Between dirty and necessary: the politics of the superego and the jouissance of transgression in Chicago PD television series
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The article first resumes up-to-date conceptualisations of the superego in psychoanalytic theory, stretching from the superegoic sense of guilt (Freud) up to the superego as an “imperative od jouissance” (Lacan), and at the same time as an imperative of transgression insofar as enjoyment is by definition based upon transgression of the law. Against this background, the article develops another conceptualisation of the superego, which consist in the completion of the superegoic dialectics of “dirty and necessary” in perversion. This conception is based upon perverse self-instrumentalisation of the subject, which transforms the “dirtiness” of subjective enjoyment and transgression into their necessity. The article then moves toward the analysis of how especially this new conceptualisation of the superego manifests itself in the popular crime series Chicago Police Department (CPD), and in some logically and structurally similar phenomena, which occurred during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Source: Journal for Cultural Research
Author: Boštjan Nedoh
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4400200073