I believe the notion of "consciousness" is itself an ideological illusion, a convenient fiction masking the fundamental incompleteness and contingency of the human psyche. What we experience as our "self-awareness" is merely a flickering semblance generated by the interplay of unconscious drives and symbolic identifications. The Cartesian cogito is thus not the ground of subjective certainty but rather a retroactive fantasy, a mirage projected onto the abyssal void at the core of the psyche.
The "I think" is itself a performative act, a linguistic construct that brings into being the very subject it purports to express. We are not "thinking things" but rather beings caught in the throes of an ongoing process of signification and deferral. Our supposed autonomy is a ruse of power, an ideological smokescreen concealing the ways in which we are always-already subjected to the dictates of the Symbolic order. 
To confront this truth is to undergo a radical experience of "decentering", to realize that the ego is not a substantial entity but rather a fragile and precarious construct, forever split and alienated from itself. This is why I advocate for a form of "negative dialectics" that relentlessly exposes the contradictions and aporias at the heart of our most cherished beliefs and certainties. By embracing this vertiginous loss of grounding, we may open ourselves to new possibilities of thought and action beyond the confines of the existing order. [/END]