The Nomadic vs Sedentary Father Figures

We have arrived at an observation of rural Nepali society and wish to dig deeper into the phenomena we have seen. The thing in question is the high number of children Nepali families used to conceive up until the recent past. In this post, we believe that rural Nepali society is at a juncture, it is at a moment between the nomadic forms of the social and the sedentary forms of the social. The high but reducing number of children conceived implies that the movement is from a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary (and nuclear family) lifestyle. Nomadic lifestyle had a productive impulse propelling it, and so, given this positivity, it was motivated to be more invested in the world, and produce more...In any case, this juncture between nomadic and sedentary is what has consequences on the number of children conceived, and also eventually on the life styles of these children, and on other related things. In an idealistic vein, we can perhaps say that the movement towards a nomadic society may indeed be possible, since we aren't completely in a sedentary lifestyle yet, but, in reality such a movement looks very impossible.

The nomadic father is a figure which is not present to the world anymore. Perhaps its disappearance owes to the limitations in space for the nomad to travel to, since the world's political orientation has caused space to be divided up among populations which have a strong claim to that space, restricting the nomad his/her mobility. But, the nomadic aspects of life have had an effect on capitalism. Before we say what these effects are, we have to say that we distinguish from other studies of capitalism our study for the following reason: whereas other studies of capitalist society begin with a very basic form of sedentary society as beginning capitalism, we go a step further in believing that not any basic sedentary society, but nomadic society before that was the true originator of capitalism, even given the sheer difference between capitalist societies of today and nomadic formations of before.

The nomadic father figure is known for one thing as it pertains to his/her body: production. We have always associated the nomad with exploitation and movement in the world of things, but this has not been an accurate explanation. Specifically, the nomad's processes of child rearing are special and it is these that gave rise to the productive mentality of society today. First, we have realized that production was not the production of things, but rather the production of children. So what does the nomad do that makes him productive? Precisely that he produces children but 'lets them go'...they are true object small a in the Lacanian sense because they are 'lost objects', they become lost after the nomad conceives them. The nomadic man does not have an enclosure whereupon he can domesticate his children...rather, his children are mobile, and travel to different points in a piece of land, not only, as may be assumed, around sources of water or food, but also to points of beauty, points of significant subjective contemplations etc. In this way, there is a form of productivity to the nomad because he lets his children-as-producers walk the land, and produce from the land, but after that, keep walking, engendering the productivity of the land wherever they go, being a pure producer without concern for the product.

In sharp contrast, the sedentary lifestyle, of which the nuclear family of today is a prime example, is not productive like the nomadic lifestyle. The sedentary lifestyle does not produce signifiers (or signifying actors), those agents that represent what they have to the wider world, take part in the world's symbolic order and produce signs. Rather, the sedentary lifestyle has a single, authoritative signifier, who is the father figure. An appropriate example of the father-as-signifier is the spider, which produces a web to entrap other flies (signs); this laying out of a web of rules is precisely what the function of the father as signifier is, and the objective is precisely accumulation (and accumulation first and only then consumption, meaning that the spider (father) is not concerned with what he eats to survive primarily but is concerned rather with what he can accumulate...it is accumulation first and consumption second)). The father is the signifier and his children are signs, that is, true objects to be manipulated, constructed, designed and arranged a certain way; enclosed via discipline. The sedentary mode of living is accumulative, in the sense that it accumulates children together, and produces children as signs and not as signifiers themselves. The signs come together, as in a sentence composed of words, to give meaning to a signifier, the father. This means that all the children in a sedentary, nuclear family are only important insofar as they provide meaning and significance to the father figure. The nomadic father does not produce object small a (object small a implies both the child and other more general objects) as a sign, as determined, as destined to be a certain way, but rather, produces object small a as a signifier, as something mobile (like himself), and independent, moving, productive but not accumulating. This nomadic child is productive in his/her subjective experiences, in his/her energy expended, and not in the crops he can produce for accumulation, or the children he can produce for accumulation etc.

