Abstract

This paper describes the relationship between technics and desire in light of Bernard Stiegler’s new critique of political economy. The starting point for the analysis is Stiegler’s critique of the reinterpretation of Freud’s legacy by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. The context of the analysis is the ongoing mutation of consumer capitalism into computational capitalism—one in which automated calculation systems are used to control all forms of mental and affective human activity. Digital automatization, I argue, encourages a different view of what Marcuse called “the automatization of the superego.” It also requires us to rethink to what extent desire is conditioned techno-logically beyond the limits of Marcuse’s critique of Freud, capitalism and technology. The article pays special attention to Stiegler’s reinterpretation of the theory of sublimation in relation to contemporary capitalism and its technological infrastructure (from television to digital platforms). It is also an attempt to include the question concerning technology in psychoanalytic thinking.