Capitalism, Schizophrenia, and Post-Lacanism: A Lacanian Perspective

Jonathan Redmond

Based upon the insights of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the contention that capitalism produces schizophrenia is a central tenet of post-Lacanian theory. Within post-Lacanian discourse, theorists such as Fredrick Jameson, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, contend that the material forces of late capitalism produce a schizophrenic socius. Although these theorists have different agendas and theoretical suppositions, a common element underlying their proposal (capitalism produces schizophrenia) concerns the inefficacy of the symbolic order: the symbolic order, the primary locus of the cultural formation, is no longer capable of producing stable subjects. The intention of this thesis then, is to produce a Lacanian reading of the post-Lacanian claim that capitalism produces schizophrenia. Our discussion will show that although post-Lacanian theory is based upon the weakening of the symbolic domain, a notion central to the Lacanian account of psychoses, post-Lacanism underplays the importance of the imaginary in both Lacan's account of psychosis, and of the imaginary in material production. Thus, this re-reading of post-Lacanism will evoke the imaginary as the central factor involved in the production of the schizoid subject within the capitalist socius. We argue that the decline of the symbolic (the central feature of both Lacanian and post-Lacanian theory) must be understood as undergoing a process of 'imaginarization'. That is to say that the inefficacy of the symbolic is due primarily to instantiation of the imaginary as the dominant form of subject formation. Not only is the material form of the imaginary the predominant form of cultural production, the omnipresence of the imaginary entails that the symbolic domain of language functions according to the logic of the imaginary. In drawing upon Lac an' s account of the symbolic/imaginary relation, we will argue that the imaginarization of the symbolic is the fundamental condition underlying the schizoid tendency of capitalism as the imaginary does not effectuate a performative injunction upon subject formation.

Capitalism, Schizophrenia, and Post-Lacanism: A Lacanian Perspective

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