The wire. A profane illumination

Introduction: Considered the best television series of the 21st century, The Wire stages the
city of Baltimore, one of the most violent in the world, taking the cheap drug industry as
its central axis. The dynamics to which this illegal economy gives rise serves as a matrix in
fiction to understand the institutions of contemporary cities and the current context of the
social bond. Methodology: Taking as reference the social texts of Sigmund Freud and the critical
review carried out by Jacques-Alain Miller based on the work of Jacques Lacan, this article
addresses the function of the toxic in this series from current discussions in the psychoanalytic
field. Results: It is possible to corroborate that the drug culture to which David Simon refers
on several occasions implies a push to obtain a plus as the main horizon of his characters
and institutions of which they are a part. The reading proposed in this article suggests that
this cultural mutation can be analyzed from the notion of object plus jouissance proposed by
Jacques Lacan.