Fetish and cruelty inside and outside Capitalism

Abstract

Magic, spells and sorcery are an omnipresent theme in Artaud’s work. The purpose of this article is to think of its double face, libidinal and social-economic, based on the Anti-Oedipus of Deleuze and Guattari, i.e. to explicit how the authors created a philosophical model capable of thinking social life in different historical moments, as a universal history, understood as a psychotic process. A society is then, generally speaking, understood as determined way of desiring, repressing and blocking unconscious desire, raising and erecting a quasi-cause external to desire itself and the engine and raison that legitimates and justifies social life. This quasi-cause is the fetish. It is present in all societies, the primitive, the barbarian and the capitalist. The relevance of this article is in its attempt to expose how the Anti-Oedipus presents an economic-libidinal theory of History, combining marxism and psychoanalysis.