Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis (CIDA) Book Launch Presentations: “A Rebel Unconscious” and “Living Through Capitalism”

Two scholars present their new books – on topics highly relevant to current events and debates.

Speakers

Gustavo Sánchez (King’s College London) - A Rebel Unconscious: Interrogating the Desire for Social Change in Chile’s Estallido (Palgrave)

This book offers a novel approach to social change by challenging conventional views of the emancipatory nature of political movements. Focusing on the 2019 Chilean revolt, it empirically demonstrates the contradictory ways in which socially desirable experiences are unconsciously organised. Drawing on interviews and observations with politically engaged scholars, the book systematically maps unconscious fantasies that offer solutions to the uncertainty surrounding emancipatory identifications. Each of these fantasies illustrates that recognising oneself in the experience brought about by the revolt is not as straightforward as the literature tends to assume. The central claim of the book is that there is an alienating aspect at play in the desire for social change that cannot be eradicated. Emancipation, thus, becomes less a matter of getting rid of alienation than of its imaginary organisation through fantasy.

A Rebel Unconscious is intended to pique the curiosity of readers interested in contemporary popular uprisings, struggles against neoliberalism, and the unconscious dimension of everyday life. It also contributes to psychosocial and Lacanian studies by expanding the interpretive potential of fantasy to include emancipatory experiences, revisiting some established premises of these fields.

James Chamberlain (Mississippi State University) - Living Through Capitalism: Resisting Devastation Through Communities of Life (Edinburgh University Press)

This book explores how capitalism uses and abuses life, and presents communities of life as a practical means of resistance. In particular, the book shows how capitalism exploits life’s capacity for self-production across myriad species, enlists us in environmentally damaging behaviour, inflicts immense physical and mental suffering in unjust and avoidable ways, and undermines the ethical quality of life for all. The best chance to find meaning in this context,  is resistance, and the affirmation of communities of life.

The book proposes eight theses on communities of life, including: the orientation of communities of life to satisfy the needs of all beings that constitute them, and to the growth of life rather than economic growth; the abolition of private property in favour of various forms of shared ownership; post-work politics; and the need to recognize the interdependence of life to enact multi-species communities.