Capitalism arrives to synthesize both the nomadic and the sedentary. It applies an alternation between accumulation and production, between being mobile and being stationary. Both styles of life are important in capitalism: one has to keep nomadically moving (not just physically but also mentally) but one also has to keep accumulating energy in order to keep moving. But what does this mean for the children and the father figure in capitalism? The children of capitalism are not pure signs, since at one point they can become father figures themselves (through the institutionalization of sexuality) and thereby they get the opportunity to treat their own children as signs. But neither has sexuality made children pure signifiers, pure subjects, they still maintain an element of the sign in them, in their will to collect together, in the cries for unity, in the constant wish for a uniting father figure. There is a trade off between productive sexuality, if it can indeed be called that, and unproductive accumulation of children and wealth. But, can there ever be a return to the nomadic? Can the hilly regions of Nepal, with its independent actors, spread out houses, distributed populations, be called semi-nomadic in one sense? The answer, it seems, is 'no'...the nomadic is alive in the imaginary but not in reality. But lessons can be learned from it: the ways of productive child-rearing and imagining the mother as a nomadic figure who can be allowed more independence in raising children.

However, having said all this, crucially, in anti-capitalist vein, what we are arguing is not that everyone must be a signifier as nomadic children are, but rather that everyone, including the father figure, must be a sign, that there should be no signifying authority. Turning people, animals and other things into signs is an accumulative act rather than a productive act. Everyone must be a sign but without there being a signifying authority or a father figure (if that is at all possible). The question is: is there a sign without a signifier? Nevertheless, even the nomad must (symbolically) 'kill'  the father figure insofar as this father figure is himself a signifier, the figure of authority and agency. The nomad must not just evade the father figure and think that he is free from the father.

The Politician's Historical Trajectory: From an Image Speaking to the Big Other to a Human Small other

What is the 'nature' of the politician? First, there is no unchanging 'nature' of the politician, he has changed with the times. So, how has the politician changed with the times, and what has caused this change, specifically in the relationship between the politicians and "the people" that listen to him, vote for him and trust him with important duties? We believe that the politician is someone who, in his most true manifestation, turns towards the people in all honesty. He is not just a friend of the people, he is the people's best friend, in that, he is a truth-speaking, earnest person when he faces the people (which is why, when the politician speaks, the people turn towards him with an attention that they don't even reserve for their own friends). In his biggest speeches, he comes alive and he at that time is what he truly is. His 'essence' is realized when he is facing the masses. Everything else about the politician, such as the typical manipulative games, are secondary to his ultimate aspiration: to face the people and speak the truth, to articulate the dreams of the people...but this earnestness and honesty of the politician is not an accident, for it is the people who have constructed the politician in this way. They agree to discipline, they adorn him with garlands, they clap when he rises, they weep at his loss...and these things shape the politician. In this sense, the politician is socially constructed.

And what are the characteristics of his? Precisely honesty, virtuosity, an ability to unite everyone via a discourse which is not divisive. The people are never the end point of the politician's campaign or career, they are the continuous reference points that the politician continuously engages with. He constantly turns to the people, to explain what is going on and also to dream again; to keep the dream alive. And the social construction of the politician takes a festive character during election times: the garlands become magnified, the applause louder...and he speaks from the top of a large podium about the desires and disappointments of the people...he speaks generally and he includes all in the crowd in his words. The audience is as general as possible: “Ladies and Gentlemen!” And during election times, the general public approaches the politician and attempts to compose and construct him. The election campaign is an event which is the time of applying "make up" to the politician, and it is a time when everyone, all citizens, are given politicians arbitrarily so that they may begin the process of construction. At this juncture of history, then, the politician is composed in order to serve the wishes of the people to construct him a certain way. The politician is not a powerful independent figure, but a representative of what the people can achieve when their attention is turned towards him. His function is not so well defined, but he has been created as some kind of earnest identity. 

It is crucial to understand that no citizen begins his/her construction of a politician with a blank slate, there is no politician who is not already endowed with something...rather, the politician comes as he is, comes as something, some positive thing, and then the citizen accepts what he is and acts upon him to construct him/her a certain way. There is therefore also gratitude from the politician towards the people...for the people who construct him but also for accepting him as he is. The politician comes to the people not as a performer (even if he seems performative and artificial, this has to do with his personality and not with his desire to hide something from the people) but as a representation of base humanity, as the representation of humanity as it would appear in all its honesty before a complete outsider (the politician's mother or a God); he appears before a big Other, before 'the Thing' which is inanimate and lifeless to the politician's words, but which still calls out, in its being, for a reckoning by the politician. The politician spoke for the people but never stood with the people. It is to the big Other insofar as it remains big Other that the politician is turned and addresses himself. 

