Overidentification
Wednesday 23 November 2005, 16:00
C91, Lancaster University Management School
Professor Ian Parker, Manchester Metropolitan University
Abstract
The concept of ‘overidentification’ is a concept drawn from the armoury of psychoanalysis but forged by cultural activists in the Neue Slowenische Kunst into a weapon against Tito Stalinism and contemporary neo-liberalism. Overidentification works because it draws attention to the way the overt message in art, ideology and day-dreaming is supplemented by an obscene element, the hidden reverse of the message that contains the illicit charge of enjoyment. When overidentification brings that double-sided ambivalent aspect of the message to light it can be a more subversive strategy than simple avoidance. However, Žižek’s particular path from psychoanalysis to politics entails some more dubious overidentification tactics that entangle him all the more closely in the ideological apparatus he claims to dismantle.
Biography
Ian Parker is Professor of Psychology in the Discourse Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University. His books include Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (Pluto Press, 2004). He is a practising psychoanalyst, member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and the London Society of the New Lacanian School.
