Fundamentalism as Capitalist Product

Fundamentalism as Capitalist Product names the thesis, developed by McGowan across two closely related texts (both indexed under capitalism-and-desire-the-psyc-todd-mcgowan and todd-mcgowan-capitalism-and-desire-the-psychic-cost-of-free-markets-columbia-uni), that religious and political fundamentalism is not an external, pre-modern residue that capitalism threatens or displaces, but rather an internally generated psychic reaction to capitalism's own logic of the sublime. Capitalism promises its subjects access to sublimity through the commodity — the commodity is elevated to the dignity of das Ding, made to glow with an aura of impossible, transcendent satisfaction. When this promise structurally fails (as it must, since the commodity's sublimity is perpetually deferred and never delivered), some subjects do not simply accept the disappointment; instead, they revolt against the form of sublimity capitalism offers by seeking a "purer," more absolute version of the transcendent. Fundamentalism is this revolt: it is capitalism's broken promise of the sublime folded back on itself, producing a subject who demands the full Thing — unmediated access to the Absolute — that the commodity gestures toward but withholds.

The theoretical-political corrective McGowan proposes is to become "Hegelian rather than Kantian" about the sublime: to recognize that the failure, the gap, the immanence of the sublime — the fact that no object ever delivers das Ding — is not a defect to be overcome by seeking a more authentic transcendent object, but is the very structure of the sublime as such. Sublimation, properly understood, produces satisfaction through the act of raising an object to the dignity of the Thing, not through the object's actually being the Thing. Fundamentalism misreads this structure, treating the immanent failure of the commodity-sublime as evidence that the true sublime remains elsewhere, in a sacred or ideological object yet to be restored. It is thus a symptom internal to capitalist modernity rather than its negation.

This concept lives at the intersection of several key nodes in McGowan's argument in capitalism-and-desire-the-psyc-todd-mcgowan and todd-mcgowan-capitalism-and-desire-the-psychic-cost-of-free-markets-columbia-uni. It is an application and extension of the concept of the Sublime and Das Ding: the commodity is theorized as occupying the structural place of das Ding (raised to its dignity through sublimation), generating a capitalist sublime. Fundamentalism is what emerges when this substitution is experienced as fraudulent — when the fetish-character of the commodity (its disavowal-structure: "I know the commodity cannot deliver the Thing, and yet...") collapses into disappointment, and the subject revolts by demanding the Thing directly rather than accepting the mediated, immanent form sublimation offers. It therefore also cross-references Fetish and Jouissance: the commodity's fetish-logic produces an inaccessible surplus-enjoyment (jouissance) that drives the subject forward perpetually; fundamentalism is the name for the crisis-point when that jouissance-economy breaks down for a portion of subjects who refuse the deferral and seek an unmediated plenitude.

The concept also engages Ideology and Sublimation as its critical counterweights. Ideologically, fundamentalism functions as a misrecognition: it presents itself as capitalism's Other while being its product. The path beyond both capitalism's commodity-sublime and fundamentalism's imaginary restoration of the Absolute runs through a correct theory of sublimation — recognizing, in a Hegelian-immanent rather than Kantian-transcendent register, that satisfaction is produced in the act of sublimation itself, in the Gap and Immanent Sublime, not in any object's or ideology's ability to close the gap. Fundamentalism as Capitalist Product is thus simultaneously a diagnostic (explaining fundamentalism's genesis) and a foil that clarifies what the properly emancipatory stance would look like: embracing failure and immanence rather than revolting against them.

Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free MarketsTodd McGowan · 2016 (p.249)

Fundamentalism is a product of capitalist modernity. It is a revolt against the form of sublimity that the commodity provides.

The theoretical weight of the quote rests on two terms held in precise tension: "product" and "revolt." Calling fundamentalism a "product" insists that it is generated from within capitalist modernity's own logic — not imported from outside — while "revolt against the form of sublimity that the commodity provides" identifies its target as the commodity's specific mode of occupying the place of das Ding, linking fundamentalism's genesis directly to the structure of the capitalist sublime and its constitutive deferral of jouissance.