Page 226 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

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Unconscious On a mundane level the idea of the unconscious simply suggests that
there are aspects of our minds and bodies of which we are not self-conscious and
that can be described as causes of our actions. However, the notion of the
unconscious is more commonly attributed to the domain of psychoanalysis, where
it has specific and technical meanings. For cultural studies, the unconscious is
pertinent to theories of subjectivity, identity and representation in particular.
In classic psychoanalysis the unconscious is the realm of the repressed that is
generated initially by the resolution of the Oedipus complex. This repressed or
unconscious domain is comprised of symbolic memories originating in primal
fantasies or scenes involving forbidden sexual knowledge, fears, desires and so forth.
Subsequently, the primary processes of drives and wishes are censored and regulated
by secondary processes of internalized social control. Freud found his evidence for
the unconscious in people’s obsessions, slips of the tongue, neurotic symptoms and
dreams. In his later work Freud tended to speak of the id, ego and superego rather
than primary and secondary processes, though the notion of the unconscious
remained intact.
In Lacan’s influential reading of Freud the resolution of the Oedipus complex
and the formation of the unconscious mark the very possibility of gendered subjects
as established through entry into the symbolic order. In Lacanian terms, the
unconscious is not just the site of the repressed but also a location for the
generation of meaningful representations. Here the unconscious is said to be
structured ‘like a language’, that is, not only is language the route to the
unconscious but also the unconscious is a site of signification. In particular, the
mechanisms of condensation and displacement, which Freud saw as the most
important of the ‘primary processes’, are held by Lacan to be analogous to the
linguistic functions of metaphor and metonymy. Condensation is the mechanism
by which one idea comes to stand-in for a series of associated meanings along a
chain of signifiers (as with a metaphor) while displacement involves the redirection
of energy due to one object or idea onto another (not unlike a metonym).

Links Identity, mirror phase, Oedipus complex, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, symbolic order

Under erasure Under erasure is a concept that is derived from the work of Derrida and
forms part of the vocabulary of deconstructionism. To deconstruct is to take apart,
to undo, in order to seek out and display the assumptions of a text. In particular,
deconstruction involves the dismantling of hierarchical binary oppositions that
serve to ‘guarantee’ truth through excluding and devaluing the ‘inferior’ part of the

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