Abstract

The libidinal economy could be exploited by both political movements and advertising campaigns in a pictorial space that is related to the social space at any historical moment. The arrangement of desires in a propaganda poster of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is, in light of political semiotics, the same as in a campaign poster in a consumer society today. The same libidinal economy is rooted in our political unconsciousness and remains to be the deep structure of our political performance. A critical image analysis or a political semiotic critique of this libidinal economy that rules us in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and in consumer society today is necessary and urgent.