Abstract
This chapter expands on the previous one by interrogating the deeper psychic relationship between capitalism and nothingness. Taking its cue from Sartre’s famous philosophical text “Being and Nothingness”, it contends that capitalist existence is built on positing a continual nothingness—or sense of experienced lack—that only the market can fulfil. In times of crisis, this turns apocalyptic with capitalism being posited as the only thing that can prevent total nothingness. At the affective heart of the embrace of this market “unfreedom” is the underlying fear that without capitalism we would dissolve into nothingness, a worry captured in the notion of the “real” first put forward by the renowned psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan—our fragmentary “true” nature that must be masked by a comforting fantastic “reality”. It concludes by positing the need for creating a radical fantasy of freedom that embraces this nothingness as part of a fundamental drive to be eternally dissatisfied with hegemonic forms of freedom such as those linked to capitalism and therefore seek out new ones.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bauman, Z. (2006). Liquid Times: Living in An Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bion, W. (1961). Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock.
Bloom, P. (2013). The Power of Safe Resistance. Journal of Political Power, 6(2), 219–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379x.2013.805919.
Bloom, P. (2014). Back to the Capitalist Future: Fantasy and the Paradox of Crisis. Culture and Organization, 22(2), 158–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2014.897347.
Bloom, P. (2015). Work as the Contemporary Limit of Life: Capitalism, the Death Drive, and the Lethal Fantasy of ‘Work–Life Balance’. Organization, 23(4), 588–606. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508415596604.
Bloom, P. (2016). Beyond Power and Resistance: Politics at the Radical Limits. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Bloom, P., & Cederstrom, C. (2009). “The Sky’s the Limit”: Fantasy in the Age of Market Rationality. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22(2), 159–180. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810910947190.
Bracher, M. (2010). Lacanian Theory of Discourse. New York: New York University Press.
Catalano, J. (1985). A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clarke, J. (2014). After Neoliberalism? Markets, States, and the Reinvention of Welfare. In M. Hayward (Ed.), Cultural Studies and Finance Capitalism: The Economic Crisis and After (pp. 103–112). London: Routledge.
Cremin, C. (2010). Never Employable Enough: The (Im)possibility of Satisfying the Boss’s Desire. Organization, 17(2), 131–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508409341112.
Dean, J. (2016). Crowds and Party. London: VERSO.
Forkert, K. (2014). The New Moralism: Austerity, Silencing and Debt Morality. Soundings, 56(56), 41–53. https://doi.org/10.3898/136266214811788808.
Gabriel, G. (2009). A Neo-Liberal Nihilism? Open Democracy.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity – Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giroux, H. (2011). Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism. New York: Peter Lang.
Glynos, J. (2000). Thinking the Ethics of the Political in the Context of a Postfoundational World: From an Ethics of Desire to an Ethics of the Drive. Theory and Event, 4(4). ISSN:1092-311X.
Harman, C. (2009). Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. New York: Guilford Publication.
Hayward, M. (2010). The Economic Crisis and After. Cultural Studies, 24(3), 283–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502381003750260.
Hoedemaekers, C. (2009). Traversing the Empty Promise: Management, Subjectivity and the Other’s Desire. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22(2), 181–201. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810910947208.
Johnson, N., Middleton, M., & Tajfel, H. (1970). The Relationship Between Children’s Preferences for and Knowledge About Other Nations. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9(3), 232–240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1970.tb00669.x.
Jones, C., & Spicer, A. (2005). The Sublime Object of Entrepreneurship. Organization, 12(2), 223–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508405051189.
Lacan, J. (1988). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Lacan, J. (2001). Ecrits. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Lanci, Y. (2014). Zombie 2.0: Subjectivation in Times of Apocalypse. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 13(2), 25–37.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Vol. I). London: Harmondsworth.
McGowan, T. (2016). Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press.
Ragland, E. (2013). Essays on the Pleasures of Death. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Reicher, S., & Hopkins, N. (2001). Psychology and the End of History: A Critique and a Proposal for the Psychology of Social Categorization. Political Psychology, 22(2), 383–407. https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895x.00246.
Sandel, M. (2016). Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Look Like Saviours to Voters Who Feel Left Out of the American Dream. The Guardian.
Sartre, J. (1956). Being and Nothingness. New York: Gallimard.
Seib, G. (2016). Behind the Rise of Populism, Economic Angst. The Wall Street Journal.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O., Hood, W., Sherif, C., & White, J. (1961). The Robbers Cave Experiment. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Shiller, R. (2017). The Economy Is Stagnant Because People Fear for the Future. The Guardian.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the Political: Thinking the Political. New York: Routledge.
Žižek, S. (1993). Tarrying with the Negative. London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1998). The Seven Veils of Fantasy. In D. Nobus (Ed.), Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Rebus Press.
Žižek, S. (2003). Tarrying with the Negative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.
Žižek, S. (2004). What Can Psychoanalysis Tell Us About Cyberspace? The Psychoanalytic Review, 91(6), 801–830. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.91.6.801.55957.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bloom, P. (2018). Capitalist Being and Nothingness: Enjoying Existential Freedom. In: The Bad Faith in the Free Market. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76502-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76502-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76501-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76502-0
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)