Jacques lacan and the consumption clinic

Abstract

The text highlights and discusses the key moments in which Jacques Lacan stood on the issue of consumption and, by doing so, deploys three points. Initially, consumption is articulated to ethics and to the impossibility of thinking it only through the notion of value; the notions of jouissance and desire value become necessary. Next, the association of consumption to trieb, especially to the oral object and to devouring fantasies, shows the change of "consumerism" to "consumption" that leads the subject from a position of consumer to one of an object to be consumed. Finally, consumption is treated in Lacan's last texts through a small mutation in the Master's Discourse that gives rise to the Capitalist Discourse.