>>2659304The modern taboo against sexual and romantic relationships between post-pubescent adolescents and adults is conventionally understood as a moral imperative for the protection of the vulnerable. This explanation, however, functions as a surface narrative that obscures a deeper, more powerful generative mechanism. The taboo is not a timeless moral universal but a historically specific technology of social and libidinal management, engineered to meet the demands of advanced industrial capitalism. It operates through two interconnected mechanisms: the imposition of surplus-repression to fuel economic productivity, and a system of differential governance that transforms the taboo into a tool of elite consolidation and control.
The foundational logic of the taboo is economic, as theorized by Herbert Marcuse's concept of surplus-repression. Any society requires a degree of basic instinctual repression to function. Advanced capitalism, however, requires a massive additional quantum of repression—surplus-repression—to create the disciplined, future-oriented subjects needed to perform alienated labor. The adolescent, a being of immense and newly awakened libidinal energy oriented toward immediate gratification (the Pleasure Principle), represents a primary challenge to this order. The taboo is the central apparatus for containing this energy. Its function is to systematically block the adolescent's instinctual drives for authentic, non-instrumental erotic connection. This dammed-up energy is then sublimated, rerouted into socially and economically productive channels: the competitive pursuit of academic grades, the ambition for career advancement, and the disciplined patterns of consumption. The taboo ensures that the adolescent's libido is not discharged in a personally fulfilling but economically useless relationship, but is instead converted into the psychic fuel for the Performance Principle—the relentless demand for productive output.
Building upon this foundation of mass libidinal discipline, the taboo operates as a dualistic system of social control, applied differently to the general populace and a ruling elite. For the masses, this is its exoteric function: the taboo is enforced as a sacred, absolute, and inviolable moral law. Publicly and legally, its violation is framed as the ultimate transgression, a monstrous act that disso
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