of unconscious desire. The speaking subject constantly expresses something of his or her desire by way of demand. Thus the parade of signifiers is structurally linked to the flow of speech. Since a single signifier never signifies anything as such, it is necessarily linked to others that form a chain of signifiers and, in fact, discourse, or a march of signifiers.

The series of signifiers that parades through speech has its source in the necessity of demand, which is always fundamentally a demand for the lost object (das Ding). This demand is repeated as a demand for the object of desire, object a, the object that remains forever lacking. In this sense, since desire is always inscribed between need and demand, it can have no...