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In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud tells of the humiliating memory of his father being insulted. Insulting someone expels them from a universal that proceeds from the imagination and that was produced by an established discourse of power, thus creating a minority category. This paradigmatic scene launches Freud into both an investigation of the exclusionary violence of language and a desire to respond to this humiliation. How can a banishing act still enable subjectivation? In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler analyses this transformation. What stigmatizing effects can scientific discourse and psychiatric diagnoses have on subjects? Insult may produce shame, yet the latter can transform into agency. Jean Genet’s writings are the epitome of this aspect.