Object oriented ontology (OOO) thinking away from the philosophy of the subject enables us to think the machinist. Automation allows capital to displace humans in order to enjoy them as objects. The jouissance of capital predominates peoples relation to human and non-human objects. We may say that we as subjects give so much credence to capital that we become its objects. We may see this conversion of the subjects into objects of capital as alienation in Marxist sense. Capital by self valorisation of itself with its objective expressions, with its commodities and with its human and non-human resources acts as a subject. Maybe be we might imagine capital as a Hegelian Absolute Spirit that is subjectivizing humans into its objects today. In Lacanian sense we may think of capital as the big other and as such is the only subject that subjects all humans into its objects. Marxists critique tells us that capital is not a subject. It does not even exists by itself. It existence is from the power of labour of the proletariat. We may also say that it exist by the power of the consumer.
Today it appears that capital becomes the subject by the consumerist power of the consumer. Consumer appears to be the face behind the capitalist mask. This structure has its truth because the consumer continues to consume. The illusion of the subject status of capitalism will collapse when the consumer ceases to consume. Humans, therefore, who have become objects of capitalism have the challenge to reclaim their status of being subjects. As capital continues to subject humans, humans simply become the cog in its machine. Today with the coming of the technology of AI, the objectivation of the human being will gather more moss. There is no secret core hiding behind the system of capital that objectifies humans. The secret is that there is no secret. In fact, the self by subjecting to the regime of capital orders itself as a object or consumer self. Objectification of the self can occur under the reductive and restrictive regime of capital. Refusing to subject ourselves to the regime of capital, we can become the anti-Oedipus promoted by Gills Deleuze and Felix Guttari .
Anti-Oedipus thinks apophatically. It squeezes and drains out the over-determining/ coding nature of capital. This deterritorialization of the capitalist code and signs will enable self to live beyond the capitalist fantasy. Capitalist fantasy subplants social relations to economic relations. The object of capital (self under capitalism) then sees all relations as economic relations. How one spends one’s time, what one eats, kind of friends one has, kind of food one eats , kind of celebrations one has and joins etc., is based on economic regime that one submits. Under the regime of capital, Marxism points out that the base of all social relations at the super structure have become economic relations. Lacan teaches that under capitalism, the social and economic relations are not generated on the basis of inter-subjective relation but are based on what he calls as intersignificance ( a link between signifiers and symbolic entities) . The chain of signifiers ( discourse) subjects us or we become its objects as it demarcates our space and time within it. We therefore, relate to each other only derivatively on the basis of capital.
To set our selves free and reclaim our subjecthood, we have to rebel against the siginificatory regime that makes us its objects. We cannot Oedipalize at the regime of signifiers generated by the capital that operates as a subject. We have to reject the society of signifiers formed through the economy consisting of the jouissance of the accumulation of signifiers where commodities and our self as object have an assigned place and recognition. The significatory system is very much part of the capital and forms part of the discourse of capital that offers discursive position for each of us and the commodities that we consume. Why are we do live our live in accordance to the symbolic order or the significatory system of capital? Why are we to become objects of capital submitting to the exchange values produced by the capitalist order? To interrogate the regimes of capital we have to understand the power play of capital as power play of signifier. To understand this power play, we have to understand the geography of capital. Capital has a geography. It assigns us a place that is never fully ours. Capital places us in a displaced mode or always under the threat of deterritorialization. This is why as objects of capital ( objected subjects), we have our life and being within the significatory regimes or symbolic orders of capital. This does not mean that we are trapped in a TINA syndrome. This does not mean that we have no options to live and flourish beyond the orders of capital
There are other ways of being in the world outside society of signifiers of the capital. Capitalism as system of organizing production and consumption had its origin in time. With the coming of capitalism, we have not reached the end of history. There are other ways of being humans-in-the-world to come. Before the birth of capital, we had other ways of being human. Hence, an anti-Oedipus of the capital embraces being human-in-the-plural in the world. The capitalist order closes our ways of being to ways of being human in-the-singular. The open-ness to the plural opens us to the economy of abundance. It makes as humans-in-the-plural and not humans-in-the-singular. Our jouissance then becomes jouissance in the plural. We enjoy the regime of signifiers that do not close to over cataphatic signification but remains open to apophatic dynamism. In Lacanian sense, the regime of signifiers that remains in apophatic dynamism opens the sphere of the Other subsumed by the symbolic order of capital. Capitalist order transmutes qualitative differences into quantitative difference. The breakdown of the symbolic order of capital then opens the orders of abundance which are chiefly orders of qualitative life. They free us from mindless automation of capital that constricts options and opens us to mindful alternate ways of human-being-in-the world. Let us embrace the cosmopolitanism of being Human-in-the-plural .
