Part 1 of the Masterclass: Surplus-Value, Surplus-Enjoyment, Surplus-Knowledge

Jacques Lacan loc­ated the ori­gin of his key notion of plus-de-jouir (sur­plus-enjoy­ment) in Marx’s notion of sur­plus-value, and it is worth explor­ing in detail the homo­logy of the two notions, adding a third one, that of sur­plus-know­ledge, a pseudo-know­ledge in the guise of which our ignor­ance appears (“supreme” know­ledge of God and other hid­den forces, con­spir­acy the­or­ies, etc.). Such an ana­lysis is cru­cial for resus­cit­at­ing Marx’s cri­tique of polit­ical eco­nomy, as well as for prop­erly under­stand­ing today’s global cap­it­al­ism and its ideo­lo­gical effects, up to fun­da­ment­al­ist viol­ence

Birk­beck, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don