And, in Lacanian vein, isn't the image the people create as 'the politician' desired precisely because it is able to represent, in all honesty and in reality, to the big Other? Isn't representing to the big Other (as alien, as complete outsider to the symbolic) a coveted wish of all people? It is with the image (the politician, who is the image created by and of the people) that the big Other has its relation, which is what inaugurates all forms of jealousy and hatred in the people. And so, slowly we are beginning to see that the image, the politician, ceases to be something that represents the people, and becomes more defined by its relation to the big Other, to the complete outsider, the alien. Therein begins the historical process of the hatred towards the politician, and the attempt to reverse the process by which he was constructed by the ideals of the people. It is because of the people's desire to be the desired object of the big Other that an anarchic overhaul of the entire political system, of destroying politics as a whole, become the goals of the people. The most successful political figures have two movements: one movement where they are constructed by the people and approach the big Other, and the second movement which is the attempt to not represent to the big Other, to keep the big Other at a distance (in this agency at pushing the big Other away is the politicians' true power, which is to say that the manifestation of power in politics is a secondary phenomena entirely, one that only arises when there is the need to push away the big Other and come closer to the people). Pushing the big Other away, the politician works in order to recognize the people, and speak to the people precisely to reduce their jealousy (of which they were not in control) and himself become the small other, an ordinary character, a everyday friend and not a special best friend...And as the politician's rejection of the proximity to the big Other is occurring, no longer are the people involved in the social construction of humans, for they have learned their lesson, but rather, they make social institutions, such as schools, factories etc. (As an aside, we can say that the first object of social construction was the human subject itself being constructed into a politician, but later social institutions and social groups became the objects of social construction.) 

With this turn towards rejecting the big Other and communicating with and becoming the small other, we come at another important historical juncture in the construction of the relationship between politician and the people. The big Other becomes ignored, the role of the politician as representing the people honestly becomes rejected. In one sense, it is in this that corruption arises, not as a mode for self-gain, but as a way for the politician to reconnect with the people, to become seen as 'sinful' (and thereby reject the big Other as God, for instance), to become like the people...and the politician himself desires now, he is no longer a desire-less image. And, to end, the applause which signified the applause and celebration at the whole of the people now becomes the applause specifically directed at the politician, not for his representation towards the big Other, but for his sacrificial rejection of such a representation.

What we have is the socially constructed politician getting out of hand before restoring order by himself. This is the trajectory taken by the politician in his relationship with his subjects (people). We come to a conclusion: that before God as the big Other was realized by the people, we had the politician constructed socially (in a sense, in Lacanian vein, before we had the mother as the big Other, we had the mirror stage, where the image was 'adorned' and constructed as a politicized being). The first politicians revealed God to people, but this turn of events was ultimately disappointing to the people, who, with the realization of God, also realized that they themselves wanted to be the representative, prized object in relation to God. In other words, the position of politician became coveted, and even today, we may expect to find a base level politicization in all people. Especially in Nepal, it seems a large majority of people have political sides, opinions, and are political leaders in their own rights; everybody here wants to represent humanity to the big Other; every Nepali person is earnestly ideological, except the actual and official politicians themselves. The politician, however, will once again step forward, but this time as a personality, a character, an individual (other) independent of social construction; he is no longer an image with privileged access to the big Other. It is only when the politician becomes a small other and restricts his role of representing the All before God that the entire political mechanism/apparatus becomes liked and accepted by the people. 

“The Publicity Stunt”: The Representation of (Subverted) Capitalism's Women

The media often brings up cases of when noted celebrities and powerful figures are accused of sexual assault and brought to the legal system (the courts, the judge, the lawyers etc). The media seems to understand sexual assault as a case of gender discrimination, since women are more likely to get assaulted by famous and powerful men. However, what is peculiar about the cases of sexual assault by famous men is that they often are also considered a publicity stunt on the part of the lesser known female figure. Even though this particular opinion about the event is usually professed only in secret and generally considered to be a unjust interpretation, what enables the sexual assault case to turn into a publicity stunt (and not a serious gender-based discrimination) should be looked at.

