Page 23 - Culture and Cultural Studies

22 CULTURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Poststructuralism and postmodernism are anti-essentialist approaches that
stress the constitutive role of an unstable language in the formation of cultural
meaning.

Poststructuralism and postmodernism argue that subjectivity is an effect of language or
discourse and also that subjects are fractured – that is, we can take up multiple subject
positions offered to us in discourse. However, rather than rely on an account that stresses
‘subjection’ by external discourses, some writers have looked to psychoanalysis, and par-
ticularly Lacan’s poststructuralist reading of Freud, for ways to think about the ‘internal’
constitution of subjects.

Psychoanalysis and subjectivity
Psychoanalysis is a controversial body of thought. For its supporters (Chodorow, 1978, 1989;
Mitchell, 1974), its great strength lies in its rejection of the fixed nature of subjects and sexu-
ality. That is, psychoanalysis concentrates on the construction and formation of subjectivity.

The Freudian self
According to Freud (1977), the self is constituted in terms of:

v an ego, or conscious rational mind;

v a superego, or social conscience;
v the unconscious (also known as the id), the source and repository of the symbolic
workings of the mind which functions with a different logic from reason.

This structuring of the human subject is not something we are born with; rather, it is
something we acquire through our relationships with our immediate ‘carers’. Here the self
is by definition fractured; consequently we must understand the unified narrative of the
self as something we attain over time. This is said to be achieved through entry into the
symbolic order of language and culture. Through processes of identification with others
and with social discourses, we create an identity that embodies an illusion of wholeness.
Within Freudian theory, the libido or sexual drive does not have any pre-given fixed
aim or object. Rather, through fantasy, any object, which includes persons or parts of
bodies, can be the target of desire. Consequently, an almost infinite number of sexual
objects and practices are within the domain of human sexuality. However, Freud’s work
is concerned with documenting and explaining the regulation and repression of this
‘polymorphous perversity’ through the resolution (or not) of the Oedipus complex into
‘normal’ heterosexual gendered relationships.

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