The centerlessness of global capitalism is psychologically unthinkable, producing fetishist disavowal

Evidence

This syndrome was repeated on a much grander scale with a disaster of a different kind –the bank crisis of 2008. The media focus was on the excesses of individual bankers and on the government’s handling of the crisis, not on the systemic causes of the crisis. I don’t for a moment want to excuse New Labour for its part in such disasters, but it has to be recognized that focus on government, like the focus on immoral individuals, is an act of deflection. Scapegoating an impotent government (running around to clean up the messes made by its business friends) arises from bad faith, from a continuing hostility to the Nanny State that nevertheless goes alongside a refusal to accept the consequences of the sidelining of government in global capitalism – a sign, perhaps, that, at the level of the political unconscious, it is impossible to accept that there are no overall controllers, that the closest thing we have to ruling powers now are nebulous, unaccountable interests exercising corporate irresponsibility. A case of fetishist disavowal, perhaps – ‘we know perfectly well that the government is not pulling the strings, but nevertheless…’ The disavowal happens in part because the centerlessness of global capitalism is radically unthinkable. Although people are interpellated now as consumers – and, as Wendy Brown and others have pointed out, government itself is presented as a kind of commodity or service – they still cannot help but think of themselves as (if they were) citizens. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 130

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a political system’s radical centerlessness is ‘unthinkable’ — sustained by fetishist disavowal rather than belief — is dense enough to alter how one reads blame, agency, and citizenship discourse across many domains.
• DEFINE: Useful example of Zizekian fetishist disavowal (‘I know very well… but nevertheless’) doing concrete analytical work, not just name-dropping.
• XREF: connects to: The centerlessness of capitalism is unconsciously unbearable and disavowed — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 130

Related

• The centerlessness of capitalism is unconsciously unbearable and disavowed (similarity 0.92)

Broader Connections

• The centerlessness of capitalism is unconsciously unbearable and disavowed #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 130