Overdetermination

The concept of overdetermination offers a way of understanding the radical contingency of the human subject, history, and politics. Initially theorized by Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), the overdetermination of the manifest content of the dream, produced when our mind is free of conscious control, offers insights into unconscious processes in waking life. Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser took up Freud's concept in his critique of the Hegelian dialectic and economic determinism in contemporary Marxism. The theorization of these issues was developed further by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985). Their school of discourse theory, and related theoretical and empirical research drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, might be seen as the most productive contemporary fields building on Freudian and Althusserian conceptualizations of overdetermination. This ongoing theorization of overdetermination produces insights into the interplay between unconscious forces, discourse, and political change

Determinism · Dialectic · Epistemology · Freudian slip · Hegelianism · Id, ego and super-ego · Interpretation (philosophy · Marxist philosophy · Overdetermination · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology