Introduction: The Stalemate of Critique

The critique of ideology has reached a theoretical impasse. For decades, the dominant critical paradigm sought to unmask, reveal, or demystify ideology, treating it as a form of “false consciousness” that obscures the real state of affairs (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1947). This approach assumes that to see the truth behind the illusion is to be liberated from its power. Yet, this model crumbles before the contemporary subject. Slavoj Žižek powerfully articulates this paradox: the modern subject is not a naive believer but a cynic who “knows very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it” (Žižek, 1989, p. 29). This phenomenon, where ideology functions perfectly well without belief, signals that its operational logic lies elsewhere.

If ideology is not merely a lie we believe, what is it? This analysis posits that ideology is not a cognitive error but a bi-dimensional apparatus of capture. It functions as a ‘Double Engine,’ powered by a self-reinforcing feedback loop that fuses two distinct, yet now intrinsically linked, forms of surplus extraction: libidinal and productive. We are captured not by what we believe, but by how our enjoyment and our activity are harnessed. To understand this, we must move beyond hermeneutics and toward a materialist analysis of the machineries that structure our reality.

The Problem: The Inadequacy of ‘False Consciousness’

The classical model of ideology is fundamentally a cognitive one. It presupposes a subject who is deceived by a distorted representation of reality, as famously outlined by Marx and Engels (1846/1978). The critical task, therefore, is to correct this distorted vision, to present the “true” picture of social relations, assuming that this revelation will provoke dissent or escape (Althusser, 1971). However, it fails to account for the fragmented, cynical, and often overtly contradictory nature of contemporary ideological subscription.

Today, subjects can simultaneously mock a system and participate in it enthusiastically. Financial traders can be aware of the systemic irrationality of markets while passionately engaging in them; social media users can critique the platform’s privacy violations while meticulously curating their online presence (Turkle, 2011). This is not hypocrisy; it is the native mode of functioning within a system governed by what Peter Sloterdijk (1987) termed cynical reason. The persistence of the system does not depend on our conviction in its truth-claims, but on its capacity to enlist our desires and actions directly. The inadequacy of the “false consciousness” model compels us to find a new analytic that can explain this material efficacy.

Theory: Deconstructing the Two Circuits of Capture

The Libidinal Circuit: Fantasy (F) and Surplus-Enjoyment (σ)

Classical critique focuses on the signified—the meaning of an ideology. Following Jacques Lacan, we shift focus to the signifier and the subject’s relationship to the symbolic order (Lacan, 1966/2006). Here, ideology’s power lies not in its message but in its construction of fantasy (F).

Definition: Fantasy (F): A symbolic-imaginary construct that frames reality, scripting desire by staging an idealized lack—the impossible object, or objet petit a—and in so doing, generating a specific mode of jouissance.

Fantasy is not escapism; it is the very framework that makes reality consistent for the subject (Lacan, 1978). It stages the object-cause of desire (objet a), a perpetual “lack” that desire orbits but never obtains. This very failure to attain the object is paradoxically satisfying, generating what Lacan terms plus-de-jouir, or surplus-enjoyment (σ).

Definition: Surplus-Enjoyment (σ): The paradoxical satisfaction derived from the very circuits of desire and prohibition established by the fantasy-frame, binding the subject libidinally to the ideological structure.

This circuit explains ideology’s resilience. The subject is not merely convinced by a narrative but is libidinally invested in its structure. To “know” the fantasy is a fiction does not dissolve its power to generate enjoyment. This libidinal attachment is the glue that holds the system together, long after cognitive belief has evaporated (Stavrakakis, 1999).

The Productive Circuit: Machinic Apparatuses (M) and Surplus-Production (π)

In parallel, drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, we understand desire not as a lack to be filled, but as an immanent and positive force of production—a primary, generative flow (Δ) of connections, intensities, and creations (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/1983). From this perspective, ideology operates as a machinic apparatus of capture (M).

Definition: Machinic Apparatus (M): A complex arrangement of heterogeneous elements (human, technological, conceptual, material) that functions by connecting, channeling, and stratifying flows of desire, attention, or activity to extract value.

This apparatus does not operate through belief but through connection and flow. It plugs into the immanent productivity of human activity—our creativity, communication, and sociality—and channels it toward ends that are alien to its origin. This channeling extracts a surplus-production (π).

Definition: Surplus-Production (π): The excess value generated by desire’s inherent productive capacity when channeled through a machinic apparatus, which is then appropriated for the benefit of the apparatus itself (e.g., capital accumulation, power consolidation).

This circuit highlights ideology’s material efficacy. It literally siphons off the creative, connective energy of subjects, converting it into quantifiable, extractable value. This is the logic of the factory, the office, and, most potently, the digital platform (Srnicek, 2017).

Evidence & Examples: The Digital Apparatus

Contemporary digital platforms, particularly social media, are the quintessential example of the Double Engine at work. They are not primarily systems of belief; they are exquisitely designed apparatuses of capture operating on both circuits simultaneously.

The libidinal circuit is manifest in the platform’s fantasy-frame. The endless scroll, the curated feed, the logic of “likes” and “shares”—these features stage a constant pursuit of recognition and connection (objet a) that generates surplus-enjoyment (σ) in the form of fleeting hits of validation, outrage, or belonging (van Dijck, 2013). This keeps the user libidinally bound to the interface.

