4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2025
⏱️ 89 minutes
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Todd McGowan joins the show once again, this time to discuss his newest book "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity". Together, he and Breht discuss commodity fetishism, the tensions between Marxism and psychoanalysis, what a critique of the subjective aspects of capitalism offers anti-capitalist politics, the "superstructural malaise" of late capitalism, Desire and Lack, capitalism's death drive, how to resist becoming a neoliberal subject, and much more.Â
"Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, McGowan shows how the production of commodities explains the role of excess in the workings of capitalism. Capitalism and the commodity ensnare us with the image of the constant fulfillment of our desires―the seductive but unattainable promise of satisfying a longing that has no end. To challenge this system, McGowan turns to art, arguing that it can expose the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate capitalist society and reveal the need for limits. Featuring lively writing and engaging examples from film, literature, and popular culture, Pure Excess uncovers the hidden logic of capitalism―and helps us envision a noncapitalist life in a noncapitalist society."
Check out all our other episodes with Todd HERE
Check out Todd's podcast Why Theory? on your preferred podcast app!
Outro Song: I Want to Work Less by Grand Commander
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0:00.0 | Have you ever had the experience of chasing something, whether it's success, love, money, personal improvement? |
0:09.8 | Only to find that when you finally reach it, the feeling of arrival never quite comes. |
0:16.1 | Maybe for a fleeting moment, it seems like you've made it, but then as soon as the dust settles, |
0:27.0 | a new longing emerges, another goal, another craving, another sense that something is still missing, that you are still missing something. And so the cycle continues, stretching out |
0:32.7 | ahead of you endlessly. The next job, the next relationship, the next purchase, the next version of yourself |
0:40.3 | that finally will feel complete. Capitalism knows this feeling well. In fact, it doesn't just know it, |
0:47.7 | it depends on it. Our entire system is structured around manufacturing and maintaining this |
0:53.3 | feeling of lack. It's not just that capitalism explo feeling of lack. It's not just that |
0:56.4 | capitalism exploits our labor, and it certainly does, but it also exploits desire itself. It convinces |
1:03.0 | us that we can finally get whole if we just consume enough, work hard enough, own enough, optimize |
1:10.7 | enough. And yet, the more we chase, the more the |
1:14.7 | goalpost moves. The more we consume, the hungrier we become. The more we seek satisfaction, |
1:21.1 | the more dissatisfied we are. Because in the end, capitalism doesn't just fail to provide fulfillment. It requires our |
1:30.5 | unfulfillment to sustain itself. At the heart of this is a deep, often hidden paradox. We are not |
1:39.0 | actually suffering from a lack of resources necessarily, but from an excess of production, an excess of commodities, |
1:47.1 | an excess of choices that never bring resolution. |
1:51.7 | Capitalism thrives not on scarcity, but actually on abundance, an abundance designed to keep us |
1:57.8 | endlessly dissatisfied. |
2:00.0 | We are surrounded by an obscene excess of wealth, information, entertainment, branding, |
2:06.6 | self-help, promises of success. |
2:09.3 | Yet we are more alienated, anxious, and existentially hungry than ever before. |
2:15.2 | Why? |
... |
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