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The Unconscious in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Scientific Suppression of the Subject and the Technological Jouissance of Capital

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The Unconscious in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Scientific Suppression of the Subject and the Technological Jouissance of Capital

Abstract

This article draws on Jacques Lacan’s ideas about knowledge, thought, and science, to analyze what happens to the subject of psychoanalysis as new technologies develop and cyberspace replaces the real world. The starting point is Lacan’s depiction of the computer as a thing with thought but without knowledge. After distinguishing knowledge from the data and information on which algorithms and artificial intelligence operate, the lack of knowledge in technological devices is explained by the Lacanian thesis of the scientific suppression of the subject as the truth of knowledge. This suppression is then situated in the history of knowledge, as reconstructed by Karl Marx and Lacan, and contrasted with the symptomatic return of the subject in Marxist and Freudian theories, against the background of what is described as the jouissance of capital. The last section considers the risk of the vanishing of the unconscious in a cyberspace dominated and exploited by capitalism.

Keywords:

  • Keyword: Psychoanalysis
  • Keyword: knowledge
  • Keyword: science
  • Keyword: technology
  • Keyword: cyberspace

How to Cite:

Pavon-Cuellar, D., (2026) “The Unconscious in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Scientific Suppression of the Subject and the Technological Jouissance of Capital”, EJP import test SD7.

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  • Published on 2026-02-06
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