Lacan and Capitalist Discourse explores the political and theoretical connections between the Covid-19 Pandemic and Capitalism, unravelling the direct consequences of Lacan's thesis of so-called Capitalist Discourse.
Jorge Aleman brings together the best of psychoanalytic theory and the best of socio-economic analysis, and the mixture is explosive. He makes it clear that, in today's capitalism, ideology is not a superstructure elevated above economy but an integral part of economic reproduction itself. His clearly written book should be an obligatory reading for all of us who want to orient ourselves in the mess we are in today. It's as simple as that. - Slavoj Zizek, Professor, European Graduate School; International Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London; senior researcher, Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Jorge Aleman is the most original proponent of what in Argentina today we might call the school of Lacano-Althusserianism to supplement and bring up to date the older paradigm of Freudo-Marxism. In this eminently readable book, he puts notions of fantasy, ideology, and subjectivity to the test of our time to locate the prospects for a renewal of the emancipatory Left. - Bruno Bosteels, Professor and Chair, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Professor, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University
In Santiago de Chile, during Sebastian Pinera's presidency, a taxi driver of Mapuche descent pointed to La Moneda and pridefully affirmed to me: I'm an entrepreneur just like him! In this book, Aleman, the most brilliant and influential Spanish-speaking Lacanian Left thinker, convincingly analyzes such a world-encompassing neoliberal production of subjectivity in the light of Lacan's concept of capitalist discourse and intensely invites us to invent new emancipatory projects by thinking from the psychoanalytic ontology of the absolute difference structurally constitutive to any subject, that is, to each and every one of the speaking, sexuated and mortal beings. - Jun Fujita Hirose, author, ?Como imponer un limite absoluto al capitalismo? Filosofia politica de Deleuze y Guattari (How to Put an Absolute Limit to Capitalism? The Political Philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari)
Jorge Aleman is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Honorary Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, the Universidad Nacional de San Martin, and the Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria Cordoba. He has published numerous essays on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and political thought.
Daniel Runnels is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Central Missouri.
Acknowledgements
Series Preface by Ian Parker
Introduction
Chapter 1 Pandemic and Capitalism
Chapter 2 No-politics
Chapter 3 The Uncanny
Chapter 4 Evil
Chapter 5 Fantasy: Ideology
Chapter 6 Exploitation: Oppression
Chapter 7 Antagonism: Conflict
Chapter 8 Promoting Hate
Chapter 9 Popular Responsibility
Chapter 10 Blueprints of the Inappropriable
Chapter 11 Community, Society, State
Chapter 12 Retroactivity: Continuity and Discontinuity
Chapter 13 New Challenges
Chapter 14 Note