Too Close to the Money A Theory of Compulsive Gambling

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. Key words addiction ■ capitalism ■ desire ■ Lacan ■ Marx ■ Žižek In gambling money is seduced, deflected from its truth. Having been cut off from the law of equivalences (it ‘burns’) and the law of representation, money is no longer a sign or representation once transformed into a stake. And a stake is not something one invests. As an investment money takes the form of capital, but as a stake it appears in the form of a challenge. (Baudrillard, 1979: 139) THE MOST obvious risk from gambling is losing one’s money. However,when a gambler bets $1000 on the outcome of the roulette wheel, theroll of a die or the result of a horserace, there is more to it than simply putting a given amount of money at stake. In gambling, money is lifted out of its ordinary circulation in the capitalist economy and led astray into