The book discusses the importance of Marx's critique of political economy in Lacan's attempt to rethink the political and philosophical legacy of Freudian psychoanalysis. By situating Marx in the broader context of Lacan's teaching it highlights the ongoing importance of the capacity of psychoanalysis to reaffirm a dialectical and materialist thinking in philosophy and beyond. Lacan presents an unorthodox image of Marx, linking his critique of capitalism with the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, the Freudian labour theory of the unconscious and emancipatory politics, showing that psychoanalysis, structuralism and critique of political economy participate in the same movement of thought, which revolutionized the human sciences and whose relevance remains intact even today.
Samo Tomsic obtained his PhD in philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the past he has worked at the Institute of Philosophy in Ljubljana and at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and is currently research assistant in the interdisciplinary cluster Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He has widely published on psychoanalysis, structuralism and contemporary French philosophy, and translated Kant, Freud, Foucault and Badiou among others into Slovenian.
Title: The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan
Author: Samo Tomsic
ISBN: 9781784781088
Binding:
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication Date: 2015-09-23
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.3675 kg
Samo Tomsic's achievement is to explain how the reference to psychoanalysis is crucial if we are to provide a theoretical framework for a confrontation with the totality of global capitalism. To be a Marxist today, one has to go through Lacan! - Slavoj Zizek The Capitalist Unconscious is the first book-length study of Lacan's reading of Marx in English language. One cannot overestimate its significance in filling in this almost scandalous gap -- which it does splendidly. It offers many original and most compelling insights into both Marx and Lacan. It is both systematic and highly original in developing the affinities between Lacan's and Marx's theories, often pointing at rather unexpected aspects of this affinity. Tomsic engages with his topics passionately, lucidly, with erudition and in a very readable way, despite the challenging complexity of the subject. Alenka Zupancic Samo Tomsic's The Capitalist Unconscious does the simple thing that's so hard to do: taking Lacan seriously as a reader of Marx. Against all the confusions and failures that have often characterized the attempts to synthesize Freud and Marx, Tomsic argues that we must think the structure of the unconscious and the structure of capitalism together. In a series of brilliant readings of Freud, Lacan, and Marx, The Capitalist Unconscious develops a politics of negativity that can engage with the social and psychic traumas of the present moment. The result is a provocative demand to think Lacan with Marx, to work through our denials and disavowals, and to traverse the hysterical misery of capitalism. Benjamin Noys Recognizing the relationship between the unconscious and capitalism, with Tomsic's help, will make us better equipped to continue this class struggle. One of the most important books of the year. - Alfie Bown, Hong Kong Review Thought you'd never hear anything new about Jacques Lacan or for that matter Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud? Then give Samo Tomsic's The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan a listen. Daringly original, Tomsic does a masterful job of orchestrating the works of Marx, Freud, and Lacan, playing their ideas off of one another in varying arrangements to produce a composition that is wholly new and exhilarating. - Andrew Cole, Critical Inquiry
