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Theory Redux (Polity)
Narcokapitalisme
Een prikkelend essay dat de geschiedenissen van verdovende middelen, geestesziekten en angst voor en controle van de massa met elkaar verweeft.
140 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2022
19 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Laurent de Sutter
84 books22 followersLaurent de Sutter (born December 24, 1977 in Brussels), is a French-speaking Belgian philosopher. He is a professor of law theory at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He also directs the Perspectives critiques collection at the Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) and the Theory Redux collection at Polity Press in London4. He is also a member of the Scientific Council of the International College of Philosophy
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 30, 2020
Another netgalley one. I honestly felt really confused, the title made me think it was going to be a history of sorts on drugs/capitalism/pharma but that wasn't what this was at all. This was a philosophy book that was basically trying to make some point about mental illness, the formation of medication, the framing of excitement as a negative thing, the framing of politics and the crowd as something needing control, and something about being and how madness and excitability make a person not be. It's basically incoherent as philosophy books tend to be in my opinion. Honestly mostly just annoyed I once again ended up reading about mental illness and had to see the word ontology so many times. There were a lot of interesting ideas brushed upon in here though, and some of them I want to look into, especially around positivism criminology. I just think this book suffers from being a philosophy book where interesting ideas are presented but there's also tons of assertions made or nonsense in between the interesting ideas that makes it almost pointless to even bother to trudge ones way through it all.
October 8, 2021
To be excited, is to be called to the tribunal.
When Morton and Jackson filed a patent for anesthesia in 1846, a new kind of subject was fashioned worldwide, predicated on manic-depressive psychosis. This kind of psychosis meant that the Being was in an extreme state, wherein it has abandoned its structural integrity; a kind of excitation that throws one outside of oneself - a 'disontologisation.' So, the drugs to contain bipolar disorder solely focused on curbing the manic part, in treating its principle symptom: excitation. Because as we all know, the only good manic depressive is a depressive. You ablate the animation principle in individuals and you get depressive zombies who are just efficient enough to tow the burden of the capitalist mode of production.
De Sutter gives a step by step historical account of how this basic principle exploded into a mass production of these drugs, assuming a new visage of monopoly over hormones: pharmaco-pornography. This is the central thesis of this book - drugs and capitalism work in tandem with each other, in a synergetic fusion: fashioning a new kind of body, a new kind of capitalist work machinery wherein the body is a site to be manipulated and tampered with.
I am reminded of this dialogue in Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Stalker: Passion is the friction between one's soul and the outside world.
Being excited means being affected by the outside world; it means forgetting of the self in lieu of the collective. Thus excitation is not merely a disruption of order from which one must protect oneself; excitation is a form of accusation itself. In curing excitation itself, they obliterate the outside world. They obliterate the possibility of crowds. Instead, a new glorious individual stands. So untethered, so lost, that the only place to be is inside oneself. In ablating animation, they ablate the social space and politics itself. According to de Sutter, the only politics is the politics of excitation. Madness is the only thing that can give us hope.
Yes, everything is an evil conspiracy theory designed to control and kill you.
I am not one of those people who is constantly fretting about there not being an argument or the author making life-sized claims without a solid structure to buttress it. I like speculative theorising and I certainly enjoyed bits of this book, especially the one where he discusses the taming and reification of the night. But oh well, this is symptomatic of that airy, fairy-tale theory-writing that has seized the Left lately. I just don't see the point anymore.
2.5
When Morton and Jackson filed a patent for anesthesia in 1846, a new kind of subject was fashioned worldwide, predicated on manic-depressive psychosis. This kind of psychosis meant that the Being was in an extreme state, wherein it has abandoned its structural integrity; a kind of excitation that throws one outside of oneself - a 'disontologisation.' So, the drugs to contain bipolar disorder solely focused on curbing the manic part, in treating its principle symptom: excitation. Because as we all know, the only good manic depressive is a depressive. You ablate the animation principle in individuals and you get depressive zombies who are just efficient enough to tow the burden of the capitalist mode of production.
De Sutter gives a step by step historical account of how this basic principle exploded into a mass production of these drugs, assuming a new visage of monopoly over hormones: pharmaco-pornography. This is the central thesis of this book - drugs and capitalism work in tandem with each other, in a synergetic fusion: fashioning a new kind of body, a new kind of capitalist work machinery wherein the body is a site to be manipulated and tampered with.
