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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterTransgression NowCharlie BlakeSteen Christiansendeliberate ‘transgressive’ hedonism as much as on the sober moralitythat might once have been associated with the capitalist system.Thus, as Noys has summarised, there are critics such as JosephGoux who claim that Bataille’s analysis and transgressive strategyis no longer applicable, whilst others such as Baudrillard argue thatcapitalism has effectively become Bataillian in its solar extravagance.(Noys, 2000, p.122).From this perspective, the transition between an economy basedon production as in Fordism or Five Year Plans to one based on consumptionhas parallels with the idea of a transition between the disciplinarysocieties anatomized by Foucault and the control society asmapped out so persuasively in relation to Foucault by Deleuze in hisseminal essay, “Postscript on Control Societies” from 1990. In thislater model, as Mark Fisher has so eloquently elaborated in his polemicalstudy, Capitalist Realism: Is there an Alternative? the anti-capitalistmovement(s) are always already formulated by a radically decentredand strategically absent capitalist Other to the extent that thenotion of there even being an ‘alternative,’ a form of transgressionthat can actually transgress, has been turned into a kind of spin onthe notion of rebellion and revolution as fashion accessories or asvideo game distractions rather than acts of ethical or political engagement.Thus Fisher writes of the tragic figure of Kurt Cobain ofNirvana as marking an end point to the possibility of transgressionin its more classical sense as follows:In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobainseemed to give wearied voice to the despondency of thegeneration that had come after history, whose every movewas anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it hadeven happened. Cobain knew that he was just anotherpiece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than aprotest against MTV; knew that every move was a clichéscripted in advance, knew that even realizing it is a cliché.(Fisher, 2011, p.9)If Cobain’s death marks, as Simon Reynolds and other have suggested,the final moment in which the zeit had or could have anykind of geist, then it might well be argued that we have reached astage of post-transgression or transgression fatigue in a culture ofVolume03 9