Ideal, identity and identification. Approaches of the unconscious and the political

Abstract

The objective of this discussion is to continue the study of the mutual inference of the political and the unconscious in contemporary society, through the analysis of what I call The “I-Complex”, which is composed of the concepts „ideal?, „identity? and „identification?. Drawing partly on the theoretical apparatuses of Lacan and Deleuze, I will demonstrate how the subject (in his impregnable performativity and his dependence on the Other / social other) is determined by numerous traces left by collective identification, authorized by the person that occupies the ideal position in the system of social production and reproduction, and that is supported by the various signifiers that shape the dominant imaginary social significances and model the processes of identity. All of this will be used to show that these mechanisms are gradually altered by their own axiomatics of capitalism and how the respective formations of the unconscious and the political (in their various forms of discourse) have resulted in a triple crisis of the ideal-identification-identity network which leads to the expropriation of the ordinary of the community itself and the consequent alienation of the subject driven by his own desire.