Stavrakakis, Yannis. “Passions of Identification: Discourse, Enjoyment, and European Identity” in Discourse Theory in European Politics. David Howard, Jacob Torfing (eds). 2005 pp. 68-92.
the key term for understanding this process is the psychoanalytic category of identification, with its explicit assertion of a lack at the root of any identity: one needs to identify with something [a political ideology or ethnic group for example] because there is an originary and insurmountable lack of identity (Laclau, 1994, p.3. cited in Stavrakakis 2005)
Central insight of discourse theory: the ultimate impossibility of identity renders identification central for contemporary political analysis … political subjectivity (both at the individual and the collective levels) depends on identification but identification never results in the production of full identity … it is because it proves unable to cover over lack and dissimulate social antagonism that identification remains the horizon of political subjectivity. 71
What I have in mind is the crucial Freudian insight that what is at stake in assuming a collective identity is something of the order of affective libidinal bonds. … Freud’s account points to a crucial dimension which is constitutive of identification: the dimension of passion, of affective attachment, and libidinal investment … Lacan will redirect this Freudian focus on the affective side of identification processes onto the obscene paths of enjoyment (jouissance).
What is at stake is to find a way to relate ethically to antagonism and jouissance, as opposed to the unethical unproductive, and even dangerous standpoints of eliminating or mythologizing them: to sublimate instead of repressing or disavowing, to inject passion into the radicalization of democracy and the reinvigoration of political discourse instead of reducing politics to the unattractive spectacle of the neutral administration of unavoidable necessities. 89-90
Repressing the dimension of enjoyment does not only affect the future prospects of European unification, it also produces a series of indirect results of major political importance … the repression of signifiers cathected with libidinal and affective value never leads to the disappearance, but merely to the displacement, of psychical energy and to the ‘return of the repressed’ through the emergence of symptomatic formations. … the rise of right-wind populism in Europe (Le Pen in France)
The neglect of the affective side of identification leads to a displacement of cathectic energy which is now invested in anti-European political and ideological discourses. In fact, a whole separate level of charged debate is erected, in which dry European identity, its institutional arrangements and big words are seen as agents of castration, not only indifferent but also hostile to the structures of enjoyment operating in the various nationalisms and engaged in a process of standardization which has to be resisted. These discourses of resistance differ from the standard euro-jargon not only in terms of their content but also in terms of their style: they are aggressive, visceral, and funny, ranging from the obscene to the violent, often via the grotesque. This is, however, the secret of their success. 87
What are the basic parameters of resistance to Europe which is articulated in the British popular press? … the depiction of the European Union as an alien regulating agency which somehow intervenes in the particular way we have organized our lives, in the particular way we have structured our enjoyment. In other words the EU is primarily represented as an agent of castration. 88
multiple subject positions
What organizes multiplicity? What determines the movement between different subject positions? Are all the components of multiple identity equally important? The answer psychoanalytic theory proves is that there is always a fantasy scenario which organizes and supports the apparent multiplicity of identity and determines the ‘rules of engagement’ between its different levels, a mapping which prioritizes particular modes of enjoyment, particular libidinally invested components and nodal points (points de capiton) and not others, which remain structurally emotionally peripheral. 84
1. Without the intervention of these nodal points, subjective structure can easily disintegrate into a psychotic state. This has to be taken very seriously into account by some ‘chaotic’ conceptions of ‘multiple identity’, primarily because the ‘the total disintegration of personal identity into identity atoms [components of the multiple identity] might not be psychologically manageable’ and thus ‘multiple identity’ might not be the most promising solution for the Europeanization of national identities … when a conflict of loyalties arises, certain components or levels are always assigned higher priority than others … ‘people always were many things, but in the epoch of nationalism, one identity was the trump card … the national identity was the primary one in cases of conflict between loyalty to the different identities.
2. Second, ‘multiple identity’ arguments often presuppose a fluid conception of identity, which is ultimately premised on a certain voluntarism. It seems in other words, to imply that the particular profile of an identity is a matter of conscious, instrumental or even rational choice on the part of the subject, a matter of shopping around for interesting components for inclusion. It is clear that discursive structuration and affective investment, set precise ”although contingent” limits to such movements.