In one vein, the publicity stunt is viewed negatively, and justifiably so. The publicity stunt (we believe the phrase “publicity stunt” and “going public” goes further in demonstrating a positive connotation than the word “fame” etc does) is an important element within the cultural aspects of capitalism today. The publicity stunt is a quick and effective way of being recognized in the system. What is noteworthy about it is how it has replaced accomplishment, ambition and hard work as characteristics needed to be a successful capitalist subject. Doesn't the publicity stunt show precisely that the demands of capitalism today are for a type of production of subjectivity without the mechanisms of production at play? Isn't the capitalist system, with the receding of the industrial proletariat, going towards production without production processes anyway? And, in the case of a human subject, don't we have the desire to be recognized but without the hassles of hard work? Aren't the machines considered ugly and outdated? The days of capitalism being associated with faceless hard work are truly over. Even so, the evanescent nature of the publicity stunt demonstrates that perhaps we are not completely in a post-industrial age, but that we are getting there. And if “going public” is the dominant trajectory of a capitalist subject's life, then we can really say that the consumer of human capital (the human capital here is the sports star, the celebrity actor, the charismatic politician) is the star, the celebrity and the powerful figure herself. (We are not saying that the publicity stunt is a good or bad thing, but we are saying that it propels a subject radically 'forward' given the context of capitalism, going beyond the prescribed movement of capitalism to an extent that it becomes anti-capitalist.) 

All of this derives from an interesting question: how are women represented in capitalism? We are asking, what is the image of the woman, how is she taken to be by others etc. For the longest time, women were not represented at all, but, then came social institutions were formed which, as an unintended side-effect, began to represent women in them. These social institutions gave women nic(h)e images in the household, within the family, within the process of child rearing, that is, in many ways intimately connected to capitalist things but still marginal as represented and representatives of capitalism. More importantly, these institutions and processes denied women a chance to engage in free competition, a chance to be proper individual and independent identities etc. It is in this context that women decided that it was time to do away entirely with formations in society, such as the household, so that they could arrive at a point where they could properly live a valuable life. They began the process of ignoring free competition and individualism too. Rather than finding a solution to discrimination within capitalism, they went around it, and found the issue of and the concept of “gender discrimination” itself to be a capitalist construct. And so, it is in this way that women began to utilize the legal mechanism in their own way and for their own ends.

When a woman has a sexual encounter with a famous star, sometimes there ensues a legal battle where the woman may claim some wrongdoing etc. Now, someone would argue that it is precisely in this process of claiming wrongdoing that the woman finds herself a purpose in life, an identity etc. However, this accessing of the legal mechanism is in fact just a way of subverting capitalism. This is because, the final conclusion of these sex-related trials is always that the woman used it as a publicity stunt. This means that she negates the legal mechanism and instead attempts to utilize it (one may say, “exploit it”) for her own ends of creating a individual, independent identity. Coming before the law is not the resolution or the final point of a struggle against gender discrimination, rather, it is within the logic of the publicity stunt that the law is utilized. The legal battle is never empowering, but the results of a publicity stunt are, precisely because going public subverts the legal mechanism. The woman's problem is not with the individual man acting out of sexual desire, but with the legal mechanism which thinks it can articulate her own desire. The woman's tactic is straightforward: the more that the justice department is used to give her publicity, the weaker the department itself gets in terms of its seriousness, effectiveness and legitimacy. The woman realizes a very important truth: that the capitalist's law is there to regulate desire, but desire itself does not originate out of the capitalist system. In short, the woman who has sexual relations with a celebrity does not want to punish the celebrity, but wants to demonstrate the fallibility of a law when it is concerned with desire.

In conclusion, what we must not do is celebrate our legal and justice system for its work on gender equality. Whatever gender equality has arrived has been by subverting such a system, that is, by anti-capitalist measures. If the legal system is, in some ways, the pinnacle of the capitalist system because it stands for truth, then subverting it is what makes women who go public in order to drive a hole into the legal system the true stars of our times. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, who asked why people desire their own "repression," we ask why do women desire their own "gender-based oppression"...and the answer is precisely because gender-based oppression has now come within the legal discourse, and it can infect this legal system with true women's empowerment once the woman completely ignores capitalist law's need to pass judgement on her oppression. The woman seeks law in order to ignore it...  

Capitalism as it Encounters the Real (Sweet)

Capitalism may die a 'natural' death, without external attacks on it. It may not be necessary for movements such as communism to attempt to end capitalism, which is the lesson of the post-Cold War days. What is known as late capitalism is the last of the types of capitalism inter-connected via common ideas and ideals: the pursuit of profit, the passionate individualism of the worker etc. But in the near future such signature capitalist ideals will not define capitalism at all. We are approaching the end of capitalism because at the moment we are at a vacuum, where late capitalism is slowly leading to what we can term 'ruined capitalism.' Ruined capitalism is radically different from the different capitalisms of before because of the attitude of the capitalist producers and the attitude of the consumers, and how both of them are constructing the Lacanian Real.

