Identity, diasporas and subjective change: The role of affect, the relation to the other, and the aesthetic

Abstract

If subjectivity is relational and metastable by reference to the material, discursive and psychological conditions that constitute it, it would follow that dislocations provoked by diasporic displacement occasion mutations in subjectivity and identity. The problems concern finding ways of understanding the mechanisms and means that enable subjects to explore dissident or disjunct identities, and that provide the supports for the critical distancing which is integral to the process of disidentification. This paper argues that this requires a radical break with either essentialist or egological conceptualisations of identity and the subject, together with the development of approaches that address the effects of the affective machinery, including the domain of the aesthetic, that binds subjects to particular socio-cultural complexes, be they ‘consumer capitalism’ or ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. Re-theorising the inter-relationship between the psychic and the social, beyond the limitations in psychoanalytic discourse, is integral to this project.