S publishes peer-reviewed essays on Lacanian and related topics from
the fields of art, film and literary criticism, political,
philosophical and ideological critique. S also re-publishes hard to
obtain essays and translations from seminal thinkers in Lacanian
studies whose work deserves the worldwide dissemination open access
publishing affords.
FORTHCOMING ISSUE: CAPITALISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
In an unpublished article written for the French newspaper Le Monde on
the heels of the events of May 1968, Jacques Lacan noted that the
“abundance of objects” offered to us by consumer society “do not
fill up the fateful object a.” These words allow us to measure the
difficulty that capitalism poses, both to psychoanalytic practice and
theory and to each of us, in the most intimate aspects of our everyday
lives.
The gap between the consumer object and the object theorized by
psychoanalysis would push Lacan towards new formulations, including
the writing of the capitalism as a discourse. It also points to other
gaps, which we never cease to confront: that, for example, between the
divided subject and homo œconomicus, the position that capitalist
practice commands us to assume. The latter, indeed, gives body to a
conception of satisfaction that is sometimes radically at odds with
the psychoanalytic one. What is the result of these fundamental
differences? Is the ciphering of the unconscious, for example,
obstructed by the requirements of homo eœconomicus? Can Lacan’s
conception of the identification with the symptom teach us something
about how to respond to our current discontents?
(Deadline August 15, 2015)