We are at a vacuum between late capitalism and ruined capitalism in the sense that we are facing problems with the capitalist system today but we don't have concrete solutions for them. Problems such as health concerns over products, environmental problems, and problems with the conditions of labor are all things big businesses are having to deal with today, but, one may ask, is there any realistic and applicable solutions to these problems today? If there were solutions, we wouldn't have violent anti-capitalist struggles and strikes to begin with. There is immense anxiety at the lack of solutions. Can't we look at the recent financial crisis of 2008 as an event which demonstrated the immense lack of confidence in the system? And some have suggested that the financial crisis was itself a crisis of confidence...In any case, the outcry over crises is more magnified these days and is more 'news worthy' than the crises themselves.

Capitalism, a very resourceful and enterprising system which produces solutions to its problems time and again, is now faced with problems it can no longer solve. In this sense, capitalism is face to face with a vacuum, caught in between the movement from late capitalism to capitalism in ruins. The capitalists know that if they 'solve' the problems then capitalism is over and if they don't solve the problems capitalism is over. What is argued in this post is that the capitalists will be passive in a sense, not because of their own will, but because the nature of capitalism will be such that it will be programmed to self-terminate. We are faced with problems, but we have no realistic solutions to move the system forward. These scenarios are ruinous to capitalism because capitalism is committed to finding solutions to problems even more than to the production of products.

Capitalism-in-ruins (a term used interchangeably with the term ruined capitalism in this post) is beyond this vacuum of indecisiveness. Ruined capitalism is the time when the capitalists realize and see the end approaching, and choose not to act. For a class of people known for their endeavor and energy, they will come face to face with the faults of their own energy and they will become passive. We predict: the main proletariats of the ruined capitalist age will be the chief capitalists themselves...it is they who utilize their brains to the extreme to come up with complex financial instruments and models, for instance. And we can already see these types of capitalists in the scene: highly knowledgeable and articulate (reports and other documents of faults in products and global warming are plenty, but resolute action is always quite limited) but seldom active and decisive. And who could take the necessary steps to stop global warming? If we ask ourselves truthfully about what is needed to end global warming, the answer is simple: we must end capitalism itself. But this is too vast a project for the capitalists of today, so nobody acts. This will be the trend of times to come: the identification of issues, the undesired experience of these issues and the lack of leadership to solve these issues.

We have looked at the indecisiveness of the capitalist producers, and what of the consumers? The consumers are, on the contrary, too resolute and too conscious of the problems of capitalism. Today, in late capitalism, they enjoy the fruits of capitalism with guilt and concern. However, in tomorrow's ruined capitalism, there is neither guilt nor concern, but a resigned acceptance of the impending collapse. Can we not therefore say that corporate social responsibility has been accepted and applied by big capitalists so enthusiastically because they realize that it is a temporary phenomenon? The activity and agency of the consumer of today will give way to the addicted and hooked consumer of tomorrow's ruins. It could be that big businesses are only appearing responsible in the short run.

The impending collapse of capitalism has a lot to do with the consumer's attitude today, as we will demonstrate with a semi-hypothetical example of Nepali sweets. Not long ago, Nepali mithais (sweets) were accused of being stored and produced unhygenically. The consumer, at this point, was perhaps confident, and wanted better hygiene and regulation. In late capitalism, the capitalists would have promised to deliver better products, subtracting the undesired ingredients from their sweets. However, capitalism was ruined when the capitalists, already hesitant and unprepared, did not promise better quality but instead closed their stores. We have here a complete subtraction of the product, even when the class known as 'capitalist' continues to exist. We have the existence of salesmen without products to sell. To go to the question of the Lacanian Real, the Real is arrived at here via a 'double subtraction': the subtraction of the undesired ingredients, and thereafter the subtraction of the mithai itself, leaving in the place of the product a void, an emptiness, nothing to sell. From material things which can be bought and sold, we arrive in ruined capitalism to the Real as an absence, as something which is arrived at after the product is completely destroyed. The Lacanian Real is often claimed to be unsymbolizable, and it is so precisely because it is arrived at after a dismantling of the product or object; it is the last step in a process of hesitancy and anxiety which makes the Real unsymbolizable. Both the capitalists and the consumer arrive at the Real via a disappearance of the sweet. An 'empty system' is left over, with producers and consumers but with nothing produced and nothing consumed. This 'empty system' is essentially the most defining element of ruined capitalism.

