Depression and anxiety are captured forms of discontent that rationing and austerity could release.

Evidence

We must convert widespread mental health problems from medicalized conditions into effective antagonisms. Affective disorders are forms of captured discontent; this disaffection can and must be channeled outwards, directed towards its real cause, Capital. Furthermore, the proliferation of certain kinds of mental illness in late capitalism makes the case for a new austerity, a case that is also made by the increasing urgency of dealing with environmental disaster. Nothing contradicts capitalism’s constitutive imperative towards growth more than the concept of rationing goods and resources. Yet it is becoming uncomfortably clear that consumer self-regulation and the market will not by themselves avert environmental catastrophe. There is a libidinal, as well as a practical case, to be made for this new ascesis. If, as Oliver James, Žižek and Supernanny have shown, unlimited license leads to misery and disaffection, then limitations placed on desire are likely to quicken, rather than deaden, it. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 164

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that affective disorders are ‘captured discontent’ misdirected from Capital connects to the chapter on mental health and the Frankfurt School thesis that suffering is individualized away from its social causes. — connects to: Mental health problems are captured discontent that should be redirected at Capital — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 164; Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 164; Widespread discontent is privatised into consumption and social-media venting — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1355 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: Reversing the left’s usual instincts — that austerity and limits are always regressive — by arguing constraint can quicken desire is a genuinely contrarian reframing.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the empirical basis for claiming desired-limitation quickens desire (the Oliver James/Žižek citations are thin, and this claims an empirical general psychological law).

Related

• Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. (similarity 0.87)
• Mental health problems are captured discontent that should be redirected at Capital (similarity 0.86)
• Limiting desire may intensify rather than deaden it (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. #exemplifies (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 164
• Widespread discontent is privatised into consumption and social-media venting #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1355
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601
• Interwar austerity deepened depressions and helped cause the Second World War #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 555
• Modern powerlessness makes living feel like a revocable ration measured by statistics #corroborates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 178