David Pavon-Cuellar

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.

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 is revolutionary about psychoanalysis, and why should those of us concerned with political praxis take it seriously? This manifesto is an argument for connecting social transformation with personal liberation, showing that the two aspects of profound change can be intimately linked together using psychoanalysis. This manifesto explores what lies beyond us, what we keep repeating, what pushes and pulls us to stay the same and to change, and how those phenomena are transferred into clinical space. This book is not uncritical of psychoanalysis, and transforms it so that liberation movements can transform the world. With a preface by Suryia Nayak.

This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacans work bridges the gap between discourse-analytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoreti

The methods developed by Freud and Marx have enabled a range of scholars to critically reflect upon the ideological underpinnings of modern and now postmodern or hypermodern western societies. In this intriguing book, the discipline of psychology itself is screened through the twin dynamics of Marxism and psychoanalysis. David Pavón-Cuéllar asks to what extent the terms, concerns and goals of psychology reflect, in fact, the dominant bourgeois ideology that has allowed it to flourish. The book charts a gradual psychologization within society and culture dating from the nineteenth century, and examines how the tacit ideals within mainstream psychology – creating good citizens or productive workers – sit uneasily against Marx and Freud’s ambitions of revealing fault-lines and contradictions within individualist and consumer-oriented structures. The positivist aspiration of psychology to become a natural science has been the source of extensive debate, critical voices asserting the social and cultural contexts through which the human mind and behaviour should be understood. This challenging new book provides another voice that, in addressing two of the most influential intellectual traditions of the past 150 years, widens the debate still further to examine the foundations of psychology.

The methods developed by Freud and Marx have enabled a range of scholars to critically reflect upon the ideological underpinnings of modern and now postmodern or hypermodern western societies. In this intriguing book, the discipline of psychology itself is screened through the twin dynamics of Marxism and psychoanalysis. David Pavón-Cuéllar asks to what extent the terms, concerns and goals of psychology reflect, in fact, the dominant bourgeois ideology that has allowed it to flourish. The book charts a gradual psychologization within society and culture dating from the nineteenth century, and examines how the tacit ideals within mainstream psychology – creating good citizens or productive workers – sit uneasily against Marx and Freud’s ambitions of revealing fault-lines and contradictions within individualist and consumer-oriented structures. The positivist aspiration of psychology to become a natural science has been the source of extensive debate, critical voices asserting the social and cultural contexts through which the human mind and behaviour should be understood. This challenging new book provides another voice that, in addressing two of the most influential intellectual traditions of the past 150 years, widens the debate still further to examine the foundations of psychology.

This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacan’s work bridges the gap between discourseanalytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavón Cuéllar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR). Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan’s psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Žižek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory.