Summary of Todd McGowan's Capitalism and Desire

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 Capitalism is a system that places the law of the market at the center, and it exists anywhere there is a free market. It has no specific relationship to the psyche of those invested in it, but it does affect how they function.

#2 Capitalism transcends culture and offers its subjects psychic rewards that are radically different from those provided by cultures. The capitalist subject never has enough, and it constantly seeks more. But this project of endless accumulation is built on the idea of its end.

#3 There is a radical difference between the image capitalism presents to its subjects and the real satisfaction they find in it. The capitalist system requires that subjects invest themselves in the idea of accumulation and the promise of an ultimate satisfaction that accompanies the idea.

#4 Capitalism is not the result of human nature, and its appeal is inextricable from the break from nature that occurs when we begin to speak. We are not capitalists because we are animalistic but because we are fundamentally removed from our animality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669376378

IRB Media

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Insights on Todd McGowan's Capitalism and Desire

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Capitalism is a system that places the law of the market at the center, and it exists anywhere there is a free market. It has no specific relationship to the psyche of those invested in it, but it does affect how they function.

#2

Capitalism transcends culture and offers its subjects psychic rewards that are radically different from those provided by cultures. The capitalist subject never has enough, and it constantly seeks more. But this project of endless accumulation is built on the idea of its end.

#3

There is a radical difference between the image capitalism presents to its subjects and the real satisfaction they find in it. The capitalist system requires that subjects invest themselves in the idea of accumulation and the promise of an ultimate satisfaction that accompanies the idea.

#4

Capitalism is not the result of human nature, and its appeal is inextricable from the break from nature that occurs when we begin to speak. We are not capitalists because we are animalistic but because we are fundamentally removed from our animality.

#5

Capitalism makes the subject alienated from its environment by introducing a layer of mediation into all of the subject’s interactions. The world appears as an immediate set of elements laid out for us to perceive as we will, but the signifier is still opaque. It distorts what we perceive and changes the elements with which it interacts.

#6

The signifier creates a divided world. It is not identical with the signified, and there is a gap between the word and what it signifies. The search for the signified leads to other signifiers that attempt to approximate it. There is no end to the search for sense, and a blank space where we expect an answer.

#7

With the advent of capitalism, the subject encounters a world of signification that is intractable. The subject never finds what it is looking for, and instead is constantly confronted with the absence that lies at its heart.

#8

The lost object, which is what Lacan refers to as the objet a, becomes a substantial status in capitalism. It appears as something substantial that the subject has lost through a traumatic event, but in reality it has no substantial status. The subject’s