Current forms of destruction: on some taboos sacrificed on the neoliberal shrine

Abstract

We live in a world characterised by a variety of extreme situations which, in their absolute heterogeneity, express the same globally effective logic. Here I choose to refer to three current cases which, as I suggest, ‘talk to each other’: the misfortunes of the small North American community of Grafton, narrated by the journalist M. Hongoltz-Hetling; the great fortunes amassed by cryptocurrency scams, which are in fashion in Argentina these days; the existence of cannibalistic practices in the context of the expansion of narco-violence in Mexico, studied by the anthropologist C. Lomnitz. These themes of the conjuncture allow us to return to Freud's ‘Totem and Taboo’ in an attempt to obliquely illuminate the lines of force of this world –made of many worlds– which is fascistised neo-liberalism.