The Libidinal Economy (Theories of Contemporary Culture)

Rating:
Summary: good stuff
Review: An important work by the late, missed and brilliant Francois Lyotard. An effective response to Deleuze and Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus", Lyotard almost succeeds in showing the libidinal drives underlying not only the economy but a critique of Marxism too. Here while seemingly accepting Freud's idea of the libido, Lyotard shows how much more complex and satisfying his take of society is compared to the cumbersome and unsuccessful try by Deleuze and Guattari to combine Marx and Freud. Lyotard uses ideas from Bataille to stress the organic development of man and society in contrast to the mechanistic structures of "Anti-Oedipus" which is reminiscent of most of the French rationalist school who want to reduce everything to equations of either bodies without organs, or a formula by Descartes.