Lacan’s Marx
From the Materialism of the Signifier to Libidinal Political Economy
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:26th Oct '26
£34.99
This title is due to be published on 26th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Lacan’s Marx presents the most comprehensive study to date of Jacques Lacan’s original engagement with Karl Marx.
Pavón-Cuéllar clarifies what Marx’s deeds, words and ideas become when they are first interpreted by Lacan and then derivatively reinterpreted by other authors under the influence of Lacan. These interpretations and reinterpretations establish various connections between Marx and Lacan and open a wide field of possibilities. The result is the intuition of a ‘Lacanian Marxism’ in which Marx’s concepts acquire new and unsuspected meanings thanks to their interpretation by Lacan and everything that results from it. Drawing on previously unexplored materials, the book reconstructs the conceptual mediations that shaped the encounter between Marx and Lacan, highlighting the roles played by various authors important to Lacan, including philosophers, Marxist and Freudo-Marxist theorists, surrealist poets and structuralist thinkers.
Lacan’s Marx will be indispensable for anyone interested in the relationship between Marx and Lacan. It will be of great interest to academics and students of Marxism, French structuralism and post-structuralism. It will also be a valuable resource for students, researchers, teachers and scholars in psychoanalysis, psychology, political theory, and psychosocial studies.
“What if we have been reading both Marx and Lacan too safely—and therefore not reading them at all? This book breaks with the reassuring habits of interpretation and stages a far more unsettling encounter. Marx is no longer the familiar critic of capitalism, nor Lacan the guardian of psychoanalytic orthodoxy. Instead, each is forced through the other: Marx becomes a thinker of the signifier, the symptom, and enjoyment; Lacan is drawn into the material and political real of exploitation and accumulation. The result is not a synthesis, but a disturbance. In this bold reconfiguration, Marx and Lacan cease to be stable points of reference and become instruments of critique once again.” - Alenka Zupančič, The European Graduate School, author of Ethics of the real: Kant, Lacan
“Lacan’s Marx is a remarkable and timely achievement. David Pavón-Cuéllar delivers a rigorously systematic and wide-ranging account of Lacan’s engagements with Marx and capitalism, situating them within their broader theoretical and socio-historical context. More decisively, he demonstrates with great clarity and force why the alliance between psychoanalysis and historical materialism remains indispensable for contemporary struggles. This is not only a formidable work of scholarship but also a political act.” - Samo Tomšič, University of Fine Arts Dresden, author of The capitalist unconscious: Marx and Lacan
“Since his earliest studies of the connections between Marx and Lacan, David Pavón-Cuéllar has maintained - like perhaps no other thinker - his commitment to two fundamental theses: that marxism and psychoanalysis don't have to be brought into some artificial relation, because they already share a fundamental core, and that this common dimension can only be properly assessed from the standpoint of revolutionary politics. And I am sure anyone who engages with his new work will be moved to uphold this same conviction.” - Gabriel Tupinambá, psychoanalyst based in Rio de Janeiro, author of The desire of psychoanalysis: exercises in Lacanian thinking
ISBN: 9781032996226
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
340 pages