Too Close to the Money

A Theory of Compulsive Gambling

Bibliographic Data

ID2352223
AuthorsOle Bjerg (0000-0003-3310-6680, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume26
Issue4
Pages47-66
Publication date2009-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0263276409104968
OpenAlexW2106495587
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited17

This article explores the relationship between gambling and capitalism. The subjective being of the compulsive gambler provides insight into the role of money in capitalism. Using the Lacanian approach of Žižek, money is analysed as a sublime object of capitalist ideology. In gambling, however, the subject engages money in a very direct encounter with the Lacanian 'Real', circumventing the ordinary symbolic order of capitalism. This results in a momentary de-sublimation of money, stripping it of the metaphysical properties otherwise vested in it by capitalism. For the compulsive gambler, the de-sublimation has become permanent, making it impossible for him to function as an ordinary capitalist subject. He has come too close to money, leaving him in a pathological state of being out of joint with capitalism

Aesthetics · Capitalism · Economics · Ideology · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subject (documents · Sublimation (psychology · Sublime · Gambling Behavior and Treatments · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology

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