Sair do discurso capitalista?

Abstract

Lacan brings up the prospect of possibly abandoning the capitalist discourse through psychoanalysis. Unlike Marx, he did not aim for the collapse of the economic system generated by this discourse, but rather that it should be trumped by psychoanalysis. There is no denunciation or protest against the misery in the world resulting from capitalism since, according to his thesis, to do so means to collaborate with this discourse that is being denounced, and even to reinforce it, as Marx succeeded in doing so. Then, how to position the analyst who neither collaborates nor protests? The analyst may be taken as the saint in that he does not practice charity, but he offers himself as a cause of desire under the guise of object a. The malaise in civilization may be attributed to the unconscious in so much as it cannot embody a formula for a ratio between the sexes. The capitalist discourse controls from jouissance to desire, without any limit, while jouissance is always limited, castration obliges. If he is to stand a chance of relieving the “parlêtre” from such subjection, the psychoanalyst must put castration in its place and lead the subject to the singular truth of his jouissance.