Edited by Ben Gook

About this book
What is a libidinal economy? How are we psychically hooked into the circuits of the capitalist economy? The contributors to this book question the relevance of a concept that began reappearing in critiques and analyses of capitalist societies since the financial crisis of 2007. The chapters stretch from its philosophical pre-history – including Marx, Spinoza, Cavendish and Ibn Sina – to the term’s introduction with Freud and on, via Lyotard, to how online platforms put our psyches to work. Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times is a collection of essays by leading scholars about the connections among economies, pleasures, and desires.

“The term ‘libidinal economy’ has increasingly become a prominent catchphrase in psychoanalytic approaches to society, reflecting a rising interest in political economy and its critique within political theory. But what exactly does it mean, and how are these two concepts related? What is the scandal of the concept of libidinal economy, and why is it often overlooked? How does it help us see the economy as irreducible to ‘something natural’?

These urgent and pressing questions, along with many others, are explored from various perspectives in this fresh, outstanding, and extremely insightful collection of essays, which could not be more timely.”

– Alenka Zupančič, Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis at The European Graduate School

“The philosophical heavyweight in a string of recent books devoted to libidinal economy. Each of the chapters collected here opens up exciting new ways for thinking the confluence of capitalism and desire today. Judging by this volume, the desire called libidinal economy is not done with us yet!”

– Amin Samman, Reader in International Political Economy at City, University of London

“A crucial companion of our contemporary resurgence of psychoanalysis, this strong volume convokes sharp thinkers to careful close readings and illuminating critiques. Why does the omnicrisis – economic, environmental, epistemological, existential – so consistently provoke reference to enigmas of desire and deadlocks of drive? Is necrotic capitalism the best the psyche has to offer? At the end of the world, whither the desire called utopia and the solidarity movement for freedom? These excellent and pithy essays provide rich answers, and will be of lasting value in classrooms, clinics, and social struggles.”

– Anna Kornbluh, Professor of English at University of Illinois, Chicago

“How do you calculate the enjoyments and attachments foisted upon us by capitalism’s new economies that invade our unconscious life? We are dragged into its unending crises, feel culpability for the ways we are stuck and unstuck, and barely catch up to the redistributions of pleasure in the onslaught of technology. We need a better language for this social dimension beyond an ethics of personal responsibility. Ideas of freedom and agency have never felt more bankrupt and yet more necessary. This collection of essays brings us closer to this possibility of rethinking this fraught terrain, giving a glimmer of where we might recover ourselves, our bodies, indeed an enjoyment we could call our own.”

– Jamieson Webster, PhD, Psychoanalyst and Assistant Professor, New School for Social Research

Chapters
1. Libido, Economy, Crisis – Ben Gook
2. Axioms of Libidinal Economy – Benjamin Noys
3. “Out of Your System”: After Lyotard’s Libidinal Set-Ups – Julie Gaillard
4. Negative Solidarity: The Affective Economy in Neoliberalism’s Decline – Jason Read
5. The Antisociality of Capitalism (Some Preliminary Reflections) – Samo Tomšič
6. Becoming a Master of an Island Again: On the Desire to be Bodiless – Adriana Zaharijević
7. Erotics as First Philosophy: Metaphysics and/of Desire between Aristotle, Avicenna, Cavendish, and Spinoza – Luce deLire
8. The Unconscious Freedom of Our Libidinal Economy, or, Existentialism After Freud  – Todd McGowan
9. What is the Libidinal Economy of Antiblackness? – Christopher Chamberlin
10. A Jouissance Beyond Capitalism: Lacan, the Feminist Critique, and the Libidinal Economy of Capitalism – Vladimir Safatle
11. Karatani for Libidinal Economy: Invariance and Praxis – Daniel Tutt
12. Datamining Desire: Short-Circuits in the Libidinal Economy – Alexis Wolfe
13. 1/0: Structuring Freedom Through the Digital Binary – Matthew Flisfeder
14. Deviant and Diseased: Metaphors of Crisis and the Sexual Semantics of Excess and Perversion – Jule Govrin
15. The Renewed Desire for the Critique of Libidinal Economy: Pain, Stress, Flesh – Ben Gook