Pshycoanalysis: The Imposion of The Subject

J. Lacan

The question of the subject is not only circumscribed to the issue of identity politics. Identity politics have become more and more linked with psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis (meaning the one inscribed in Freudian and Lacanian tradition, not the object-relation version of it) represent, also, a strong critic against the subject of modernity. Freud and Lacan revealed the fiction of an autonomous and centered subject. The ego is a imaginary which act like a mask concealing the internal divisions and ruptures of the subject. This is a hard blow to the ideal of the modern rational, autonomous and self-conscious subject, by disclosing a fragmented subject that have no other choice than to re-present himself as a fictional unit after seeing his unitary image on the mirror. Coming from an image, the unity of the subject is an imaginary. So, if identity based social movements make their reclaims in terms of the differences between groups; psychoanalysis' reclaims are in terms of the difference of the subject with (him/her)self. As stated by Baudrillard: “It is no longer the difference of one subject with another, but the internal and infinite differentiation of the subject to itself” (translation is mine; Baudrillard cited by Madeline Román, p. 9).