Drawing on Lacan's notion of the barred subject, the subject is a purely negative , a void of negativity (in the Hegelian sense), which allows for the flexibility and reflexivity of the Cartesian cogito (transcendental subject). Though consciousness is opaque (following Hegel), the epistemological gap between the In-itself and For-itself is immanent to reality itself;. The antinomies of Kant, quantum physics, and Alain Badiou's 'materialist' principle that 'The One is Not', point towards an inconsistent ("Barred") Real itself (that Lacan conceptualized prior).