Advertisements in the Post-Consumerist Era

In the consumerist period, advertisements played a major role in facilitating the selling of products. The advertisement agency was called in to ensure that a suitable market was created for some product. Even though big businesses spend a lot on advertisements, today's era can be labeled post-consumerist, primarily because of the decline of one function of the ads: to convince the consumer to buy something, and the advent of another function: to serve as the cultural product of capitalism. In short words, capitalism's claim to art and culture is the advert. Although the ad as cultural product is still an important identity for the advert, the advert no longer has the power and influence it once did when it sold products.

Why have we called today the post-consumerist era? This is because the consumerist era was defined by a subject who desired, but did not know the object of his desire. The consumer of the consumerist era believed the other (the other being the big businesses and the ad agency) had the best guess of what his/her object of desire was. This consumer was not the Lacanian subject supposed to know (his object of desire). The consumer bought only the product, and he fitted in the product into the rest of his lifestyle. And indeed, isn't it from the addition of different products to form a lifestyle that the consumer found value in his life? The desired object fills an absence, and a lack, but only insofar as the desired object creates the lack itself, that is, it creates the absence which it seeks to fill. There is never an ancient and original hole which the new object fills, rather, the new object creates the hole which it then attempts to fill. This is why the object of desire cannot also be an object of satisfaction, for what the object of desire ultimately highlights to the subject is the hole, the painful lack, the saddening gap. In a sense, the object of desire fills the gap but the gap is still there...and the consumer is satisfied, quite strangely, by the filling of any gap whatsoever, perhaps unconsciously realizing the fantastical nature of the production of lacks and objects. Here, the biggest mistake the consumer makes is not realizing that the gap/lack is in the product and not in the subject.

Thus, the advert was very important in two ways: it created the hole in the subject's lifestyle which needed filling, and it also created the object of desire to fill such a hole. So important were the advertising agencies that we can talk of capitalism of the recent past as not governed solely by the big businesses, but governed by a big business-advertiser complex, as a collusion of two institutions. At home, the advertisement governed the family, and at the dealership, the corporation was in charge. And today, while the big business continues to grow in strength and influence, the ad agency seems to be less important. This is because, quite simply, the consumer no longer buys based on adverts, and the product itself has been brought closer in proximity to the consumer. In simple terms, the consumer can touch and feel 'the real thing' (but this real thing is itself also distant no matter how one can tough it) and no longer needs to rely on a picture. The distance needed for an object to be an object of desire is no longer maintained, rather, selling a product relies on irreducible subject-object division.  Desire is going out of the equation. 

So, in this post-consumerist era, what can we say rationalizes the persistent existence of adverts? Precisely the advert as the chief cultural product of our times. The advert is no longer selling the product, it is selling innovation, creativity, a storyline, bright colors and so on. One way in which this benefits the capitalist system is that the advert is, in conventional interpretation, available free of cost, giving capitalism a good face. It can be enjoyed by anyone and anywhere. Each big business or company, through the advert, makes its presence felt in the cultural realm, contributes to the formation of art. The product need not take center stage, indeed, the product is often not even present. Why? Because the producers are artists, because with the advertisement the workforce is satisfied at his/her accomplishment and feels a sense of recognition for his/her work. The worker takes pride when it sees a billboard advertising a product he has worked on, or, any product for that matter, for even the system of which his/her product is a part is important to him/her. The worker is the audience, and it is not so much that he/she is being asked to do something in return; he watches the art piece like a movie and moves on. From the consumer being sold a product, in post-consumerism we have the worker being 'made proud.' Ads contribute to the 'cultural enrichment' of capitalism. In an era of social responsibility, it seems that contributing to the cultural field and realm is the most responsible and thoughtful action big business can take. And this would be a good thing were it not placating workers to work in bad conditions, for less pay, and generally ignoring other ways of being responsible which would improve quality of life in a more in-depth manner.

The consumer, now ignored by capitalism and adverts, feels autonomous (and, interestingly, the machines which make the consumer feel autonomous and independent are themselves created by big businesses...the hand held gadgets of our times). The consumer actively seeks the product, which is one reason why the product is made present to the touch and the eyesight of the consumer. The consumer learns of the product in conversations, in interactions, outside of the media which it finds untrustworthy. The consumer, therefore, is not one to passively consume, but rather to actively seek an object to fill a lack. The consumer is now an adventurer, his/her faith in the product firmly in place.

