The Violence of Exclusion: A Psychoanalytical Approach Toward Intersectionality, Identity, and Hegemony

ABSTRACT

When one looks from a feminist and critical point of view at how the Symbolic is created through the structure of the Master’s Discourse, one finds a necessary exclusion of specific signifiers and objects through which the subject can engage in processes of identification. This exclusion, far from being naturally given, results from power relations and hegemonic struggles to impose a Master Signifier that allows the subject to emerge. Following the idea that our current Hegemonic Symbolic (HS) is patriarchal, this article poses questions around the idea of a possible feminist Symbolic, the rejection of the Symbolic, and the articulation of intersectionality from a psychoanalytical approach that proposes to shift from identity politics to politics of identification. The speculative nature of this article aims at illustrating different outcomes and paradoxes while focusing on two specific legislative processes by the Spanish Ministry of Equality.

View translated version:

La Violencia de la Exclusión: Una Aproximación Psicoanalítica a la Interseccionalidad, la Identidad y la Hegemonía

Acknowledgment

The author thanks the Spanish Ministry of Universities and the “Convocatoria de Ayudas para la recualificación del sistema universitario español para 2021–2023, de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, de 31 de Mayo de 2022” for funding her contract.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Notes

¹ This article has decided to force the use of the the plural form of the word violence to emphasize and make explicit the way in which violence is never singular and never has a unique source or objective.

2 To get a further reading on the use and misuse of the term post-modernism, I suggest reading the book Los Olvidados by Antonio Gómez Villar (Gómez Villar, 2022).

3 My own translation of the title and the quote.

4 Abolicionismo (abolitionism in English) is the word that has been chosen by those against granting labor and fundamental rights to sex workers. The idea of abolition only relates to sex work, as this current within Spanish feminism does not usually support the abolition of other kinds of labor, prisons, gender, or other punitive and oppressive institutions.

5 It is important to note that this law was passed but has been the target of several attacks. These attacks have been primarily led by right-wing parties and mass media, which forced its modification.

6 A feminism that is inclusive and intersectional must stop centralizing gender as the only or central axis of oppression and include antiracist and decolonial claims that may also come from men. Furthermore, boys and grown men also need feminism as a space in which to grow and develop feminist masculinities.

7 My own translation.

8 While I believe this topic is central to feminist critiques to the HS, the length of this article does not allow me to further develop it.

Additional information

Funding

The author would like to thank the “Ministerio de Universidades” and the “Convocatoria de Ayudas para la recualificación del sistema universitario español para 2021-2023, de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, de 31 de Mayo de 2022” for the funding of her contract.

Notes on contributors

Alicia Valdés

Alicia Valdés, Ph.D., currently holds a postdoctoral scholarship at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and is developing her research at Universitat de Barcelona. She is the author of Toward a Feminist Lacanian left. Psychoanalytical Theory and Intersectional Politics (Routledge, 2022). Alicia’s work is in a constant process of transformation that addresses resistance and subversion from different approaches that allow for new perceptions of subjectivity, the body, identities, and desire. Her approach is transdisciplinary, with a strong focus on psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminisms, and politics.