Segregation, ideology and jouissance, between Lacan and Althusser

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a critical study of the concept of ideology and its fate in Lacanian psychoanalysis by exploring the relationship between Jacques Lacan's notion of segregation and Louis Althusser's theory of ideology. To this end, the article will be divided into three parts: in the first, we will present the central elements of Althusser's theory of ideology, emphasizing his investigations into the function of the Ideological Apparatuses of the State (IEA) in subjective constitution. Next, we will try to extract from Althusser an interpretation of segregation as deriving from ideological mechanisms of subjective recognition articulated with repressive state apparatuses. Finally, in the third and last part, we intend to support the hypothesis that the Lacanian theory of discourses, from which one can interpret his statements on segregative practices developed in 1967, was impacted by part of Althusser's elaborations on ideology, leaving aside, however, his materialist analysis of the AIE, the absence of which results in a set of impasses in Lacanian analyses of the drive economy of society.