ABSTRACT
As narrative, history unfurls as nothing other than chains of signifiers. History is what gets recorded within symbolic register, what receives recognition and memorialization by big others as symbolic orders. Put differently, Marxist historical materialism will have been true—this would be a truth in the temporal key of the future anterior—if it succeeds at remaking subsequent history in its own image and according to its own visions. Yet, starting with Marx himself, the more sophisticated and thoughtful elements of Marxist tradition carefully avoid such vulgarities in handling history. The more transcendentalist side of Lacan proposes that such entities as fantasy and desire (or, more broadly, the fundaments of the libidinal economy) function as trans-historical motors of the movement of history itself. Lacan's oscillations between transcendentalism and historicism leave a lot still to be done both in terms of interpreting and reconstructing his own theoretical framework as well as in terms of re-examining Lacanianism and Marxism with respect to each other.
