Identification and desire: Lacan and Althusser versus Deleuze and Guattari? A short note with an intercession from Slavoj Žižek

This paper constitutes an exploration of the construction of academic identity through a retrospective autoethnographic narrative analysis. In essentially experimental mode I set out to examine processes of identification evident in this account, and in particular, the understanding of desire that resonates within it for, it can be argued, without desire there is no identity. I began my analysis by following two lines of thought concerning desire. The first, drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan, conceives of desire negatively as lack (Fink, 1995; Lacan, 2001). The second deriving from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2004) constructs desire as abundance, a positive flow. These two conceptualisations may, at first sight, appear to be in opposition but could things be otherwise? The question I arrived at was to what extent can these different conceptualisations of desire be held to be