The Capitalist Unconscious

The Capitalist Unconscious PDF Author: Samo Tomsic
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178478110X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A major systematic study of the connection between Marx and Lacan’s work Finalist for the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize Despite a resurgence of interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly in terms of the light it casts on capitalist ideology—as witnessed by the work of Slavoj Žižek—there remain remarkably few systematic accounts of the role of Marx in Lacan’s work. A major, comprehensive study of the connection between their work, The Capitalist Unconscious resituates Marx in the broader context of Lacan’s teaching and insists on the capacity of psychoanalysis to reaffirm dialectical and materialist thought. Lacan’s unorthodox reading of Marx refigured such crucial concepts as alienation, jouissance and the Freudian ‘labour theory of the unconscious’. Tracing these developments, Tomšič maintains that psychoanalysis, structuralism and the critique of political economy participate in the same movement of thought; his book shows how to follow this movement through to some of its most important conclusions.

The Capitalist Unconscious

The Capitalist Unconscious PDF Author: Samo Tomsic
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178478110X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A major systematic study of the connection between Marx and Lacan’s work Finalist for the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize Despite a resurgence of interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly in terms of the light it casts on capitalist ideology—as witnessed by the work of Slavoj Žižek—there remain remarkably few systematic accounts of the role of Marx in Lacan’s work. A major, comprehensive study of the connection between their work, The Capitalist Unconscious resituates Marx in the broader context of Lacan’s teaching and insists on the capacity of psychoanalysis to reaffirm dialectical and materialist thought. Lacan’s unorthodox reading of Marx refigured such crucial concepts as alienation, jouissance and the Freudian ‘labour theory of the unconscious’. Tracing these developments, Tomšič maintains that psychoanalysis, structuralism and the critique of political economy participate in the same movement of thought; his book shows how to follow this movement through to some of its most important conclusions.

The Capitalist Unconscious

The Capitalist Unconscious PDF Author: Hyun Ok Park
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540515
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants' reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present's past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.

Lacan and Marx

Lacan and Marx PDF Author: Pierre Bruno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000145220
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Lacan and Marx: The Invention of the Symptom provides an incisive commentary on Lacan’s reading of Marx, mapping the relations between these two vastly influential thinkers. Unlike previous books, Bruno provides a detailed history of Lacan’s reading of Marx and surveys his references to Marx in both his writings and seminars. Examining Lacan’s key argument that Marx "invented the symptom", Bruno shows how Lacan went on to criticize Marx and contrasts Marx’s concept of surplus-value with Lacan’s surplus-enjoyment. Exploring the division between Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives on social and psychological need and Lacan’s formalisation of the capitalist discourse, the book compares the positions of Althusser, Deleuze and Guattari, and Žižek on the relations between Lacan, Marx and capitalism, using a wide range of cultural examples, from Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Brecht’s Joan Dark and Pierpont Mauler. Through these readings, Bruno also elaborates an extended commentary on Lacan’s central idea of the division of the subject. His focus is not only on showing how we can exit from capitalism but also, and just as importantly, on showing how we can make capitalism exit from us. This book will be of great interest to scholars and readers of Lacan and Marx from across the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy and political economy, and will also appeal to Lacanian psychoanalysts in clinical practice.

The Labour of Enjoyment

The Labour of Enjoyment PDF Author: Samo Tomsic
Publisher: Walther Konig Verlag
ISBN: 9783941360563
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Enjoyment appears as purely private matter, but this is by far not the case. Ever since Aristotle the philosophical social critique is tormented by the question, whether the libidinal tendencies of human subjects allow the construction of a just political-economic order.It seemed at first that in modernity this problem had been overcome. Economic liberalism and utilitarianism argued that egoistic private interests and social justice were directly linked and that capitalism united libidinal and political economy in the best possible manner.But the political-economic panorama soon turned out significantly more complex and contradictory; an insight to which Marx's intervention with his critique of political economy significantly contributed.Another critical turn is to be found in psychoanalysis. Freud's conception of the unconscious provided a new cartography of political space and his theory of libido revealed the participation of libidinal apparatuses in sustaining the capitalist power-relations.Tomsic's essay recalls these Freudian insights and circumscribes the political stakes of psychoanalysis under the general banner of Critique of Libidinal Economy.Published with August Verlag

Capitalism and Desire

Capitalism and Desire PDF Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542216
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.

