Challenging capitalist ideology : transgression to evil in Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight club”

Abstract

This study is focused mainly on the Western civilisation, which is based on a capitalist state of government. It is aimed to take a closer look at the negative side of Capitalism in a postmodern world, where consumerism and commodification constitute all spheres of life. Entire generations showed their dissatisfaction in a system, which predominantly aims solely at generating profit. Moreover, I will examine this dissatisfaction and the reasons why people can feel that way. In order to do so, I will closely examine Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive fiction novel Fight Club, where such dissatisfaction is clearly shown through various situations. Furthermore, Fight Club also expresses transgressive notions, and this makes this novel an ideal example for the arguments I am trying to present. As in this dissertation, I will make use of transgressive notions as a means to counter such dissatisfaction created by the capitalist patriarchy. Fight Club is a novel which revolves around men who feel insignificant in a civilisation where they are considered to be disposable workers in the grand capitalist machinery. It starts with an un-named narrator who is tired of living in a society where nobody cares about him, he feels like a white-collar slave who works for an exploitive company. In order to feel something again, his defence mechanisms creates another personality named Tyler Durden. Durden is depicted as being the saviour who will rescue the narrator from the idleness created by the same society through rebellious acts. With his other personality, the narrator influences other men in their quest to free themselves from their metaphorical emasculation. Over time, the narrator along with other men, opens various fight clubs where they would meet and fight each other in an act of redemption. After some time, as fight clubs grow bigger, they evolve into an underground warfare organisation called Project Mayhem. Through various acts of transgression, Project Mayhem aims solely at the destruction of the capitalist civilisation in order to create a better society, where people are free and satisfied with themselves. Members of Project Mayhem reason out that in order to battle such a large disproportionate force they have to recur to extreme radical measures. Nonetheless, their intentions are always to help the masses liberate themselves in order to find their individuality through a cleansed interiority. One of my main aims is to demonstrate that Capitalism is not the best state of government, and in order to do so, I will make use of acclaimed scholars, intellectuals and theorists to explain why transgression is needed in such societies. In this sense, transgression is mainly the only alternative in fighting against such a system, a system where the inversion of ethics and morals is made possible. Hence it can be argued that, what is considered as “good”; does not really represent Good, since it has been remodelled to serve those in power. Therefore in such context, Evil is the only way out and in order to go against such impositions, transgression is needed.