ABSTRACT
Ernesto Laclau, emphasizing, for his part, the psychological character of interpellation, embraces it as the starting point for his work: the concept of "interpellation" is the phenomenon of "identification" which Freud described at various points of his work, especially in Group Psychology. The relation Laclau attempts to establish between subjects and institutions does not, it must be stressed, deny the active role of institutions. In a move which has the effect of naming as an ideological effect Louis Althusser's elimination of individual agency by the economy, Laclau extends the definition of ideology from the self-misrecognition of subjects to the misrecognition of any identity or state of being as permanent and immutable. Because identities are not finally determined by any transcendental force, they are subject to reconstitution through new discursive forms. Locating the exclusionary principle of a discourse is not a simple task, however.