I am reminded of this dialogue in Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Stalker: Passion is the friction between one's soul and the outside world.
Being excited means being affected by the outside world; it means forgetting of the self in lieu of the collective. Thus excitation is not merely a disruption of order from which one must protect oneself; excitation is a form of accusation itself. In curing excitation itself, they obliterate the outside world. They obliterate the possibility of crowds. Instead, a new glorious individual stands. So untethered, so lost, that the only place to be is inside oneself. In ablating animation, they ablate the social space and politics itself. According to de Sutter, the only politics is the politics of excitation. Madness is the only thing that can give us hope.
Yes, everything is an evil conspiracy theory designed to control and kill you.
I am not one of those people who is constantly fretting about there not being an argument or the author making life-sized claims without a solid structure to buttress it. I like speculative theorising and I certainly enjoyed bits of this book, especially the one where he discusses the taming and reification of the night. But oh well, this is symptomatic of that airy, fairy-tale theory-writing that has seized the Left lately. I just don't see the point anymore.
2.5
December 16, 2017
(Netgalley book)
I have this (bad?) habit of reading several books at the same time and hence sometimes ideas from different books interweave in my head creating strange patrons. While reading Narcocapitalism, (Polity, 2017) by Laurent de Sutter, I also started reading a book about cinema titled ‘Slow movies’ by Ira Jaffe. In the introduction, Jaffe explains how Gilles Deleuze encountered in Italian neorealism and later in Michelangelo Antonioni, a more real cinema, closer to the experience of time as we live it, as opposed to Hollywood films and its saturation of time and space, its sometimes but not always welcomed unreality.
My experience in reading Narcocapitalism follows the opposite path, by assuming that nowadays real life is not anymore synonym of quietness but rather of noise, haste, and frantic images, and paradoxically there is no time to truly appreciate the passage of time, when I take a book, particularly an academic book, I am seeking for that deliberate and familiar rhythm, that slowness and stillness, and that space for reflection which, more and more often, I solely find in books. And that is precisely the only thing I miss in Narcocapitalism, since in my opinion, the author misses an excellent opportunity to tackle in depth some of the subjects.
To be honest, I have to confess my profound contempt for anything similar to an abridged version of a book, any attempt to simplify it for whatever noble reason (Moby Dick in only 100 pages without digressions about marine life, Decadence and Fall of the Roman Empire but cutting off some decadence so it is not that long, or those books that explain the entire philosophy of Kant, Spinoza, or Derrida in 90 minutes). Just like I think that an abridged version is an aberration I find troublesome when books are forced to renounce to some of their essence to become something else that is consonant with the demands of market and society. To explain myself, I believe books are without discussion, the most perfect tool for intellectual argumentation, critical thinking, and elaborating new ideas, the best way of explaining your own thinking or to understand other's. Too often, I have noticed a certain trend among publishers and writers to lighten up books both in content and in physical weight. In general I find this search for brevity and concretion more disturbing than helpful, and more a concession to the internet era and its new reading habits, to the restless readers, and to the commonplace balderdash of the lack of time to read. De Sutter, who in general does an estimable work, sometimes prefers to tiptoe around the subject for the sake of such brevity and sacrifices depth and vehemence.
Having said all this, the book tells how the story of pharmacology and the formation of contemporary capitalism run parallel to each other. The anaesthetization can be read at two different levels, one more literal that explains how people’s abuse of drugs and medicines contributes to create a narcotised society, and secondly can be interpreted as a metaphor for contemporary neoliberal politics and its aptitude to keep society in a permanent state of numbness, not providing any room for dissent or radical politics while at the same time make us believe naively that we are in fact getting involved in some sort of grassroot politics just for sharing some articles on the internet and attend two conferences.
These two facets will combine playing with the idea that a social body that is calmed or de-excited, is always easier to manipulate. States, corporations, and politicians have found in narcotics and its use outside medicine, an excellent apparatus for control and repression, one that allows them to bring into being more productive workers and efficient consumers, one that would make Michel Foucault proud. The similarities that Foucault found between the birth control pills display and Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon contemplate sinisterly to us. To the point, that the discovery and implantation of the birth control pill that is obviously considered a milestone in the feminist movement and a great social advance, can also be read as a manoeuvre that facilitates greater control over private and familiar life, and the liberation that supposes for women to enter the labor market can be also seen as an opportunity to increase productivity and competition. The devastating conclusion is that sometimes the social advances that seem to occur due to popular pressure, to the awareness of citizens, and to the struggle for rights, could be simply orchestrated by organizations and governemnts with spurious interests.
