Perversions of the Market

by Eugene W. Holland

ISBN: 9798855800210

Published: 2025-06-02

An engaging analysis of the catastrophic ways capital perverts market dynamics by a leading scholar of Deleuze. Perversions of the Market argues that capitalism fosters sadism and masochism-not as individual psychological proclivities but as widespread institutionalized patterns of behavior. The book is divided into two parts: one historical and the other theoretical. In the first, Eugene W. Holland shows how, as capital becomes global in scale and drives production and consumption farther and farther apart, it perverts otherwise free markets, transforming sadism and masochism into borderline conditions and various supremacisms. The second part then turns to Deleuze and Guattari's "schizoanalysis," explaining how it helpfully embeds Freud's analysis of the family and Lacan's analysis of language within an analysis of the capitalist market and its psycho-dynamics. Drawing on literature and film throughout to illuminate the discontents of modern culture, Holland maintains that the...