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.
Reviews:
“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.”
—Alenka Zupancic “Samo Tomšic’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, Tomšic argues that we must think the structure of the unconscious and the structure of capitalism together.”
—Benjamin Noys
— “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. Tomšic engages with his topics passionately, lucidly, with erudition and in a very readable way, despite the challenging complexity of the subject.”—Alenka Zupancic “Samo Tomšic’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, Tomšic 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. About the Author: Samo Tomšic 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.
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