Overdetermination as a concept has itself become overdetermined and is now encrusted both with projected versions of itself and introjected variations on its theme:
1.
i.The formation is the result of two or more separate causal sequences which are layered and not combined within the formation. Each layering performs an adequately ‘complete’ explanation for the object, whilst from within each discourse the other explanations appear to have only a ‘neutral’ relevance; ii.The formation is the receptacle, representation or symbol for more than one condensed experience or process that are referenced by context-dependent parent discourses; iii.The formation is the site from which great social contradictions are recorded in compressed state; iv.The formation has become over-saturated by the possible interpretative/analytic discourses which might be drawn out of it; v.The overdetermined formation as fetish object draws energy from those social pressures which it obscures – precipitating a single over-saturated causal/explanatory sequence – and thereby orchestrates a displaced formation which denies that which it is nonetheless a signal for; vi.Overdetermination is the seizing by a parent discourse of minor discourses that it recognises as operating within an object.
2.
i.Overdetermination is not a quality of the object but a consequence of the quantities of theoretical engagement tinvested into making it appear within a parent discourse. Those discourses which reveal overdeterminations presume depth in the object, i.e. they hypothesise that the conditions for the object’s appearance are hidden from the ordinary intercourses of the object itself, and in turn the uncovering of these conditioning factors validate the possessive movement of the theory by providing it with a suitable trophy-like object. Theory validates itself by re-situating the object within the projected field of its significances, and within the expropropriative processing of its causal sequence. The greater the number of theoretical registers in which an object appears the more nuanced with overdeterminations it becomes; ii.However, a cut-off point, or a state of over-overdetermination, is also possible through theoretical over-investment. Typically, radical disinvestment from an object will occur before permission-saturation sets in (i.e. where anything may be associated with everything). At the point of cut-off the object essentially disappears, becoming under-determined, this means the parent discourse which produces the object in its field finds nothing in the object which resists it and thereupon falls silent (as there is nothing of significance or causality that is to be uncovered and appropriated); iii.In this latter state, the object becomes exhausted and is reduced to an archaeological artefact and lost to viable social discourse. This loss is redeemed whenever a ‘new way of seeing’ appropriates the object and finds another relevance within it; (iv.It is also the case that actual archaeological artefacts may become activated in discourse even though they are ‘alien’ to the parent discourse, even though they are unknowable; this return of lost objects occurs wherever overdetermination (depth) may be identified by the parent discourse within the object by means of associative sequences). v.Therefore, it seems there must be an optimal state in the functioning of the concept of overdetermination, for example where two to five identifiable but minor causal sequences are identified within the formation and are incorporated by a single strong theorisation.