Today, an unknown, but certainly high, percentage of the population has an unrecognised dependency on some legal drug. Accusations that society seems to be lethargic and indifferent to an array of problems may have an origin more physical than metaphysical, and the reasons for this lethargy could be other than mere disinterest or apathy, what suggests we live in a society still more dystopian than we already imagine. Depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress, fatigue are buried under mountains of medicines and never cured but the persons who suffer of these diseases are considerate, as chronically ill, condemned for life to ingest drugs that modify their character, moods, and sensations. People who are too excited, too sad, too sick, and too tired are described as abnormal and consequently labeled, cataloged and stuffed with pills to prevent the epidemic of abnormality from spreading. In this way, once again, we can change everything so that everything remains the same.
The particularity and specificity of the drug manufacture disrupt any form of resistance or alternative movement, and erase all possibility of an ethical competence, leaving instead open ground for insatiable pharmaceutical multinationals. Only the states, usually last responsible for the distribution of medicines and for their respective national health systems seem able to exercise some control, but every day that passes any attempt by a national state to restrain the market mechanisms seems highly unlikely.
Narcocapitalism is an absorbing reading for anyone interested in history, psychoanalysis, philosophy or economics, so almost for everyone. The author presents his arguments clearly and brings the discussion to the table, even though the purpose seems to be of initiating the debate rather than coming to a final conclusion. His main strength is how is able to put together two fields that generally follow separate ways, such as politics and psychoanalysis. The ineludible interaction of one’s body with the social mind and of one’s mind within the collective conscious highlight the undeniable importance of the private sphere in politics and viceversa. After finishing the reading, I cannot help thinking that although de Sutter establishes relevant connections he forgets that these relations do not always determine causality nonetheless his approach and originality is praiseworthy.
I have this (bad?) habit of reading several books at the same time and hence sometimes ideas from different books interweave in my head creating strange patrons. While reading Narcocapitalism, (Polity, 2017) by Laurent de Sutter, I also started reading a book about cinema titled ‘Slow movies’ by Ira Jaffe. In the introduction, Jaffe explains how Gilles Deleuze encountered in Italian neorealism and later in Michelangelo Antonioni, a more real cinema, closer to the experience of time as we live it, as opposed to Hollywood films and its saturation of time and space, its sometimes but not always welcomed unreality.
My experience in reading Narcocapitalism follows the opposite path, by assuming that nowadays real life is not anymore synonym of quietness but rather of noise, haste, and frantic images, and paradoxically there is no time to truly appreciate the passage of time, when I take a book, particularly an academic book, I am seeking for that deliberate and familiar rhythm, that slowness and stillness, and that space for reflection which, more and more often, I solely find in books. And that is precisely the only thing I miss in Narcocapitalism, since in my opinion, the author misses an excellent opportunity to tackle in depth some of the subjects.
To be honest, I have to confess my profound contempt for anything similar to an abridged version of a book, any attempt to simplify it for whatever noble reason (Moby Dick in only 100 pages without digressions about marine life, Decadence and Fall of the Roman Empire but cutting off some decadence so it is not that long, or those books that explain the entire philosophy of Kant, Spinoza, or Derrida in 90 minutes). Just like I think that an abridged version is an aberration I find troublesome when books are forced to renounce to some of their essence to become something else that is consonant with the demands of market and society. To explain myself, I believe books are without discussion, the most perfect tool for intellectual argumentation, critical thinking, and elaborating new ideas, the best way of explaining your own thinking or to understand other's. Too often, I have noticed a certain trend among publishers and writers to lighten up books both in content and in physical weight. In general I find this search for brevity and concretion more disturbing than helpful, and more a concession to the internet era and its new reading habits, to the restless readers, and to the commonplace balderdash of the lack of time to read. De Sutter, who in general does an estimable work, sometimes prefers to tiptoe around the subject for the sake of such brevity and sacrifices depth and vehemence.
Having said all this, the book tells how the story of pharmacology and the formation of contemporary capitalism run parallel to each other. The anaesthetization can be read at two different levels, one more literal that explains how people’s abuse of drugs and medicines contributes to create a narcotised society, and secondly can be interpreted as a metaphor for contemporary neoliberal politics and its aptitude to keep society in a permanent state of numbness, not providing any room for dissent or radical politics while at the same time make us believe naively that we are in fact getting involved in some sort of grassroot politics just for sharing some articles on the internet and attend two conferences.
