The Jouissance of Tangping

Following up on something I posted yesterday, the NYTimes reports: (Note- The linked article is behind the pay walk.)

Five years ago, Luo Huazhong quit his job in a factory, biked 1,300 miles to Tibet and started working odd jobs. He called his new lifestyle “lying flat,” or tangping in Mandarin. His blog post about it, “Lying Flat Is Justice,” went viral and became a broader statement about Chinese society for millennials who are defying the country’s prosperity narrative by refusing to participate in it: forgoing marriage, children, jobs, houses and cars.

The ruling Communist Party has targeted the idea as a threat to stability. The authorities barred posts on a tangping forum with more than 200,000 members and required e-commerce platforms to stop selling clothes, phone cases and other merchandise branded with “tangping.”

As I said yesterday, I’m fascinated by this! Seriously fascinated! The reason is that I want to see what happens next.

It seems to me that the CCP has become far bolder and authoritarian during the past year while the world was so focused on COVID-19. We can see this clearly in implementing the national security law in Hong Kong and the increased tensions between China and Taiwan.

Right now, the CCP is a juggernaut moving at great speed.

I’m far from sure that tangping will be anything other than a fad, but it sure makes me think that the CCP has not read Lacan and that they don’t understand how jouissance works. It’s my claim that having jouissance in their blind spot might cause the CCP to inadvertently make something that could just be a fad into something that has significant effects on their power.

The masses will put up with a lot of abuse from the powers that be. But when the powers that be get overconfident and go head-to-head with jouissance...

Shit gets real.