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Abstract
This project analyzes the public and political discourse surrounding recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Drawing from Lacanian psychoanalysis, I argue the debates and conflicts over Supreme Court nominees, issues such as Constitutional interpretation, bipartisanship, and ideological difference, are symptomatic of a psychical split in public formation. This split is characterized as a gap or fissure within American identity preventing harmonization or agreement between public and political difference. Two structures of subjectivity in Lacanian psychoanalysis, perversion and neurosis, are taken up as rhetorical relationships to authority and law, specifically the Constitution. Furthermore, Lacan’s concept of jouissance or enjoyment is highlighted as necessary to theorize identification in American political rhetoric.