These two facets will combine playing with the idea that a social body that is calmed or de-excited, is always easier to manipulate. States, corporations, and politicians have found in narcotics and its use outside medicine, an excellent apparatus for control and repression, one that allows them to bring into being more productive workers and efficient consumers, one that would make Michel Foucault proud. The similarities that Foucault found between the birth control pills display and Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon contemplate sinisterly to us. To the point, that the discovery and implantation of the birth control pill that is obviously considered a milestone in the feminist movement and a great social advance, can also be read as a manoeuvre that facilitates greater control over private and familiar life, and the liberation that supposes for women to enter the labor market can be also seen as an opportunity to increase productivity and competition. The devastating conclusion is that sometimes the social advances that seem to occur due to popular pressure, to the awareness of citizens, and to the struggle for rights, could be simply orchestrated by organizations and governemnts with spurious interests.
Today, an unknown, but certainly high, percentage of the population has an unrecognised dependency on some legal drug. Accusations that society seems to be lethargic and indifferent to an array of problems may have an origin more physical than metaphysical, and the reasons for this lethargy could be other than mere disinterest or apathy, what suggests we live in a society still more dystopian than we already imagine. Depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress, fatigue are buried under mountains of medicines and never cured but the persons who suffer of these diseases are considerate, as chronically ill, condemned for life to ingest drugs that modify their character, moods, and sensations. People who are too excited, too sad, too sick, and too tired are described as abnormal and consequently labeled, cataloged and stuffed with pills to prevent the epidemic of abnormality from spreading. In this way, once again, we can change everything so that everything remains the same.
The particularity and specificity of the drug manufacture disrupt any form of resistance or alternative movement, and erase all possibility of an ethical competence, leaving instead open ground for insatiable pharmaceutical multinationals. Only the states, usually last responsible for the distribution of medicines and for their respective national health systems seem able to exercise some control, but every day that passes any attempt by a national state to restrain the market mechanisms seems highly unlikely.
Narcocapitalism is an absorbing reading for anyone interested in history, psychoanalysis, philosophy or economics, so almost for everyone. The author presents his arguments clearly and brings the discussion to the table, even though the purpose seems to be of initiating the debate rather than coming to a final conclusion. His main strength is how is able to put together two fields that generally follow separate ways, such as politics and psychoanalysis. The ineludible interaction of one’s body with the social mind and of one’s mind within the collective conscious highlight the undeniable importance of the private sphere in politics and viceversa. After finishing the reading, I cannot help thinking that although de Sutter establishes relevant connections he forgets that these relations do not always determine causality nonetheless his approach and originality is praiseworthy.
February 18, 2021
Overall, yet another piece of faux history tolerated for its alleged political investment.
Laurent de Sutter fails to provide a coherent assessment of the relations between drugs, capitalism and the detachment/excitation pair that - formally - articulates this short work.
What's interesting about this book is the strictly chronicle aspect of it, the historical episodes it showcases. As for the interpretation of the events as parts of a whole, it ranges from the mere pun ("Enlightenment", hah) to borderline paranoic links and sweeping assertions that should merit more than the odd 100 pages of this book (world finances are one with cocaine trading?!).
Drugs and capitalism are evidently related and exist in synergy, as much is clear - from the very fact that drugs, in our current world, dwell within capitalism. The relations between the pharmaceutical industry and questions of work productivity etc are of great interest. But de Sutter doesn't take that path. We're presented, instead, with a gaggle of barely congruent metaphors? images? about Being and its Policing and the Impossibility of Politics within the Framework of Narcocapitalism.
Narcocapitalism tries to avoid excitation, because it's tantamount to breaching the stability of Being, hmm. Manic depression and mass psychology as examples, ok... Wait, cocaine too? Wait, nightclub orgies are a way to ensure the stability of being? Wait, the contraceptive pill too?
"Being", "productivity", and the spectre of capitalism are a single grey and multipurpose blob that allows de Sutter to not bother defining or explaining the true - and, perhaps distinct! Why not! - dynamics that underlie the worrying role of drugs in our society, and, likewise, to - as other authors have done - point at a credible way to resignify drugs in a liberating way.
