You are on page 1of 4

From LQ 210

From Civilisation to Globalisation I

Agns Aflalo

Since the end of the Second World War, the world has changed. And this change can be put into order
1

starting from the concept of discourse as Lacan formalised it . The progress made by the discourses of
capitalism and science allows us to grasp the effects of it.

The Capitalist Discourse and its Subject

As for every discourse, the discourse of capitalism account for a loss of jouissance that is impossible to
recover. This loss of jouissance is always perceived as a theft, and its return is always located on the side of
the Other, the Master. Freud describes the same libidinal displacements within the circuit of the drive. But
Marx was the first to knot these two unknown displacements of the libido, which made Lacan say that he is the
inventor of the symptom. This symptom as it was discovered by psychoanalysis in its beginning is still valid
today. Scientific obscurantism in the 21st century may very well decide to ignore it, which does not prevent it
from existing.

This capitalist discourse rejects the first loss of jouissance and suspends its return. The symptom ceaselessly
reiterates this double movement of refusal of the loss and its return so as to totalise it, which it does not
miss. This is the fundamental stereotypy of the symptom. This discourse thus accomplishes a foreclosure of
castration. In Freuds era, civilisation and its discontents centred itself essentially on loss, whilst today,
globalisation centres itself especially on the second time of the return of jouissance without limits. For
Lacan, the discourse of the unconscious must be clarified with this capitalist discourse.

Capitalism has allowed a new subject to emerge. He is very much an effect of language, but is no longer
subjected to the master signifier which is repressed. That is to say that the signifiers of the social Other no
longer identify him. We particularly observe this with regards to homosexuality or autism, current
symptomatic stakes for the DSM. These subjects refuse the segregation induced by the dominant discourse
which classes them respectively within perversions or psychoses. These worn-out master-words no longer index
the real that is at stake and are rejected.

More generally, the capitalist subject refuses the authority of the Master. And the authority crisis names
this phenomenon of the decline of the Master at every level of democratic societies. However, the function
of the master-words is also the mortification of jouissance. When the master-word is repressed, the
mortification of jouissance castration no longer operates. The consequence of this at the level of the body is
decisive. There are no longer any limits upon the production of the object (a) surplus-enjoyment. This is
exploitation to death. The reason for this is that it is not only having that is concerned, but also being. The
subject is even more abandoned to the authority of the absolute master in so far as he is not identified to any
particular master. Death is the only limiting principle for jouissance when castration no longer operates.

Capitalism has known two major modifications during the last thirty years. Firstly, it has become globalised.
Effectively, since the fall of the Berlin wall, communist nations have come together under the market economy.
It is then legitimate to say that there is no longer civilisation, but globalisation in which subjects are suffering
particularly from addictions without any limits founded upon the unlimited return of the surplus-enjoyment.
Next, capitalism has become scientific financial capitalism should be called scientific capitalism. Its
subject is the generalised proletarian, because nothing allows him to uphold a discourse, as the phenomenon
of the Indignados shows us. It is no longer necessary to place the proletarian in factories in order to extract
the surplus-enjoyment from him. The financial crisis of 2008 showed this, it suffices to lure him by means of
investments which have the appeal of casino winnings, reduced to a few opaque mathematical equations
(securitization) in order to transform him into a homeless person at the first crisis of confidence. The
phenomenon of solitude and its autistic satisfaction gives an idea of the worldwide expansion of this
phenomenon.

The Scientific Discourse and its Subject

With science, the master-signifier no longer functions either. What is more, science reduces the effect of a

series of functions of discourse: The signifier is reduced to its effect of letter mathematics only uses letters
and the object (a) surplus-enjoyment is rejected; there, the dialectical work of truth is no longer possible
because the subjects division is neutralised. Castration then no longer operates. Truth and the singular real of
libido are disconnected. The only real at stake in this discourse obeys universal laws, and not a singular cause:
It is the real of the organism which is to be distinguished from that of the body. The analytic discourse has
shown, in effect, since its beginnings in the 20

th

century, that the body is always a speaking body, which

evidently is not the case of the organism which is a matter of science.

The subject of science dates from the cogito and is nothing other than a void. It is a pure subject. It is decisive
to see this, because science no longer needs to turn to the intuition of the body. It does without the body.
Now science operates solely on the organism and its real. This pure subject of science does not exist
anywhere, but it is necessary to grasp that science veils the part of the subject that expresses itself in the
fantasy and which is correlated to the object (a). The subject thus neutralised in his division becomes
universalising. He increasingly lends himself to the logic of classes. But the liberation from the body provokes
a disjunction between the body and the object (a), between the universality of the body and the particularity of
the object (a). The object (a) is an empty set, it is therefore incorporeal. When it is rejected, it gallops off all by
itself, separated from the body. But it is also ready to recapture the bodies again at the first opportunity. This is
the case of every natural or industrial object (a). This object (a) is not inert. It is a bit like a black hole, it is an
object that wants. Let us take the example of the object (a) gaze and its relation to the body. The gaze
increasingly captures the bodies in our societies under surveillance, whether outside on the street by way of
increasingly numerous cameras, but also in the home by way of television or computer screens without
counting mobile telephones and other mobile tablets transportable everywhere, all the time. In other words,
this object (a) has on the body the effect of a push-to-enjoying, from which it cannot be separated for long.
When it returns towards the organism, it then manifests itself in all sorts of addictions which make up
contemporary symptoms. It is the same insatiable gaze object that scrutinises the private life of everyday
people through shows of the so-called reality TV; it is also this object that feeds upon the vicissitudes of the
private lives of our modern masters whose mediatisation is demanded without delay. But when the media
mirror no longer provides a veil, the awaited ideal does not appear, and disappointment is then assured. The
ideal of the normal man is without doubt in the spirit of our times. However, this fiction which gathers
together also contains within itself the germ of ulterior dispersion. Effaced for only a short time, it does not
miss re-appearing and manifesting itself in particular as the small difference to which each one holds on, as
though to his most precious possession. Let us add that the subject of science, liberated from the body, is also
a subject without shame. Following the same principle, the emancipation of the oral object provokes
worldwide epidemics of obesity or anorexia, from the earliest age.

Science and capitalism are united for better and for worse. They have engendered the most important
progress of humanity. However, the deep modifications that they impose on discourse also generate new
forms of discontent. Evaluation has come to reinforce this globalised discontent. Contemporary discontent
knows no traditional frontiers and this is why it is justifiable today to speak of globalisation and no longer of
civilisations.

You might also like