Libidinal economy

Libidinal Economy. Trans. Ian Hamilton Grant. Bloomington Indi-... 

Therein resides the libidinal economy of the capitalist consumption in the production of objects which do not simply meet or satisfy an already given need, but create the need they claim to satisfy (the publicity usually operates in such a way that the consumer becomes aware of desires they were not even aware they possessed ), giving the ultimate twist to Marx s old claim that production creates the need for consumption, for tlie objects it produces. Which is why these objects are no longer. . . constrained to the natural series of oral object, anal object, voice, gaze, and phallus, but comprise die proliferating multitude of cultural sublimation, which, however, is strictly correlative to a certain lack—the excess of capitalist consumption always functions as the reaction to a fundamental lack. ... 

Elsewhere in the same book, Zizek speaks of the transcendental illusion of desire and the internal, inherent obstacle constitutive of desire as such. This is certainly a far cry from earlier Frankfurt School attempts to incorporate psychoanalysis into Marxism whereas Marcuse, for example, treats the dysfunctionality of individual libidinal economies as, primarily, a gratuitous feature of capitalism a la a temporary and unnecessary set of particular socioeconomic arrangements, Zizek, in his reliance upon... 

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