All in all, a shallow and pretentious book whose lucid moments do not outweigh the generally arbitrary feel that it gives off as a whole.
Laurent de Sutter fails to provide a coherent assessment of the relations between drugs, capitalism and the detachment/excitation pair that - formally - articulates this short work.
What's interesting about this book is the strictly chronicle aspect of it, the historical episodes it showcases. As for the interpretation of the events as parts of a whole, it ranges from the mere pun ("Enlightenment", hah) to borderline paranoic links and sweeping assertions that should merit more than the odd 100 pages of this book (world finances are one with cocaine trading?!).
Drugs and capitalism are evidently related and exist in synergy, as much is clear - from the very fact that drugs, in our current world, dwell within capitalism. The relations between the pharmaceutical industry and questions of work productivity etc are of great interest. But de Sutter doesn't take that path. We're presented, instead, with a gaggle of barely congruent metaphors? images? about Being and its Policing and the Impossibility of Politics within the Framework of Narcocapitalism.
Narcocapitalism tries to avoid excitation, because it's tantamount to breaching the stability of Being, hmm. Manic depression and mass psychology as examples, ok... Wait, cocaine too? Wait, nightclub orgies are a way to ensure the stability of being? Wait, the contraceptive pill too?
"Being", "productivity", and the spectre of capitalism are a single grey and multipurpose blob that allows de Sutter to not bother defining or explaining the true - and, perhaps distinct! Why not! - dynamics that underlie the worrying role of drugs in our society, and, likewise, to - as other authors have done - point at a credible way to resignify drugs in a liberating way.
All in all, a shallow and pretentious book whose lucid moments do not outweigh the generally arbitrary feel that it gives off as a whole.
August 6, 2022
Me lo recomendó Juan y entiendo porque lo hizo. Además, escribe ligero sobre cosas densas y pastosas, un poco como él. Me lo releeré y habla de cosas loquísimas sobre las pastillas anticonceptivas, la cocaína y lo que significan los antidepresivos en nuestra era de la ablación excitada.
March 20, 2021
Me ha gustado muchísimo. Se queda un poco superficial en algunos puntos, pero todo lo que plantea es brutal y muy original.
October 9, 2018
de Sutter is not a philosopher, indeed he is a legal scholar, hence a focus on a history of narcocapitalism as opposed to a 'true' theory of it. Yet, there are brilliant insights in this book, even if ultimately it fails to see all of them through. In particular, the most interesting passage of the book was it's treatment of the night as a social and political order as separate from the day, and the rise of nightclubs, though it is clear Monsieur de Sutter has not set foot inside Berghain, he remarks on some very interesting features, and manages a miniature history of man's political dominion over the night (from the introduction of street-lighting in Paris under Colbert to the denomination of nightclubs as public spaces), albeit only tangentially related to his initial theses regarding the nature of drugs ("narcotics"), and capitalism via the medication of insomniacs.
So, what is de Sutter's thesis? It is that there is (in his words) "no capitalism save for narcocapitalism". This thesis is not particularly new, though he does have some novel directions and proposals for how and why this came to be. It offers a particular echo of some of the work of Franco Berardi, and his commentary on the 'Prozac economy' in the final pages of The Soul at Work. He traces this thesis through the introduction of various drugs and the popular campaigns which followed their invention and discovery, cocaine, antihistamines, various anesthetics, and so on in a much more historical and material manner than Berardi or other theorists who treat (pun not intended) the subject of narcocapitalism.
Yet, he ultimately falls short, though this is not for lack of trying. The great faults are not his theses, nor his prose, which, if lacking the poetics of counterparts, is quite approachable and informative. He only falls short in the ultimate development of his thesis due to the length of time he spends defending his novel thoughts. Certainly he diagnoses (again, no pun intended) a rather prescient issue in psychiatry, society-at-large, and capitalism; the constant need for medication, and ties this rather-recent-but-also-long-developing phenomenon to a fair deal of historical and philosophical thought. Many of these chapters, essays, and points (the book is laid out in a set of micro-topics, contained within chapters) could become worthy literature in their own right.
So, what is de Sutter's thesis? It is that there is (in his words) "no capitalism save for narcocapitalism". This thesis is not particularly new, though he does have some novel directions and proposals for how and why this came to be. It offers a particular echo of some of the work of Franco Berardi, and his commentary on the 'Prozac economy' in the final pages of The Soul at Work. He traces this thesis through the introduction of various drugs and the popular campaigns which followed their invention and discovery, cocaine, antihistamines, various anesthetics, and so on in a much more historical and material manner than Berardi or other theorists who treat (pun not intended) the subject of narcocapitalism.
