Austerity is structurally sadistic and anorexic fantasy miscalculating bodily limits

Evidence

Neoliberal austerity is at once a form of Sadism — in the technical, psychoanalytic sense, rather than the everyday, moralising sense — and corporate anorexia. What Sadism and anorexia have in common is the belief in the indestructibility of the fantasmatic body: no matter how much I cut, how much I punish, the body will survive… In the Sadist’s case, the fantasmatic body is the body of the endlessly humiliated Other; in the anorexic’s case, the fantasmatic body is, in a sense, their “own”. Yet the infinite elasticity of the fantastic body eventually comes up against the limits of the physical body. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1972

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Fisher’s earlier insights on capital inflicting deliberate suffering (chs 85, 108, 114 on Sadism in austerity, humiliation drives). — connects to: Austerity suppresses consumer demand by starving the population that sustains the economy — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 349; Austerity’s three pressures function to foreclose the imagination of alternatives. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 156; Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 135 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity suppresses consumer demand by starving the population that sustains the economy #expands (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 349
• Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will #expands (0.80)
• Austerity’s three pressures function to foreclose the imagination of alternatives. #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 156
• Austerity rests on a fallacy of composition, not a confidence problem #expands (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 45
• Austerity is a recurring policy suite that entrenches wealth and private primacy #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 21
• Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. #expands (0.70) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135
• Unequal austerity generates populism, nationalism, and violent movement instead of revenue #qualifies (0.70) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 63
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #expands (0.70)
• Modern powerlessness makes living feel like a revocable ration measured by statistics #complicates (0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 178
• Monetary austerity was designed to moralize and discipline economic behavior toward thrift #qualifies (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 759
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #expands (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654