questions of ethics (and ideology) centre on the subject’s particular mode of enjoyment. They address issues that arise from the different modalities of subjectivity in relation to the ultimate contingency of social existence. How does a subject relate to the contingency of social life that is disclosed in dislocatory events? How does it identify anew? how does it translate its ‘radical investments’ into social and political practices? how does a subject relate to its identifications and consequently to its own contingency? It is perhaps worth emphasizing there that these modes of subjectivity should not be understood in cognitivist or intellectualist terms. In other words, what we are trying to capture here with the categories of ideology and ethics has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea that someone can apprehend and even consciously affirm a particular ontological schema rooted in the radical contingency of social relations. This is because modes of subjectivity are also modes of enjoyment, and modes of enjoyment are always embedded in material practices, and thus not completely reducible to conscious apprehension. It is with this in mind that one should approach the question of subjectivity and identification.
For example does the mode of identification privilege the moment of closure and conealment (ideological dimension), or does it keep open the contingency of social relations (ethical dimension)?
(119-120)