Yet, he ultimately falls short, though this is not for lack of trying. The great faults are not his theses, nor his prose, which, if lacking the poetics of counterparts, is quite approachable and informative. He only falls short in the ultimate development of his thesis due to the length of time he spends defending his novel thoughts. Certainly he diagnoses (again, no pun intended) a rather prescient issue in psychiatry, society-at-large, and capitalism; the constant need for medication, and ties this rather-recent-but-also-long-developing phenomenon to a fair deal of historical and philosophical thought. Many of these chapters, essays, and points (the book is laid out in a set of micro-topics, contained within chapters) could become worthy literature in their own right.
August 5, 2025
empezó bien pero se me quedó corto. también es que no entendí la mitad de la parte final.
“Psychopolitical reprogramming has become the privileged means for the reintegration of individuals who create disorder in the inner spaces of the world of production – conceived as the default horizon of existence.”
“The age of anaesthesia is the age of the chemical organization of separation – the age in which every problem must be considered as rooted in the sufferer, without it ever, ever, being possible for them to rejoin what lies beyond.”
“Now, at the same time, a new word appeared in political vocabulary, a word used to designate what we ended up calling ‘crowds’: the word ‘masses’. This was not by chance; behind the transformation of the subject into matter, something else was happening. Crowds had to become matter so that you could forget that they had a soul.”
“Psychopolitical reprogramming has become the privileged means for the reintegration of individuals who create disorder in the inner spaces of the world of production – conceived as the default horizon of existence.”
“The age of anaesthesia is the age of the chemical organization of separation – the age in which every problem must be considered as rooted in the sufferer, without it ever, ever, being possible for them to rejoin what lies beyond.”
“Now, at the same time, a new word appeared in political vocabulary, a word used to designate what we ended up calling ‘crowds’: the word ‘masses’. This was not by chance; behind the transformation of the subject into matter, something else was happening. Crowds had to become matter so that you could forget that they had a soul.”
May 4, 2021
depressió meets Karl Marx.
Ojo a aquesta frase sobre la relació entre la píldora, els antidepressius i el capitalisme: "Tanto con la píldora como con los antidepresivos se reprograma el funcionamiento hormonal de individuos que gozan de una salud perfecta, para alterar de forma deliberada un sistema al que no hay nada que reprochar, salvo su eficacia. Se trataba de volver a situar en el mercado de la vida a individuos que ya fuese por "enfermedad mental" o embarazos repetidos pudiesen comportarse sin alborotar demasiado"
Ojo a aquesta frase sobre la relació entre la píldora, els antidepressius i el capitalisme: "Tanto con la píldora como con los antidepresivos se reprograma el funcionamiento hormonal de individuos que gozan de una salud perfecta, para alterar de forma deliberada un sistema al que no hay nada que reprochar, salvo su eficacia. Se trataba de volver a situar en el mercado de la vida a individuos que ya fuese por "enfermedad mental" o embarazos repetidos pudiesen comportarse sin alborotar demasiado"
December 30, 2021
Divulgación política y de historia. La premisa es interesante y sigue un discurso lógico en los capítulos 1 a 3, pero luego deriva en una cascada de ideas en mi opinión bastante inconexas. También hace unas cuantas afirmaciones sin pruebas, que se puede entender en la divulgación pero que en ciertos casos se puede identificar fácilmente que omite o manipula los datos históricos.
June 28, 2025
“El único capitalismo es el de la cocaina, del mismo modo que únicamente hay cocaína en la medida en la que requiere un sistema económico adecuado a su volatilidad, a su ilegalidad, a su adicción y a su inmaterialidad, es decir, un sistema nervioso abstracto convertido en excitación perfecta. Todo capitalismo es, necesariamente, un narcocapitalismo, un capitalismo de cabo a rabo narcótico, y cuya excitabilidad propia no es más que el reverso maníaco de la depresión que no cesa de suscitar, al tiempo que se presenta como su remedio. En este remedio no se trata de otra cosa obviamente que de un olvido, de esa ablación de la sensación de órganos que Freud señalaba, y que acabó por encontrar su forma ideal en la anestesia practicada cada día sobre los millones de consumidores de antidepresivos. Por lo demás, no es una casualidad que la mayor parte de los antidepresivos disponibles en el mercado compartan con la cocaína mucho más que su carácter de producto sintético y del efecto de anestesia que sigue a su consumición. Releyendo a Freud, aquello que se esperaba de la cocaína era precisamente lo que los habitantes estresados de las ruinas del capitalismo globalizado esperan conseguir de las pastillas que tragan durante la jornada: no sentir nada, sobre todo ninguna molestia en el estómago. El narcocapitalismo es el capitalismo de la narcosis, ese sueño forzado en el que los anestesistas sumergen a sus pacientes para extirparles todo aquello que les impide ser eficaces en el orden del presente: trabajar, trabajar y más trabajar.”