Simultaneously, the productive circuit is in full operation. Every click, every post, every moment of attention is a productive act. This user-generated data is the raw material from which the platform extracts surplus-production (π) in the form of marketable behavioral data (Zuboff, 2019). The machinic apparatus here is the algorithm, which channels the user’s generative desire into data streams that feed the advertising model.

Objections: Interrogating the Model

Three primary objections might be raised against this model. First, that it is overly abstract and unmoored from empirical reality. To this, we argue that concepts like “fantasy” and “machinic apparatus” are analytic tools designed to map concrete systems, such as the architectural choices of a social media platform (Couldry & Hepp, 2016). Second, one might argue it leans toward technological determinism. However, the model does not claim technology is causal; rather, it analyzes how specific technological arrangements function as apparatuses of capture within a given political economy.

Finally, the model could be accused of erasing conscious agency. This objection misses the point. The Double Engine model does not deny that subjects make choices; it asserts that these choices are made within a field pre-structured by apparatuses that channel desire and production. Agency is not eliminated, but it must be understood as operating within, and often in the service of, these powerful circuits of capture, a concept well-explored in Foucault’s work on power/knowledge (Foucault, 1980).

Synthesis: Formalizing the Double Engine Feedback Loop

The core novelty of our position is that these two circuits are no longer merely parallel. In contemporary formations, they are interlocked into a single, recursively reinforcing engine. The fantasy-frame (F) that captures our enjoyment directs our desire into the channels of the machinic apparatus (M). In turn, the machinic apparatus (M) that captures our production generates the data and resources that are fed back to refine and personalize the fantasy-frame (F).

This creates a powerful feedback loop: our enjoyment (σ) fuels our participation in the machines that extract our production (π), and that extracted production is used to make the ideological fantasies even more compelling. In our Substack piece, we formalize this interaction using notation from our Prolegomena (Symbolic Analysis Lab, 2025). The ideological operator I is shown to be a complex function of these interlocking captures: $I = F \circ M + M \circ F$. This formulation aims to provide a rigorous, analytical grammar for mapping these systems.

Implications: Toward a Constructivist Praxis

If ideology is this deeply engineered, running on the fuel of our own desires and productive capacities, then simple critique is an insufficient response. It is an autopsy of a living system. What is needed is a constructivist praxis of effects—a move from deconstruction to recomposition. The “Schizoanalytic Calculus” (Symbolic Analysis Lab, 2025) offers formal instruments for this task.

This involves three steps: 1) Precise Diagramming, using formal notation to map the specific capture circuits of a given ideological assemblage. 2) Strategic Operations, applying defined interventions (e.g., cut, recode) to alter the system’s topology and semiotics. 3) Targeted Invariants, specifying desired outcomes not as utopian ideals but as observable changes, such as a measurable redistribution of surplus or an increase in the system’s degrees of freedom. This is an engineering problem, not merely a philosophical one. schizoanalytic calculus.

Conclusion: Re-engineering Desire

The Double Engine thesis reframes our understanding of ideology. It is not a veil to be lifted but a machine to be reverse-engineered. It operates by interlocking two circuits: one that captures our enjoyment through fantasy (Lacanian fantasy) and one that captures our productivity through machinic apparatuses (Deleuze’s theory of desire). These circuits now feed each other in a relentless loop, making our pleasure the engine of our own exploitation.

To break this loop requires more than knowing the truth; it requires building counter-apparatuses and counter-fantasies. The goal is not to escape ideology, but to design and build new assemblages that reroute the flows of desire and production. We must create systems where the surpluses of enjoyment and production are reinvested in collective, life-affirming projects rather than being captured and alienated.

End Matter

Assumptions

• This model assumes that desire can be conceptualized as a productive, material force, not merely a psychological lack.
• It assumes that the logic of surplus-value extraction developed by Marx can be homologously applied to the psychoanalytic concept of surplus-enjoyment.
• It presupposes that complex social systems can be modeled as “machinic apparatuses” with inputs, outputs, and feedback loops.

Limits

• The model’s high level of abstraction requires significant work to be applied to diverse, specific case studies.
• It does not fully account for non-systemic forms of resistance or moments of genuine, un-captured creation that occur outside or in the cracks of the apparatus.
• The formal notation ($I = F \circ M + M \circ F$) is, at this stage, a heuristic for a more rigorous calculus that remains to be fully developed.

Testable Predictions

• Ideological systems that more tightly integrate the libidinal and productive circuits will be more resilient to traditional critique than those that do not.
• Interventions that successfully disrupt one circuit (e.g., by altering the fantasy-frame) will produce observable perturbations in the other circuit (e.g., a drop in productive extraction).
• New political or social movements will be successful to the extent that they are able to construct their own “Double Engines” that capture and reinvest desire and production for their own ends.

References

• Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Monthly Review Press.
• Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2016). The mediated construction of reality. Polity Press.
• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1972)
• Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Pantheon Books.
• Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1947). Dialectic of enlightenment. Social Studies Association, Inc.
• Lacan, J. (1978). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, 1964. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The first complete edition in English. W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1966)
• Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1978). The German ideology. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels reader (2nd ed., pp. 146–200). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1846)
• Sloterdijk, P. (1987). Critique of cynical reason. University of Minnesota Press.
• Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Polity Press.
• Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the political. Routledge.
• Symbolic Analysis Lab. (2025). Prolegomena to a Schizoanalytic Calculus. Substack. https://symbolicanalysis.substack.com/
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.
• van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199970773.001.0001
• Žižek, S. (1989). The sublime object of ideology. Verso.
• Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.