Marx and Lacan mixed to make a heady cocktail of social critique
"A major systematic study of the connection between Marx and Lacan's work This 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 the critique of political economy participate in the same movement of thought, which revolutionized the human sciences and whose relevance remains intact even today"--
“Samo Tomšič’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 Žižek “The first book-length study of Lacan’s reading of Marx in the English language, filling an almost scandalous gap—which it does splendidly. It offers many original and most compelling insights into both Marx and Lacan.”
—Alenka Zupančič “
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 attempts to synthesize Freud and Marx, Tomšič argues that we must think the structure of the unconscious and the structure of capitalism together.”
—Benjamin Noys “Thought you’d never hear anything new about Jacques Lacan or for that matter Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud? Then give Samo Tomšič’s
The Capitalist Unconscious a listen. Daringly original, Tomšič 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 “Recognizing the relationship between the unconscious and capitalism, with Tomšič’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
