Il luddista metafisico

Abstract

The essay is focused on the start-up as a symbolic tool. Why does it take a central place in the public discourse? Which symbolic function does it play inside the institutional order of our societies? I propose to interpret the start-up as an elusive and ideological answer to the economic and anthropological saturation that has involved Western societies starting from the early eighties of the last century. The abundance state created by the alliance between Capital and political power during the thirty glorious years requires the creation of a new anthropological subject and a new social regulation system. Contrariwise, Western societies prefer to remain attached at the glorious symbolic order of modernity, based on the epic of the individual. The start-up myth re-legitimizes this narrative, hiding the hitches in the development of the social building it engenders.