What lies ahead when there is no [design] future.
“But what if the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened – that we’re already five minutes past zero hour” (Žižek 2023,1).
Navigating Desire and Post-Capitalist Futures in Design: Žižek, Lyotard, and Wizinsky
The discourse surrounding post-capitalist design finds itself at a unique intersection of critical theory and speculative imagination. Slavoj Žižek’s Too Late to Awaken and Jean-François Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy offer provocative theoretical frameworks that contrast sharply with Matthew Wizinsky’s Design after Capitalism. While Wizinsky proposes a transformative agenda for design as an agent of systemic change, Žižek and Lyotard force us to reconsider the deeper libidinal and ideological undercurrents that complicate such visions.
This essay unpacks these theoretical intersections and contrasts them with Wizinsky’s proposal, critiquing the latter’s focus on the political economy at the expense of engaging with the libidinal dimensions of human drives.
Žižek and Lyotard on Desire, Ideology, and Systemic Transformation
Žižek: Ideology’s Role in Neutralising Desire
In Too Late to Awaken, Žižek argues that contemporary capitalism sustains itself through mechanisms of ideological cynicism and interpassivity. Individuals are inundated with pseudo-choices and performative agency, creating an illusion of freedom that masks deeper systemic inertia. Žižek critiques the commodification of dissent itself, where even radical gestures become co-opted into capitalist frameworks. His analysis implies that any post-capitalist project must not only dismantle capitalism’s material structures but also confront the ideological narratives that perpetuate passivity (Žižek 2023, 9).
Lyotard: The Libidinal Band and Disruption of Representation
Lyotard, by contrast, focuses on the chaotic flows of desire in Libidinal Economy. The libidinal band is a metaphor for intensities that evade representation, operating outside the stabilising mechanisms of language, identity, and capital. For Lyotard, capitalism functions by capturing and commodifying these intensities, transforming polymorphous flows of desire into exchangeable units. His work critiques the nihilism of systems that constrain the vitality of human drives, advocating for their liberation through affirmative disruption (Lyotard 1993, 10).
While Žižek calls for ideological critique and mobilisation, Lyotard emphasises an anarchic liberation of desire, rejecting the constraints of critique itself. Together, their theories expose the dual challenge of overcoming not just capitalism’s structural and ideological apparatuses but also its libidinal economy.
Wizinsky’s Post-Capitalist Design and Its Blind Spots
Post-Capitalism as Political Economy
Wizinsky’s Design after Capitalism centres on reorienting design practice toward systemic change, diagnosing capitalism as the root of contemporary crises. He frames design as an inherently political and economic activity, shaping material flows, cultural norms, and power relationships (Wizinsky 2021, 14). By positioning design as “world-making,” Wizinsky offers a transformative vision for design disciplines to transcend their complicity in capitalist frameworks.
While his critique of capitalism’s hegemony is compelling, Wizinsky’s focus on the political economy risks neglecting the libidinal dimensions that Žižek and Lyotard foreground. For example, his emphasis on “preferred states” and “inclusive, sustainable, and just” futures assumes that dismantling capitalism’s structures will inherently resolve the deeper drives that shape human behaviour (Wizinsky 2021, 8).
The Libidinal Economy’s Absence
Žižek and Lyotard reveal why this assumption is problematic. Human drives—rooted in desire, fetishism, and jouissance—persist irrespective of economic systems.
Jouissance is a psychoanalytic concept, primarily associated with Jacques Lacan, referring to a form of excessive, transgressive pleasure that goes beyond simple satisfaction or enjoyment. It often involves a paradoxical mix of pleasure and pain, as it pushes the subject beyond conventional limits or boundaries, disrupting normative desires and societal expectations. Jouissance is deeply tied to the unconscious, reflecting the intense and often irrational ways individuals seek fulfillment. Unlike pleasure, which operates within socially and symbolically acceptable frameworks, jouissance frequently challenges or undermines these structures.
Even outside capitalism, individuals will find ways to satisfy their libidinal needs, often in ways that subvert or undermine post-capitalist ideals. Lyotard’s concept of the great ephemeral skin, for instance, illustrates how libidinal flows resist containment, suggesting that new systems risk reproducing old dynamics of desire and commodification in different guises (Lyotard 1993, 12).
Žižek adds that such drives are often ideologically mediated, meaning that post-capitalist designers may unconsciously replicate capitalist patterns of fetishism under the guise of progressive values. Wizinsky’s omission of these dynamics leaves his vision vulnerable to the same cycles of commodification and co-optation he seeks to transcend.
The Fetishism of "Better Designers"
One of the more insidious risks of Wizinsky’s vision is its reliance on the figure of the “post-capitalist designer.” By framing designers as agents of systemic change, Wizinsky risks creating a new fetish: the idealised “better designer” who embodies progressive values. Žižek’s critique of ideology warns us that such figures often serve as ideological props, obscuring deeper contradictions within the system. Lyotard, too, would caution against such representations, as they risk cooling down the disruptive potential of design into institutionalised norms.
Moreover, the libidinal economy highlights how individuals often pursue symbolic satisfaction over substantive change. Even in a post-capitalist framework, designers may prioritise self-image and performative engagement, reinforcing systems of control under the guise of liberation.
Reconsidering Post-Capitalist Design
A robust theory of post-capitalist design must grapple with both the political and libidinal economies. While Wizinsky’s emphasis on systemic critique is vital, it must be complemented by an understanding of how human drives shape and subvert these systems.
This means acknowledging that “world-making” is not purely a rational or ethical endeavour but one deeply entangled with desire, fetishism, and jouissance. Post-capitalist design must therefore account for the ways in which libidinal flows operate both within and beyond capitalist structures, creating frameworks that can accommodate and channel these energies rather than repress or ignore them.
Conclusion
Žižek and Lyotard remind us that any project aiming to transcend capitalism must confront not only its material and ideological apparatuses but also its libidinal economy. Wizinsky’s Design after Capitalism offers a valuable starting point for rethinking design’s role in systemic change but risks falling into the traps of idealism and performativity by neglecting these deeper dimensions.
A truly transformative post-capitalist design must integrate these insights, challenging not only capitalism’s structures but also the desires and fantasies that sustain them. Only then can design move beyond its current limitations to imagine and realise genuinely disruptive futures.
References
Lyotard, Jean-François. Libidinal Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Wizinsky, Matthew. Design after Capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2022.
Žižek, Slavoj. Too Late to Awaken. London: Verso, 2023.
