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Liberals smirk at Trump’s narcissism, but, as renowned theorist Anselm Jappe explains, contemporary capitalism has turned everyone into a narcissist.
The Greek myth of Erysichthon describes the fate of a king whose hunger drove him to eat until the only thing left to devour was himself. This image—of a society spiraling inexorably in a self-destructive dynamic—forms the starting point of Anselm Jappe’s investigation into the relationship between contemporary capitalism and subjectivity, or our personal experience of the world.
In a work that unites the critique of political economy and the psychoanalytic tradition, Jappe explores the dynamics of contemporary capitalism and explains how internalizing them creates a specific kind of person—a narcissist, someone who can only interact with the world by consuming it and who cannot conceive of limits to this consumption. In conversation with Marx as well as Freud, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Christopher Lasch, Jappe probes the ways in which the churning of the capitalist machine, ceaseless and yet devoid of real purpose, creates an endless hunger that increasingly ends in spectacular violence.
Everyone can feel that the world is getting angrier. The Self-Devouring Society provides an original and rigorous explanation of why.
"An absolutely remarkable essay on the links between narcissism and ultra-capitalism. It should be read with a solid reserve of coffee and silence at your disposal: its analysis is as fascinating as it is sharp."—Maïa Mazaurette, GQ France
"Anselm Jappe describes the slow development of capitalism through the growing narcissism of the subject. The indifference and cruelty of capitalism, obsessed with quantitative value...is mirrored in the narcissist's indifference and cruelty to others."—Romaric Godin, Mediapart
“...Capitalism creates a profound anthropological mutation, according to the author, by destroying all the symbolic and material limits to its expansion.... The globalization of capitalism being practically complete today, the modern subject ends up internalizing the ‘“death drive’” of this fetishized world, the crucible for the outbursts of extreme violence that strike at the very heart of the most developed countries.”—Mehdi Benallal, Le Monde Diplomatique
Praise for previous work:
“A clear-headed account… far and away the best we have so far.” —Times Literary Supplement
“The only book on Debord in either French or English that can be unreservedly recommended… particularly useful for its extensive treatment of the Marxian connection that is usually ignored in culture-oriented accounts of the Situationists.”—Ken Knabb, editor of Situationist International Anthology
“Jappe successfully gets to grips with the content of Debord’s and the SI’s activity in a way that is accessible and doesn’t require a vast amount of prior knowledge or an extensive vocabulary of obscure jargon in order to understand it.”—Do or Die
“Political writing is always instrumental as well as utopian. Debord’s is no exception. Only sometimes writing has to reconcile itself to the idea that its time of instrumentality—its time as a weapon—lies a little in the future. Jappe’s book is true to its subject, above all, because it reads Debord, and helps us read him, with that future in mind.”—T.J. Clark, from the Foreword
Anselm Jappe is a philosopher and social critic who explores the intersection between contemporary capitalism, art, and subjectivity. He currently teaches art history and political and economic theory at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Sassari in Sardinia. His books have been translated into several languages. Books in English include Guy Debord (U.California/PM) and The Writing on the Wall: On the Decomposition of Capitalism and Its Critics (Zero). In 2015, Le Magazine Littéraire listed Jappe as one of “Thirty Names in French Thought to Watch Out For.”
Eric-John Russell teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Université Paris 8. He is the author of Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord: Why Everything is as it Seems and an editor of Cured Quail. He lives in Berlin.
Prologue: The King Who Devoured Himself
1. The Fetish that Rules the World
What the Critique of Value Can Teach Us
Bad Subjects
It’s Decartes’s Fault
Excursus: Descartes as Musicologist and the Acceleration of History
Kant, Philosopher of Liberty?
The Marquis de Sade and the Moral Law
Enough with Philosophy—Deeds
Narcissism as Consolation for Helplessness
2. Narcissism and Capitalism
What Is Narcissism?
Narcissism and the Fear of Separation
Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse
Christopher Lasch: Narcissism as a Critical Category
A Little History of Narcissism
The Narcissist-Fetishist Paradigm
Returning to Nature, Defeating Nature—or Defeating Capitalist Regression?
3. Contemporary Thought in the Face of Fetishism
The Loss of Boundaries?
Invoking Authority to Escape the Market?
From Idealism to Materialism
New Forms, Old Misfortunes?
New Discussions on the Misery of Our Times
A Mutation Older than the Digital
4. The Crisis of the Subject-Form
The Death-Wish of Capitalism
Amok and Jihad
Understanding Amok
No Reason Anywhere
Capitalism and Violence
Epilogue: What To Do with the Bad Subject?
Appendix: Essentials of the Critique of Value