*A Psychoanalytic Approach to Identity Politics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105402*

criticism of political correctness, even though the intersubjective dimension renders individual experience comprehensible once again). Intersectionality exposes the incompleteness of the social order; that is, it does not simply shuffle the puzzle pieces before the puzzle has almost been completed, but rather, it illuminates the inexorable absence of puzzle pieces that dooms the project of "completing the puzzle."

Intersectionality introduces an aleatory element into the discursive formation of identity politics, unknowingly yet always residing in the background of signification (i.e., the unconscious). Žižek's imputation of sterility to identity politics, then, misses the death drive lurking underneath the facade of a tranquil exterior. It is not the case that identity politics merely leaves things as they are; instead, it contains a disruptive force (i.e., intersectionality) that impugns the field of signification within the extant social order. For a similar reason, the piecemeal approach that filters identity categories (e.g., race and gender) through existing psychoanalytic concepts excludes the extimacy of identity politics, or the intersectional indeterminacy of meaning according to individual experience. Seshadri-Crooks's [4] psychoanalytic intervention into the concept of "race," albeit instructive and facilitative for expressing the extimacy of whiteness, emblematizes the problematic character of the gradual approach to psychoanalyzing identity politics, such that Seshadri-Crooks reveals the purely symbolic character of racial distinctions in a vacuum (i.e., abstracted from other forms of identification that constitute the meaning of racial distinctions). Her (dis)closure of racial signification within the social order denies the complexity associated with the Real of intersectionality. Furthermore, her analysis of "whiteness" unwittingly reproduces its unconscious desire by obscuring the Real(ity) of identity politics; that is, after exposing the lack of the Real at the heart of whiteness (i.e., the unfounded character of phenotypic distinctions between racial groups), Seshadri-Crooks does not necessarily produce an "anxious" reaction in its adherents (i.e., an encounter with the lack of a lack) because the Real of identity politics remains a feasible option for whiteness to legitimize itself.

In turn, a more comprehensive psychoanalysis of the relationship between systems of oppression, including whiteness, and the dimensions of identity politics, including intersectionality, must be conducted. Even though Seshadri-Crooks and others (e.g., Juliet Flower MacCannell [3], Joan Copjec [14], etc.) have blazed the trail for the psychoanalysis of identity-based discourse, intersectionality offers a novel pathway for understanding its intricacies while also, unfortunately, providing a dangerous source of justification for oppressive apparatuses. For instance, the analyses of race and gender undertaken by psychoanalysts illuminate the heinous characters of whiteness, patriarchy, and neoliberalism, but the intersectional analysis of "beingblack," "being-a-man," and "being-impoverished," for instance, has inspired a rational calculus for coding and assessing the likelihood of an individual's deviance from the mandates of the social order. To put otherwise, the Real of identity politics enables resistance against oppressive apparatuses by tracing patterns of marginalization, but it also enables the smooth functionality of these apparatuses by isolating and identifying potential "threats" to its reproduction. As Seshadri-Crooks [4] notes, whiteness appropriates the Real for the sake of fortifying its logic of domination, and the discursive element of intersectionality represents another avenue for co-opting the Real in order to bolster itself (59). I will pursue a contemporary pathway to make sense of the aforementioned phenomenon: a (psycho)analysis of racism in American public discourse with respect to the murder of an unarmed black man.
