Qualifying alienation and de-reification in the capitalocene, or, more anthropocentrism or less anthropocentrism? Yes, please!

This essay qualifies recent psychoanalytic-Marxist arguments which defend anthropocentrism. These arguments disagree with the ecophilosophical claim that human alienation from the rest of nature is historically contingent, and instead recognize human alienation as constitutive of human subjectivity. The anthropos, in this view, is always-already decentered, and an emancipatory project must recenter it. This essay qualifies these arguments by discussing how alienation is both constitutive and contingent, with the contingency of capitalist modernity producing an illusion of the anthropos as active and centered. It is therefore important to critique anthropocentrism qua a historically contingent ideological illusion, as well as support anthropocentrism qua an emancipatory project. The essay then positions this project within the context of Lacan’s four discourses. It advocates raising nature to the agency and dignity of the hysteric, so that it can help split human subjects interrogate the apocalyptic master signifier which is the capitalist form of anthropocentrism.