October 21, 2025
Название книги более многообещающее, чем куцее содержание, однако есть несколько мыслей в дельном направлении.
Это одна из тех книг, где достаточно прочитать аннотацию или краткий ИИ-пересказ.
Вот, например, отрывок из ИИ-обзора, сгенерированного при помощи Grok:
«Автор, профессор юридической теории в Свободном университете Брюсселя, переосмысливает "наркокапитализм" не как криминальный наркотрафик, а как систему анестезии — онемения и контроля эмоций, где "нарко" возвращается к своему корню в смысле "онемения" или "оцепенения". Это манифест против "эпохи анестезии", где капитализм монетизирует нашу эмоциональную пассивность, чтобы поддерживать порядок и производство».
«Современный капитализм — это "машина анестезии", которая перепрограммирует человеческое существование через фармакологические технологии. Вместо возбуждения (excitation — состояния ажиотажа, мании или коллективного бунта, которое разрушает порядок) система навязывает онемение, чтобы интегрировать индивидов в производство. Эмоции "аутсорсятся" на химию: от антидепрессантов и снотворных до кокаина и противозачаточных пилюль. Это не о зависимости, а о контроле — успокоенный субъект легче манипулируется и продуктивен».
Это одна из тех книг, где достаточно прочитать аннотацию или краткий ИИ-пересказ.
Вот, например, отрывок из ИИ-обзора, сгенерированного при помощи Grok:
«Автор, профессор юридической теории в Свободном университете Брюсселя, переосмысливает "наркокапитализм" не как криминальный наркотрафик, а как систему анестезии — онемения и контроля эмоций, где "нарко" возвращается к своему корню в смысле "онемения" или "оцепенения". Это манифест против "эпохи анестезии", где капитализм монетизирует нашу эмоциональную пассивность, чтобы поддерживать порядок и производство».
«Современный капитализм — это "машина анестезии", которая перепрограммирует человеческое существование через фармакологические технологии. Вместо возбуждения (excitation — состояния ажиотажа, мании или коллективного бунта, которое разрушает порядок) система навязывает онемение, чтобы интегрировать индивидов в производство. Эмоции "аутсорсятся" на химию: от антидепрессантов и снотворных до кокаина и противозачаточных пилюль. Это не о зависимости, а о контроле — успокоенный субъект легче манипулируется и продуктивен».
March 7, 2023
Het is niet mijn favoriete boek. Ik vind dat de auteur te snel wil gaan in dit boek. Het lijkt me eerder een "overzicht" dan een boek waar de auteur de tijd wil nemen om over verschillende items te reflecteren.
Ik was verkocht met een vraag van het begin: over welk leven spreken we indien elk aspect ervan uitgerekend is in microdoses? Deze vraag vind ik ontzettend boeiend.
Het boek is voor mij eerder een verzameling van gegevens, data, namen, informatie... Wel alles mooi geordend in een chronologische wijze. Daarnaast is er weinig plaats voor reflectie, voor het stellen van hypotheses, voor het nadenken over de gevolgen in de maatschappij...
Ik heb wel veel geleerd over de verschillende medische ontwikkelingen en de b-side van die ontwikkelingen.
Je leest wel dit boek heel snel en vlot. Maar helaas mis ik wat ademruimte in de vorm van reflecties en bedenkingen.
Ik was verkocht met een vraag van het begin: over welk leven spreken we indien elk aspect ervan uitgerekend is in microdoses? Deze vraag vind ik ontzettend boeiend.
Het boek is voor mij eerder een verzameling van gegevens, data, namen, informatie... Wel alles mooi geordend in een chronologische wijze. Daarnaast is er weinig plaats voor reflectie, voor het stellen van hypotheses, voor het nadenken over de gevolgen in de maatschappij...
