First used scientifically by Freud. Overdetermination refers
to a non-reductionist account of human experience and believes that the
constitution of each thing is given by the totality of cause and effects that
are give it instantiation…in Freud, that includes things not remembered,
elements of the sub-conscious that act without being recognised. To understand
something we can not just look at the most visible and obvious causes, and
overdetermination is a counter to these totalities of simple determination. Representation
is problematised by the presence of non-visible or not articulated sentiments
must be included in the cognition of various aspects of social life, especially
subjectivity. But more generally overdetermination refers to multiple
coexistent and complexly integrated structures, non- transparent modes in which
certain types of activity express themselves. It is a counter to the idea of
single determination of a whole and in its structuralist use is a counter to
functionalist ideas of static harmonious wholes. Thus overdetermination is used
to refer to multiple causality - of for instance in Freud a hysterical symptom
or in Althusser a revolutionary situation – or just the social itself.
Contradiction
and Overdetermination; notes for an investigation – Louis Althusser (in For
Marx)
Read
(Marxists.org)
In Althusser the need for a concept of overdetermination
appears in Marxism at the point where the ideology of simple and general
contradictions is undermined by historical process.
“If, as in this situation, a vast accumulation of
‘contradictions’ comes into play in the same court, some of which are
radically heterogeneous – of different origins, different sense, different
levels and points of application – but which nevertheless ‘merge’ into a ruptural unity, we can no
longer talk of the sole, unique power of the general ‘contradiction’… This
means that if the ‘differences’ that constitute each of the instances in play
(manifested in the ‘accumulation’ discussed by Lenin) ‘merge’ into a real
unityt, they are not ‘dissipated’ as pure phenomena in the internal unity of
simple contradiction. The unity they constitute in this ‘fusion’ into a
revolutionary rupture is constituted by their own essence and effectivity, by
what they are, and according to the specific modalities of their action. In
constituting this unity, they reconstitute and complete their basic animating
unity, but at the same time they also bring out its nature: the ‘contradiction’
is inseperable from the total structure of the social body in which it is
found, inseperable from its formal conditions of existence, and even from the
instances it governs; it is radically affected by them, determining, but also
determined in one and the same movement, and determined by the various levels
and instances of the social formation it animates; it might be called
over-determined in its principle.”
“ I am not particularly taken by this term overdetermination
(borrowed from other disciplines) , but I shall use it in thje absence of
anything better, both as an index and as a problem, and alos because it enables
us to see clearly why we are dealing with something quite different from the
Hegelian contradiction.”
From For Marx pp 100-101 (Verso)
N.B – ‘ruptural unity’ – what is such a thing?
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