French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Jappe, The Autophagous Society: Capitalism, Excess and Self-Destruction
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
The Autophagous Society.
Capitalism, Excess and Self-Destruction
Anselm JAPPE
La Découverte
Published: January 2020
ISBN: 9782348057472
No. of pages: 294
Dimensions: 125 * 190 mm
Digital ISBN: 9782348057823
Format: EPUB
Print version: 12 €
Digital version: 9.99 €
The Greek myth of Erysichthon tells of a king who devoured himself because nothing could satisfy his hunger—a divine punishment for an outrage committed against nature. This anticipation of a society doomed to a self-destructive dynamic is the starting point of The Autophagous Society. Anselm Jappe continues the investigation begun in his previous books, where he showed that modern society is entirely based on abstract labor and money, commodity and value.
But what kind of subjectivity does capitalism produce? To understand this, we must abandon the idea, forged by modern Reason, that the "subject" is a free and autonomous individual. In reality, the latter is the product of internalizing the constraints created by capitalism, and today, the vessel of a lethal combination of narcissism and commodity fetishism.
The fetishistic-narcissistic subject no longer tolerates any frustration and conceives the world as a means without an end dedicated to boundlessness and excess. This loss of meaning and denial of limits lead to what Anselm Jappe calls the "death drive of capitalism": an unleashing of extreme violence, mass killings, and "gratuitous" murders that precipitates the human world toward its downfall.
Rooted in the tradition of critical theory and the critique of value, this work builds upon the author s previous investigations into commodity fetishism and abstract labor. Anselm Jappe engages with heterodox Marxist thought to interrogate how economic structures shape human psychology and social behavior. By examining the contemporary subject through the lens of philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, the book offers a trenchant critique of modern rationality and its inherent drive toward boundlessness.
This study will prove especially valuable to researchers, students, and readers interested in critical theory, contemporary philosophy, and the sociology of capitalism. It addresses fundamental questions regarding the psychological toll of economic systems and the philosophical roots of ecological and social crises. Scholars of modern intellectual history and cultural critique will find it a stimulating contribution to ongoing debates about agency, excess, and the limits of modern civilization.