In what is arguably his most politically oriented work, Seminar XVII – The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969-70), Jacques Lacan coins the neologism anthropie in order to refer to a form of entropy – a degradation or loss of energy – that would be specific to the human animal. In my presentation I will scrutinise this expression. First, I will introduce the notion of discourse, which is the main focus of Seminar XVII.