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Rice, Jeffrey Allen

English

2004

M.A.

This thesis investigates recent thinkers' attempts to combine psychoanalysis and Marxism into one unified theory. While this thesis agrees that Marxism and psychoanalysis can be combined--offering a richer, more comprehensive understanding of history, society and the individual--it at the same time endeavors to radically undertake the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of each theory. Thus, I contend that to successfully combine psychoanalysis and Marxism, certain factors need to be reexamined and reinterpreted-namely, the engagement between fantasy and the subject. The limitations of each theory-exemplified throughout this thesis as the engagement between the subject and fantasy-are therefore the prime concerns. Only by understanding our limitations, can we begin to understand the universal.
In the first chapter, I show how Marcuse's theory of subjective fantasy is external to the already existing social conditions, thus producing a 'split' within the subject: the private subject and the public subject. With this new 'split' in the subject, chapter two focuses on Slavoj Zizek's theory of fantasy and how it is informed by and complicates the relationship between the subject and fantasy. The third chapter demonstrates the theory of the Marxist-psychoanalytical subject we have been developing throughout chapters one and two using the film Indecent Proposal, thus illustrating how existence can only be rendered meaningful through a radical loss of fantasy. With the interpretation of Indecent Proposal in mind, the conclusion suggests important ramifications and considerations for the Marxist-psychoanalytic subject's philosophical foundations.