Deconstructing Capitalism through Perversion: Readings of The Invention of Morel

João Albuquerque

Deconstructing Capitalism through Perversion: Readings of The Invention of Morel

João Albuquerque

Abstract

The central argument of this article lies in the intent to think, from a reading of The Invention of Morel, about the subversion possibilities, simultaneously discursive and operational, of certain structures of capitalism, carried out by discrete elements of society, regardless of their social standing. Discussing Morel himself and his invention, I postulate the hypothesis that Morel is subversive because he is perverse. As a preamble to this discussion, and in an attempt to turn it into a critique of current times, a reading of Slavoj Žižek’s 2009 article entitled “Censorship Today: Violence, or Ecology as a New Opium for the Masses” will be undertaken. Through a comparative analysis of the rational underlying the four antagonisms which, in Žižek’s opinion, will prevent the indefinite reproduction of the current “naturalization” of capitalism in the global world, and Morel and his invention, one concludes the latter’s obscene perversity causes, through exaggeration, potentially destructive effects (ecological, biological, communicational and of exclusion) of the very mechanisms and capitalist subsystems which generated them, thus deconstructing their significant codes

Keywords

Žižek, capitalism, perversity, The Invention of Morel, obscene, society.

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