Identification, aesthetic transgression and sublimation

This paper examines emancipatory forms of identification by articulating the idea of populism as aesthetic transgression and psychoanalysis. Divided into two sections, the study first examines populism as aesthetic transgression, a notion previously developed by Théo Aiolfi and myself. This perspective transcends leader-centred performative currents by drawing on Jacques Rancière's idea of aesthetics as 'partage du sensible'. Here, populism is seen as aesthetically transgressive because, through the discursive articulation of 'the people', it generates processes of identification that bring elements excluded from the symbolic order – the 'part of no-part' – into the political realm. The second section uses psychoanalysis to assess the emancipatory potential of this aesthetic transgression resulting from the inclusion of marginalised sectors. Psychoanalysis shows that transgression and the reactionary affirmation of order can coexist. However, the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation, one of the most complex ideas in the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, opens up a way of understanding emancipatory forms of transgression. The attempt to use the concept of sublimation to inform radical democratic politics was first proposed by Yannis Stavrakakis and subsequently developed in Ernesto Laclau's reflections on populism. This paper builds on these contributions by demonstrating that sublimation is intrinsically linked to aesthetics, particularly aesthetic practices that highlight the incompleteness of their own symbols – what Oliver Marchart calls 'conflicting aesthetics', akin to queer practices. This transgressive aesthetics not only implies an ethical stance in line with radical democracy but also promotes alternative forms of enjoyment compatible with this ethical stance. The article concludes that emancipatory and sublimatory forms of identification involve the construction of an unsaturated symbolic order, in which 'the people' serves as a symbol that continuously questions its identity to incorporate subalternised groups.