A state of mind: Reply to commentaries

In our reply we query Richard Chefetz's view that what happens in the privacy of one's family and emotional system precedes the intrusion of the State and cultural discourse. From our perspective, many seemingly private fragmented states of mind are actually reflective of the ideology of the State. Using Hartman's vignette, we demonstrate how competing ideological messages can colonize and splinter a mind to evoke incompatible subject-positions and dissociative states. Affect, traditionally understood as our link to an authentic self, is also understood as culturally ordered, and in particular shame. We conclude with a call to assign the full weight of analysis of interpellation to the psychoanalytic project.