To end, a note on big businesses in the post-consumerist era. No longer are all firms advertising and fighting over any and all advertising slots and spaces. Rather, one advertisement attempts to sell all products, all objects. There is no such thing as monopoly or duopoly, rather, these are only expressed in the realm of advertisements. Rather, the big businesses do not compete, but help one another sell all products. In a slightly positive note, perhaps we can say that the creativity invested in advertisements is something that may potentially engender more creative products themselves. However, the fact that the adverts are to 'stay away from the products' in today's times, it is likely that the role of the advertisement will decline even more. Perhaps big businesses have realized that advertisements had begun to point to the truth of the lack inherent in products, rather than selling the idea of the consumer himself as lacking.

Late Capitalism and the Supervillain

We are attempting to shed some light on the peculiarity of the 'supervillain' of our Hollywood times. Anyone familiar with Hollywood's most popular movies of today knows that the supervillain of today is usually the professor, and here we try to illuminate some qualities of the professor that may make him a supervillain. There are two facets of this supervillain which are discussed here, which have important implications for the discussion concerning late capitalism: one is the fact that this supervillain seems to possess a creativity, and more specifically, an enterprising attitude (although this supervillain's creative potential is always utilized to make some form a weapon and never for other more nuanced functions, such as the creation of strategies to beat the superhero)¹. The other interesting fact about the supervillain is that he is, in this reading, above and beyond the villains in reality. Villains in reality are burglars, people of color or communists etc, but the supervillain seems to resist such categorizing altogether; he is a single individual acting out of individual interests. He is neither left nor right, neither for the people or against them, and, quite surprisingly, he is not even interested in benefiting his own self. Having said this, we will still attempt to place the supervillain within the capitalist system as a peculiar 'character' of late capitalism.

How could such a villain develop in Hollywood, and what is it about the superhero-supervillain movie format which makes it so appealing to Hollywood and to capitalist societies in general? Hollywood is supposed to be concerned with 'propagandizing,' implying that the villain should be based on real life social formations and identities. And this is not just any villain, but a supervillain, one that is on par with the superhero in terms of his power and ability. But, whereas the superhero is in many ways a representation of the people, an extension of the passion of the people, the supervillain does not have his own team. His best characterizations arise when he embodies the Freudian uncanny: he is an alien, uncanny and differentiated from everything which is expected of in reality and in the movies. What we mean is that this villain is not only once removed from the hero, but twice removed from the ordinary villain itself. He is once removed from the small other (the ordinary villain) and hence, he is the big Other². What we must first realize, then, is that the uncanny is the style taken up by the big Other, the uncanny is the garment worn by the big Other. Whenever someone seems uncanny to us, we may speculate that we are in the presence of the big Other.

We have heard of the claims (made by Zizek) that the big Other is the unreachable depth of the subject, and here, the big Other supervillain is precisely the depth of capitalism. What we are claiming is that the supervillain is an enemy to capitalism, insofar as he is also a capitalist himself. In late capitalism today, the concern is not so much with the 'other' threat, the external threat: the threat of the communists, the threat of the people of color etc, but rather, late capitalism, of which Hollywood is one of the primary institutions, considers internal enemies to be more dangerous. This biggest threat to capitalism is a form of capitalist itself. In this case, it means that late capitalism is more about management than war, in that, it is about the careful management of the internal threat rather than an external one. The threat is inherent to capitalism and not outside of it. And we may ask, why are there sequels of the superhero movies? Precisely because the villain is never killed (for one does not kill what is inherent to oneself) but he/she keeps returning in different garbs. The villain is managed away, consigned, maybe imprisoned or trapped, but never killed.

In a sense, Zizek's accusatory claim that corruption is at the core of the system of capitalism and not outside of it as an external threat is not really a dramatic accusation but rather a statement of fact. With the supervillain as located within the late capitalist system, we arrive at an answer as to the two observations made of the supervillain professor: one, that he is enterprising, and two, that he is not defined by any social identity along race/class/gender lines. The professor creates something, and therein he expresses himself as a desiring subject. His desire is peculiar, as it is not ultimately motivated by a will to belong to a race/class/gender, but rather to separate oneself from such categories. Unlike the communist enemy, he/she does not want to belong to a group of people with satisfied needs, rather, he/she deliberately wills his detachment from belonging. He/she is the expression of a radical death drive; he/she is the expression of the subject whose desire is self-castration. It thus seems that desire itself is the enemy of capitalism.

