ABSTRACT
In contemporary analyses of the relation of psychoanalysis to politics, the real has no place; the psychical and the social are conceived as a realtight unit ruled by a principle of pleasure. I propose to show that it is the real that unites the psychic to the social, that this relation is ruled by the death drive. Taking seriously those formulations by which the subject and the unconscious are termed the effect of the social order, I will describe this relation as a causal one. But, reader, please beware: a definition of cause that depends on and is produced through a definition of the death drive will certainly not be familiar.
