Both Lacan and Agamben are interested in the thought of an absolute alterity beyond the categories of ‘us and them’ - an otherness that may prevail beyond the law and language, the law as language. For both thinkers, such an alterity not only discloses the structure of the subject and its implication in desubjectification, but it is also the site of an ethics. However, there are also sharp differences between the two thinkers on how this site is to be approached. This paper attempts a brief preliminary sketch of these differences.