What is the Social?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Taking up the often referred to concept of interpellation in psychoanalysts’ ongoing discussions about the social, the author explores the ways in which the concept as it was elaborated in the work of Louis Althusser in relationship to the State, governing institutions, and capitalism may now need further exploration. Arguing that interpellation implies a technology of mediation, for Althusser, the cinematic apparatus, the author asks how digital media/technologies and algorithmic processes are presently mediating the subject in the current condition of the State, governance, and capitalism. Concluding that the unconscious is socially mediated, and as such is presently adrift in the social where it no longer is simply given over for its administration to the family or the other governing institutions of the State, the author draws out the implications for psychoanalysis including its present concern about climate change, systemic racism, violence, and the ongoing pandemic.