Debt drive and the imperative of growth

Abstract

Slavoj Žižek's Freudian concepts of desire and drive provide a model to distinguish between 'normal' engaged behavior and 'pathological' addiction. While desire is structured around the pursuit of an object onto which the subject projects different fantasies of enjoyment and redemption, drive has moved beyond the realm of fantasy and thus also beyond the realm of subjectivity as such. The proposition I would like to raise is that contemporary financial capitalism is no longer even structured around the desire for money but has moved into a state of debt drive. Political initiatives in the wake of the financial crisis such as bank packages, quantitative easing, and austerity politics seem to have given up even on the fantasy that we can move out of the crisis. Ultimately, they all boil down to the compulsive repetition of the same failed act of creating money out of debt.