Ik heb wel veel geleerd over de verschillende medische ontwikkelingen en de b-side van die ontwikkelingen.
Je leest wel dit boek heel snel en vlot. Maar helaas mis ik wat ademruimte in de vorm van reflecties en bedenkingen.
January 30, 2025
Muy breve pero muy informativo acerca del desarrollo historico y cientifico de las drogas desde el siglo XIX que plantea cuestiones filosoficas esenciales para entender el desarrollo del capitalismo y la politica contemporanea, en pocas palabras es certero en su critica y diagnostico.
November 13, 2023
quite interesting, quite questionable, be ready to google new words about 100 times lol
March 3, 2025
de Sutter’s classic.
May 23, 2025
kinda teleurstellend, was niet wat ik verwacht had maar het is ook niet super slecht ofzo
January 5, 2018
Biopolitical assessment of the altered state ontologies of the 21st Century. Capitalist ethos identification reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.
The assertions are a little blindered and overreaching when they're not obviously accurate. Anaesthesia = wellness is a disturbing if not particularly penetrating insight. The claims of narco(ca)-productivity are underdeveloped and bracket out too many factors. The history/evolution of chlorpromazine & the pill are instructive and interesting, but overall, it feels like a book Foucault could have (or had) written. Yet I still think there's enough in it to have been worth reading. (If only for another reminder that capitalism is a plague that pervades every aspect of human 'being'.)
The assertions are a little blindered and overreaching when they're not obviously accurate. Anaesthesia = wellness is a disturbing if not particularly penetrating insight. The claims of narco(ca)-productivity are underdeveloped and bracket out too many factors. The history/evolution of chlorpromazine & the pill are instructive and interesting, but overall, it feels like a book Foucault could have (or had) written. Yet I still think there's enough in it to have been worth reading. (If only for another reminder that capitalism is a plague that pervades every aspect of human 'being'.)
March 19, 2022
Psycho-political history of ontological alterity, focusing on the centrality of narcosis to the capitalist mode of production and social relations in the 20th-21st centuries. In general, an interesting book, but one that suffers from chronic underdevelopment. While many of the ideas presented are exciting, the author seems to withdraw from pursuing an assertion at the point when it seems pregnant with potential.
Worthwhile reading, if only as an indictment of precursors to the modern psycho-mafias.
Worthwhile reading, if only as an indictment of precursors to the modern psycho-mafias.
December 26, 2017
Laurent de Sutter is Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and in this book (translated from French by Barnaby Norman) he describes how contemporary life is characterised by the use of drugs to manage human emotions and how this is manipulated to benefit the capitalist system but although I enjoyed the historical sections, I found de Sutter’s arguments confusing and unconvincing, which ultimately made for a disappointing read.
March 11, 2019
Jako fakt kritiku antidepresiv jde vést mnohem zajímavějc než "eeeee numbing down obedient subjects eee age of anaesthesia aaa age of antiexcitation because excitation is being outside self that is politics and is threat to order" jakože třeba ta část o subjektivitě a noci podvolené kontrole státu je myslim supr, ale ta ontologie bytí/excitace je fakt trestuhodně neorzpracovaná a jeho pohled na antidepresiva úplně hloupě ale hloupě reduktivní (the pills save lives, u know)
September 15, 2020
Narcocapitalism is an incredibly interesting book that takes a deep dive into the history of how narcotics have thrived under capitalism. Though I was expecting a more modern perspective that talked about modern issues in narcotics and capitalism, this was still an incredibly interesting book. Maybe a bit heavy, even if it's short, but still absolutely worth reading for those who are interested in the way narcotics have influenced capitalism.
March 1, 2022
Este libro me pareció bastante meh sinceramente me gustó la primer aparte en que hablan del uso de las drogas en los pacientes con problemas mentales, en cómo estas ayudan a controlarlo pero al mismo tiempo lo despersonifican, pero después entró en una especie de baile de conceptos que sinceramente me parece bastante confuso, y el final sobre las masas y demás, no entiendo a qué quiere llegar exactamente.
March 20, 2022
De Sutter brings together medical and legal history touching upon the rise of night clubs, the pill, depression and insomnia to support one clear message: capitalist society wants to tame our excitement. This thesis makes sense from his narrative, although I find that it could have been further complicated and challenged, within a broader piece of work.
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