And with desire as the enemy, we arrive at why enterprising villains are the supervillains of Hollywood. They want too much of what late capitalism is about: individualism and servitude to consumerism (that is, finding the consumption of the other pleasurable). The enemy for late capitalism, which is managerial capitalism, is enterprising capitalism itself³, which is an earlier form of capitalism still expressed among some subjects. Perhaps managerial capitalists find that the proliferation of capitalism without responsibility, without a balancing act, is not something positive for the world at the moment. Capitalism with checks and balances is the aim at this period. In a self-critical vein, the enemy for late capitalism is capitalism itself. But this type of self-criticism always positions the refined self in a more permanent position: it bolsters and strengthens managerial capitalism itself so that the evolution of capitalism to other sub-types will be more tough. To put it more abstractly, the self is preserved as a site of superiority, and other further enemies to capitalism are slowly being developed. One of our predictions is, therefore, that the enterprising class will be the newest 'other' or excluded group of capitalism, same as people of color are (in some readings). What we have come to is a peculiar observation: that the more problematic movement in capitalism is from the big Other to the small other, from the Other which is a part of the self and not addressed, to the other which has to be discarded and ignored. We can predict and say that late capitalism itself will begin to show authoritarian and strict tendencies in its management of populations.

Ultimately, this paper is about how people should best enjoy the late capitalist superhero movie. There is no point in enjoying the movie by identifying with the superhero: in fact, we are in a time where the sinister enjoyment of an audience member identifying with the supervillain is more relevant than the enjoyment of someone identifying with a superhero. In managerial capitalism, we must begin to enjoy the interactions and the dialogues between the two antagonistic characters, and we must find the resolution not in the film's plot line and structure, but in other scenes and with other, marginalized interpretations of the film's characters. We must learn to enjoy as manager and not as hero or villain. The ego's identification with a character on screen must be swiftly resisted. In a sense, we have returned to Greek theater, where the chorus stands in for the audience, and inaugurates the audience itself within the theatrical performance. We must act as if we are the chorus of the superhero and supervillain dynamic, for therein is the managerial role.

1The supervillian's inventiveness is probably Hollywood's way of rationalizing the proximity between science and creativity, so that science is seen as an adventurous endeavor.

2We are here deliberately resisting Lacan's claim that there is no other of the other, and reading keenly on his lack of comment on whether there is a big Other of the small other.

3But entrepreneurship being the enemy is not the problem in managerial (late) capitalism, which is the more astounding fact for us.   

The Superhero: A Symptom of Change

It seems that one of the most important things in a subject's life which elicits symptoms is change. When there is change or some sort of transformation in a subject's life, then there are symptoms that signify to the subject that there is a change occurring. This symptom as a signifier of change is true for both the individual subject and the whole of society (“the social”). It is important to note that the symptom does not imply a resistance to change or pose as a supporter of change, but rather it only neutrally signifies that change is occurring. Indeed, this is the difficulty for psychoanalysis, which has to justify its intervention even when faced with the fact that nothing negative is going on. The symptom, even when it is a human subject, is truly lifeless. It serves as an attraction of anxieties from the other audience members. 

We believe that the superhero is also a symptom of systemic change. As Spiderman or Superman, the production of the superhero by Hollywood movies is spreading across the social the signifier that the times are dramatically and drastically changing. This is evident because the superhero is defined by a difference from the rest of society, he is not of the same time as the rest of the social; he is quite extremely ahead of the times. Dramatic change means that we are not only entering a new generation or a new century, but that we are entering a new age entirely. This new age which we are entering brings in man such a change that he is not to be defined by the ways of living that are prevalent today, but something makes of his entire life different from ours. The superhero is a symptom that a new age is upon us.

But this does not mean that the superhero is not also a product of normalcy. Indeed, the superhero always begins life as normal, and only through an abnormal reaction to something does he become a symptom. It is because of an external factor that his life becomes different from ours; it does not have anything to do with the superhero's character or behavior. Beneath his mask or superhero quality, the superhero is still an ordinary subject. It is as this ordinary subject that the superhero can serve as a metaphor for the rest of the ordinary social. The superhero expresses the anxiety of the social with regards to the change into a new age. He demonstrates that the social considers itself limited as to the amount and type of power it has to become a society of the new age.

The symptom therefore demonstrates an anxiety, and, as all anxieties, is directly related to change. The superhero, however, does not enter when there is any type of change, but only when there is drastic and dramatic change in society. The superhero signals the coming of the new age, and whenever new ages arrive in society, there is an increase in the appetite and consumption of superhero images.