In his reinterpretation of Marx in Time Labor and Social Domination, Moishe Postone argues that contrary to traditional Marxism, capitalism should not be viewed only as a form of concrete domination (i.e., the exploitation of the working class) but rather as a quasi-objective abstract historical dynamic that constitutes a form of abstract domination. In this paper, I will explore the implications of Postone’s reinterpretation of Marx on our understanding of capitalist subjectivity. I will argue that by viewing capitalism as a historical dynamic that both dominates and creates the subject throough proletarian labor, that capitalist subjectivity is defined by a feeling of helplessness and disempowerment that leads to the embrace of forms of anti-capitalism, which fail to challenge capitalism's core tenets (Such as Commodity and Value Production and Proletarian Labor) and instead reinforce capitalism under different political guises. I will argue that by understanding this, we can better understand the failures of social emancipation movements and formulate an alternative to capitalism to create different political and economic formations.

This paper is situated in the poststructuralist political theories between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek on their psycholinguistic analysis on empty signifiers in socio-political changes. I argue that during the emergence of empty signifiers there is another psychic event behind what Laclau calls the “demand” – societal trauma. This introduction of the trauma in political life helps to rethink the role and function of empty signifiers in terms of the temporality of revolution. I apply the temporality model concluded by Freudian and poststructuralist psychoanalysis (i.e. Kristeva, Ettinger, Schmukalla) on timeless trauma and unconscious to understand how empty signifiers act as seemingly “timeless” political representations of the societal trauma beyond a singular traumatic event in the linear time, which push forward social changes toward the healing of the “wounds”. In my presentation, I will also illustrate my above ideas via Erik Satie’s music work Vexations (1983) – treating his motif as a metaphor of an empty signifier emerged from his personal trauma and the 840 repetitions as a procedure of revolution along with the empty signifier.

My paper closely responds to the theme of the conference on “learning from experiences”. As social beings, structural violence from different perspectives (e.g. racism, sexism, colonialism, class struggle) induces trauma within us – our experiences are marked by those traumas while we also “learn” from those traumatic experiences to find urge to push forward social changes.

The phenomenon of perversion emerges in most contexts of human societies, it presents itself in both disguised and conspicuous ways, whose hallmark is the transgression of the Law. One of the most extreme forms of a perverse discourse in a particular Mexican context, is religiousness/mysticism and the need for purification, in a criminal sphere. The case of Nazario Moreno and his religious Order, The Knights Templar of Michoacán is of particular interest because it unifies these three elements in one case within Mexican culture and its subjectivity. This exploration aims to analyze the perverse logic of seeking justice through criminal acts acting as arbiters of divine law, virtue and reason; the act of committing atrocities in the name of a tyrannical God, and it also delves into discerning the extent to which we may venture, and where are the boundaries. Moreno weaves an absurd reality for the outside observer, but seen from the inside, it allows us to observe the fragile reality built from a twisted logic that allows the perverse person to subsist in an intersubjective world. We address the discourse of perversion in a criminal context by the use of a construction of a case in psychoanalysis, by making use of Moreno’s autobiography, the moral manifest of the Knights Templar used by the Knights Templar of Michoacán and some other documents. Finally, we compared a different manifestation of perversion in a different culture and discussed the difference between the perverse individual who seeks to impose their order on the world and the perverse individual who reenacts a past scene.

This paper questions an individualistic perspective of the psychopathological phenomena of perversion, in an attempt to understand how an institutionalization of perversion can be created under specific, subjective circunstances, under the cover of religion or other ideological inspirations.