Neoliberal austerity expresses sadistic drives, not just economic calculation

Evidence

This programme has to be understood in libidinal as well as politicaleconomic terms (because there is no economy without politics, no economy without libido). It is a psychopathology of the corporate elite. Even if the ultimate libido driving capital is miser-masochism (I will let myself become the means by which capital grows and proliferates), it’s clear that capital — which can machine whatever desiring complexes it needs — has from the start called upon an ancient Gothic impulse towards humiliating and subjugating others. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1971

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Fisher argues austerity policy cannot be analyzed in political-economic terms alone but requires a libidinal framework — that capital machines the desiring complexes it needs, drawing on a ‘Gothic’ impulse toward humiliation.
• XREF: Connects to critiques of instrumental reason and ‘racket theory’ where survival requires compulsorily joining destructive systems. — connects to: Post-2011 austerity governance operated through a spreading fog of despair; Austerity is structurally sadistic and anorexic fantasy miscalculating bodily limits — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1972; Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity is structurally sadistic and anorexic fantasy miscalculating bodily limits #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1972
• Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. #corroborates (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135
• Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will #corroborates (0.82)
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #qualifies (0.78)
• Neoliberalism induces risk-bearing then blames the victims when risk fails #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 351
• Austerity rests on a fallacy of composition, not a confidence problem #complicates (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 45
• Neoliberalism governs through guilt and debt rather than the body #qualifies (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 53
• Neoliberal welfare policy has privatized stress and depoliticized depression #expands (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601