Genie out of the bottle: Lacan and the loneliness of global capitalism

Vighi, Fabio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4245-0144 2019. Genie out of the bottle: Lacan and the loneliness of global capitalism. Crisis and Critique 6 (1) , pp. 390-415.

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Abstract

The article argues that Lacan’s understanding of the capitalist discourse should be framed within the ongoing crisis of valorisation, where for the first time in the history of capitalism the impact of automation causes the economy’s operating logic to backfire. Contemporary capitalism’s crippling inability to generate the necessary mass of economic value required for the reproduction of our societies can be fully appreciated by reconstructing Lacan’s critique of labour qua value-fetish, the specific ruse through which capitalism fictionalises the uncountable (unconscious) dimension of any “knowledge at work”. By triangulating between Lacan, Marx and Hegel, this piece seeks to reflect on the empty core of the capital-labour dialectic. The next step will be to explore the capitalist symptom as obdurate form of resistance to the transformation of an exhausted and increasingly self-destructive mode of production.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
ISSN:	2311-8172
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 April 2019
Date of Acceptance:	6 March 2019
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 15:13
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/121337

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