José Luiz Aidar Prado 150 for us is not the enjoyment it triggers but the barrier it poses to jouissance. Instead of being besieged by disobedience and transgressive enjoyment, our society has become filled with obedience, with subjects completely committed to sustaining their symbolic identity, their status within the prevail- ing social order (ibid., p. 192). This obedience is circumvented through a communica- tional strategy that presents it as a rebel, its opposite. Advertis- ing uses this strategy frequently. Enunciators are invited to be free and rebellious, as long as they do not threaten the system, as long as they are obedient. Otherwise, there will come antide- pressants, truncheons, prison, cancellation; society is liquid as long as we obey; otherwise, it becomes very solid. As McGowan says, “ironically, despite all the radical claims made today, very few question the global capitalism functioning” (ibid., p. 192). The extreme right questions it, but in a way that only breaks civi- lization, thanatically, against the surplus value of life8. Says the author: only by understanding this obedience to the dic- tates of global capitalism as obedience we can hope to get out of it. Global capitalism seems an insurmountable horizon simply because we do not adequately recognize our own investment in sus- taining it. We see this as insuperable because we don’t want to lose it – and the imaginary satisfac- tion it provides (ibid., p. 193). Jameson (1996) has been saying for decades that the only universal value after the entry into the scene of neoliberal- ism with Thatcher and Reagan is the market. People live in the system as if they were outsiders, not thinking that they could alter the Thanatic functioning of the system. The only way to create new universals is to reenter that society, reconciling ourselves in it through an understanding of how our investment in it takes place: 8 Surplus value of life is a Brian Massumi’s (2020) term, which we will clarify further on.
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