Abstract

My essay examines how Slavoj Žižek sets Lacanian psychoanalysis into active equivalence with Marxism to produce a new theoretical discourse in the history of Western Marxism, a ‘cultural psychoanalysis.’ I explore how Marxism adheres to psychoanalysis in Žižek’s theory to the point where we can speak of a new theoretical discourse, a Lacanian Marxism. I investigate how Žižek finds the meditations necessary to allow a combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis by outlining his transcoding of Marxism through the Lacanian concepts of symptom, surplus-enjoyment, drive, and the real