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Zizek says Post-Oedipal capitalism is the dominant system today, and this is in reference to Deleuze and Guattari's work and issue against Freud. From WP:

Deleuze and Guattari analyze desire and propose multiple ideas about it from the standpoint of schizophrenia and psychosis, as well as from the social developments that capitalism has unleashed. They refer to psychology, economics, the creative arts, literature, civilization, psychiatry, anthropology and history in engagement with these ideas.1 They outline a "materialist psychiatry" modeled on the unconscious in its relationship with its productive processes, which in contrary to institutional psychoanalysis is built on the concept of desiring-production which interrelates desiring-machines and bodies without organs, repurpose Karl Marx's historical materialism to detail their different organizations of social production, "recording surfaces" and the act of "inscription", and develop a critical practice that they called schizoanalysis which the book proposes.

Can someone explain exactly what Zizek means by post-Oedipal capitalism, or how it relates to the critique of Freud by French modernists?

J D
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Ash Rivers
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    Maybe, in order to understand what "Post-Oedipal capitalism" is, we have to understand what "Oedipal capitalism" can be... – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Feb 24 '22 at 10:33
  • Tweaked tags and expanded question with links since Continental philosophy seems to confuse previous reviewers. – J D Mar 02 '22 at 05:25

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Suppose the Oedipal refers to the psychological reproduction of patriarchial formations. D&G make us think about how this norm is historically set and undone in a collective and unconscious surface. "Post" refers to a relationship of overcoming. Capitalism in a way erodes the fixity of the old patriarchial norm, hence Zizek's assertion that contemporary Capitalism is post-oedipal.

Basically Deleuze and Guattari are criticizing Freudian analysis and practical applications for participating in the same strictures it deems to treat. Mind that Freud was widely popular for Lacanian disciples back in the 70s in France.

Zizek critizes D&G for he thinks they are affirming this post-oedipal capitalism by their affirmation of nomadism, multiplicity, flux, etc.

DG agree with Zizek that indeed, we can celebrate the undoing of strictures of the old. But that is not the problem. The problem is that capitalism always creates new ways of confinig and oppressing us for it's own persistence (the "reterritorializations"). And then we can push this further. D&G don't affirm the "post-oedipal" artifices contemporary capitalism creates for us, but a desiring which is free of strictures once and for all.

snacks positive
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