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"The mother of every insane form: fetishistic interest and capitalistic perversion".

Authors :
Johnston, Adrian
Source :
Journal for Cultural Research. Sep2024, Vol. 28 Issue 3, p251-267. 17p.
Publication Year :
2024

Abstract

Money is the epitome of Marx's fetishised commodity. And, in Marxist discussions of the connected topics of currency and commodity fetishism, it often is left under-appreciated that such fetishism reaches its apotheosis only with the development of 'interest-bearing capital.' Herein, I perform two complementary gestures, one as regards Marxism and another with respect to psychoanalysis. Apropos Marxism, I counter-balance the usual, long-standing (over)emphasis on commodity fetishism as per the first volume of Das Kapital with a foregrounding of this fetishism as per the third volume. Apropos psychoanalysis, I shift away from its traditional fixation on reducing financial matters to libidinal contents. I explore instead the implications of the forms of capitalist fetishism for reconsidering the forms of intra-subjective defence mechanisms. This leads me to posit a complementary inversion of Lacan's dictum according to which 'repression is always the return of the repressed': The return of the repressed sometimes is the most effective repression. To pose a rhetorical question paraphrasing Brecht: What is the laundering of money compared with the laundering that is money? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
14797585
Volume :
28
Issue :
3
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Journal for Cultural Research
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
179146941
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2024.2373453