The machine of jouissance

The capitalist discourse operates as a relentless programmer of our desire. It doesn't limit itself to selling us objects: it installs in us the feeling that we need them, that without them something is missing. Like a perverse algorithm, it anticipates our "desires" before they even arise, creating a perpetual thirst that no object can truly quench.

What contemporary clinical practice reveals is the trap of this device: each consumer object promises a satisfaction that, being unattainable, pushes us toward the next object in an infinite chain. It's not a cycle of desire but of jouissance: that paradoxical satisfaction which, in its compulsive repetition, produces more discomfort than pleasure. The latest iPhone isn't an object: it's a gear in this machinery of jouissance.

The paradox is that this system doesn't work despite its failure, but because of it. Each unfulfilled promise of satisfaction pushes us to seek the next object, the next gadget, the next experience that promises to be "the definitive one." Capitalism doesn't sell products: it trades in promises of completeness that, in failing, fuel their own continuity.