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This chapter draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis to zero in on the kernel of enjoyment involved in regulating the poor. Here, not only are the poor seen as symptoms of capitalist development — its rejects and disposables — but a significant economy of enjoyment is produced wherein the development industry, as well as the poor themselves, enjoy the(ir) symptom. The poor, in this sense, are what Jacques Lacan would call the sinthome of development, whose presence is what binds the massive institutional machinery together, serving as its very raison d'être, yet whose absence would cause it to fall apart. The poor so conceived are the potentially disruptive limit point of the global capitalist order. The chapter suggests that it is the notion of jouissance (enjoyment) which better helps explain how capitalist ideology can psychoanalytically (and materially) embed itself at the level of the state as much as local citizens, and in the development apparatus as much as the ranks of the poor-as-symptom.

This chapter discusses how queer cultural spaces came to emerge in a city dominated by capitalist ideologies and material consumption. Specifically, it uses the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival 2004 (HKLGFF) and HKLGFF 2005 as case studies to facilitate a discussion on the contested relations between a politics of consumption, the claim for queer visibility, and the emerging representation of lesbian desires in Hong Kong independent film and video. The HKLGFF has only just begun to understand the needs of local lesbian communities. Apart from continuing and expanding its lesbian programming, it should also partner itself with community organizations and media-arts groups in order to facilitate innovative programming. Furthermore, the chapter defines lesbian desires as same-sex desires between women, regardless of the politics of sexual identification, thereby including women with bisexual and lesbian sexualities.

This chapter introduces the concern of the book with unfreedom and class rule in contemporary American capitalism as seen in the digital realm. Class struggle is the first and last force shaping developments in communication. Computers are built using commodity chains and a labour process, both organized by the supremacy of a private property rights regime. Subsequently, as data and code are central to almost every facet of contemporary life, capitalist ideology with its conceptions of suitable social relations are reflected in the uses and programming. It is thus appropriate to worry about when, as opposed to whether, automated decision-making algorithms and their ilk will be used by corporations to optimize for profit at the expense of people. Capitalism is not about 'markets' or even private property per se. Rather it is a political order that consolidates decision-making power over the use, circulation and consumption of resources in a wealthy minority in ways that are opaque. As communication is a component of class formation it is also inflected by the structural antagonisms and contradictions inherent in capitalist societies. The chapter focuses on the results of systems, relationships and structure as they move in history along with the concepts and methods required to achieve that aim.

This chapter examines the specificity of the partition of China and the conditions surrounding the birth of a Taiwanese entrepreneurship in the early years of the Republic of China’s exile on the island. The Taiwanese post-1949 trajectory is understood in terms of a Nationalist and anti-capitalist counter-revolution. Continued confrontation with the Communist rival led to the establishment of both a war economy and a colonial regime with the monopolization by the state of most of the island’s resources. This resulted in a double fragmentation of the productive sector with, on the one hand, private enterprise being made dependent on the state sector and, on the other, a second split between a rentier sector monopolizing the domestic market and an unprotected sector forced to confront the world market. The rentier sector was reserved for the minority of “settlers” – the mainland industrialists who had fled to Taiwan – and to a few Taiwanese collaborators co-opted by the government, while the unprotected sector was filled by the managers of small businesses from the island. Ultimately, Taiwanese entrepreneurship was the contingent product of an openly anti-capitalist ideology.