Abstract

Zizek insisted on the ‘temporal gap between the production of value and its actualization’ (Zizek, 2009b [2006], p. 52): ‘the temporality here is that of the futur antérieur: value “is” not immediately, it only “will have been,” it is retroactively actualized, performatively enacted’ (ibid.). His use of the word ‘gap’ calls to mind the psychoanalytic literature on which Zizek draws, which provides a way to understand the 2007 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and its aftermath. This paper presents three key ideas about the GFC. First, the GFC was a traumatic encounter with lack, in which global capitalism confronted a gap at the centre of its chain of signifiers. Whether the financial system is seen as a series of promises or a system for allocating and hedging risk, a gap or lack remained at the origin of its chain of signifiers. Secondly, many explanations of the crisis focus on ‘getting back to fundamentals’, which can be read as an attempt to paper over the lack. Finally, in the panic to re-establish the master signifier, global finance tossed aside core justifications for capitalism, and it is not yet clear what the results will be: re-establishment of the old regime, a return to a Primal Father, or a turn to the analyst’s discourse