The Sublime Object of Ideology

The Sublime Object of Ideology PDF Author: Slavoj Žižek
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789604370
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Slavoj Žižek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the “Elvis of cultural theory”, and today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes—all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema and Žižek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life’s work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Žižek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Žižek’s thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy. The Sublime Object of Ideology: Slavoj Žižek’s first book is a provocative and original work looking at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. In a thrilling tour de force that made his name, he explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.

The Jamesonian Unconscious

The Jamesonian Unconscious PDF Author: Clint Burnham
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822316138
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Imagine Fredric Jameson--the world's foremost Marxist critic--kidnapped and taken on a joyride through the cultural ephemera, generational hype, and Cold War fallout of our post-post-contemporary landscape. In The Jamesonian Unconscious, a book as joyful as it is critical and insightful, Clint Burnham devises unexpected encounters between Jameson and alternative rock groups, new movies, and subcultures. At the same time, Burnham offers an extraordinary analysis of Jameson's work and career that refines and extends his most important themes. In an unusual biographical move, Burnham negotiates Jameson's major works--including Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, and Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism--by way of his own working-class, queer-ish, Gen-X background and sensibility. Thus Burnham's study draws upon an immense range of references familiar to the MTV generation, including Reservoir Dogs, theorists Slavoj Zizek and Pierre Bourdieu, The Satanic Verses, Language poetry, the collapse of state communism in Eastern Europe, and the indie band Killdozer. In the process, Burnham addresses such Jamesonian questions as how to imagine the future, the role of utopianism in capitalist culture, and the continuing relevance of Marxist theory. Through its redefinition of Jameson's work and compelling reading of the political present, The Jamesonian Unconscious defines the leading edge of Marxist theory. Written in a style by turns conversational, playful, and academic, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Marxism, critical theory, aesthetics, narratology, and cultural studies, as well as the wide circle of readers who have felt and understood Jameson's influence.

The Selfish Capitalist

The Selfish Capitalist PDF Author: Oliver James
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0091924162
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In the bestselling 'Affluenza', world-renowned psychologist Oliver James introduced us to a modern-day virus sweeping the English-speaking world. Now 'The Selfish Capitalist' provides more detailed substantiation for the claims he has already made.

Transitional Subjects

Transitional Subjects PDF Author: Amy Allen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231544782
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Critical social theory has long been marked by a deep, creative, and productive relationship with psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud and Fromm were important cornerstones for the early Frankfurt School, recent thinkers have drawn on the object-relations school of psychoanalysis. Transitional Subjects is the first book-length collection devoted to the engagement of critical theory with the work of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and other members of this school. Featuring contributions from some of the leading figures working in both of these fields, including Axel Honneth, Joel Whitebook, Noëlle McAfee, Sara Beardsworth, and C. Fred Alford, it provides a synoptic overview of current research at the intersection of these two theoretical traditions while also opening up space for further innovations. Transitional Subjects offers a range of perspectives on the critical potential of object-relations psychoanalysis, including feminist and Marxist views, to offer valuable insight into such fraught social issues as aggression, narcissism, “progress,” and torture. The productive dialogue that emerges augments our understanding of the self as intersubjectively and socially constituted and of contemporary “social pathologies.” Transitional Subjects shows how critical theory and object-relations psychoanalysis, considered together, have not only enriched critical theory but also invigorated psychoanalysis.

Cognitive Capitalism

Cognitive Capitalism PDF Author: Yann Moulier-Boutang
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745647324
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;