Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity.

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: Offers the genuinely constructive ‘cure’ that ch7’s critique of biologizing depression pointed toward — politicize affect against its cause. — connects to: Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 82; Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 42; Legitimate workplace grievances get pathologised as individual mental illness — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2493 (+3 more)

Related

• Mental health problems are captured discontent that should be redirected at Capital (similarity 0.91)
• Depression and anxiety are captured forms of discontent that rationing and austerity could release. (similarity 0.87)
• Legitimate workplace grievances get pathologised as individual mental illness (similarity 0.83)
• Biochemical explanations of mental illness serve capitalism by depoliticizing suffering (similarity 0.82)
• Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes (similarity 0.82)
• Stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness (similarity 0.82)
• Treating mental illness as brain chemistry depoliticizes it and serves capitalist interests (similarity 0.81)
• Capital privatizes stress as illness then profits from treating it (similarity 0.80)
• Medicalizing depression blocks political explanation of its systemic causes (similarity 0.79)
• Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Legitimate workplace grievances get pathologised as individual mental illness #expands (0.70) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2493