Capitalism and Desire

Understanding capitalism as a psychic strategy.

McGowan Todd :

Todd McGowan (PhD, English, Ohio State) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He is the author of a number of books, including Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis (Nebraska, 2013), Rupture: On the Emergence of the Political (Northwestern, 2012, 2011), Out of Time: The Ethics of Atemporal Cinema (Minnesota), The Impossible David Lynch (Columbia, 2007), and Capitalism and Desire (Columbia, 2016). I chose him as a reader for his knowledge of the Hegelian tradition and its relation to politics.Todd McGowan is associate professor of film studies at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis (2013) and The Impossible David Lynch (Columbia, 2007), among other books.

Richard Boothby, author of Sex on the Couch: What Freud Still Has To Teach Us About Sex and Gender:
The immense satisfaction of McGowan's latest and most ambitious book is achieved, appropriately enough, by putting capitalism to the test of a suitably profound (and paradoxical) conception of satisfaction. Astonishingly far-ranging in its references yet written in perfectly limpid prose, Capitalism and Desire sets a new high-water mark in contemporary social and political philosophy. A dazzling work of theory.

Joan Copjec, author of Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists:
How many syntheses of Marx and Freud have been forged in an attempt to ground a critique of capitalism—only in the end to fail? After tallying their individual failures, this smart book goes on to confront their underlying problem: a botched reading of Freud. Relying on Lacan's radical re-excavation of Freud, McGowan offers brand-new ideas about the subject's ensnarement in the "freedoms" of capitalism and the possibilities of resistance to them.

Fabio Vighi, author of Critical Theory and the Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism:
With Capitalism and Desire, McGowan provides an admirably accessible and intellectually sophisticated analysis of the real connections between capitalism and psychoanalysis. This is a wonderful book demonstrating immense intellectual vitality—it is simply impossible to ignore.

Mari Ruti, author of The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living:
McGowan's argument is positively brilliant—almost every page brings a startling insight and every chapter compels an exciting reorientation of thought. Because of its paradigm-shifting originality, Capitalism and Desire places McGowan among the most prominent critical thinkers of his generation and competes admirably even with the very best work of the generation before him.

Slavoj Žižek:
Capitalism and Desire turns around the predominant leftist whining about the devastating psychic consequences of global capitalism, about how it undermines elementary structures of psychic stability which enable individuals to lead a meaningful life. The focus of Todd McGowan's effort is, rather, the enigma of the success of capitalist ideology: how was it possible for such a destabilizing life practice to fully capture the libidinal lives of billions, how was it possible that continuous crises and states of exception only strengthened its hold? In short, how is it possible that capitalism again and again imposes itself as the cure for the crisis it brings about? In answering these difficult questions, McGowan has produced a classic.