Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl

First published in France in 1999, `Preliminary Materials for a Theory of theYoung-Girl’ dissects the impossibility of love under Empire. The Young-Girlis consumer society’s total product and model citizen: whatever “type” of Young-Girl she may embody, whether by whim or concerted performance, “she can only seduce by consuming.” Filled with the language of French women’s magazines, rooted in Proust’s figure of Albertine and the amusing misery of (teenage) romance in Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke, and informed by Pierre Klossowski’s notion of “living currency” and libidinal economy, `Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl’ diagnoses — andmakes visible — a phenomenon that is so ubiquitous as to have becometransparent. In the years since the book’s first publication inFrench, the worlds of fashion, shopping, seduction plans, makeover projects, andeating disorders have moved beyond the comparatively tame domain of paper magazinesinto the perpetual accessibility of Internet culture. Here the Young-Girl can seekher own reflection in corporate universals and social media exchanges of “personalities” within the impersonal realm of the marketplace. Tracing consumer society’s colonization of youth and sexuality through the Young-Girl’s”freedom” (in magazine terms) to do whatever she wants with her body, Tiqqun exposes the rapaciously competitive and psychically ruinous landscape of modern love.