In addition to the four discourses he described in Seminar XVII, in 1972 Lacan also put forward a matheme that characterizes capitalism: the capitalist discourse. Lacan considers this discourse to be an amended version of the discourse of the master. In this talk Stijn Vanheule explores the particularities of the capitalist discourse and discuss its fundamental differences with respect to the other discourses. The capitalist logic is considered as a most extreme form of mechanical thinking in which man and society are seen as a machine - a mode of thinking that took shape since the Enlightenment. Contemporary belief in science makes up a component of this mechanical mode of thinking. The truth of capitalist discourse is that it disavows the non-rapport and associated forms of jouissance that lie at the basis of any subjectivity and any social bond. Capitalist discourse entails a specific position vis-à-vis discontent, in which it is assumed that this latter can be resolved by way of fetishized consumption. Many contemporary psychiatric disorders can be read in terms of such a position towards discontent.
Interestingly, the covid pandemic has shed a new light on the clinic of capitalism. Confinement measures challenge habitual ways of dealing with non-rapport. Solitary ways of administering jouissance have been magnified, and measures articulated in the name of science provoke the paranoid fear of being the object of a malignant enjoying other.