The more the system blows out of steam, the more its raw sadism is exposed. Turn the libidinal in libidinal economy to its maximum, in the hope all else is forgotten. Perversion as policy. Perversion.

New in Urban Studies: urban change needs analyzing class AND housing tenure together. Coulter & Paccoud offer five "ideal types" showing how different class-tenure groups drive local change. From "molar" citywide patterns to "molecular" local intersections. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

« l’étude sincère purifie tout, comme le feu » « l’étude d’un cas curieux de physiologie » « chercher en eux la bête, ne voir que la bête, les jeter dans un drame violent, et noter scrupuleusement les sensations et les actes de ces êtres » Zola, préface à Thérèse Raquin, 1868

New open access paper with Rory Coulter Leasing space through the private rented sector: The intersections of class and tenure change in London, 2011–2021 doi.org/10.1177/0042... The distribution of populations in cities is increasingly tied to the strategies of property investors and developers

Dear Colleagues, On behalf my co-organisers, I am writing to invite abstract submissions for the ‘Re-centring land conflicts in the post-globalisation order’ mini-conference (MC11) as part of the SASE 2026 Conference in Bordeaux (1-3 July). sase.org/events/2026-... Deadline: December 16th

🎥 Breaking the Deadlock: Evidence and Collaboration for Housing Reform, featuring: Michel-Edouard Ruben (Fondation Idea) Ketty Dorla (IKO Real Estate) Antoine Paccoud (LISER) Paulette Lenert (Member of Parliament) Luc Biever (Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning) ▶️https://youtu.be/V4QGqgZtFHk

👏 Congrats to Dr. Madalina MEZAROS who successfully defended her PhD thesis "Property, Policy, & Place: #Housing #Inequality & #Gentrification Dynamics in #Luxembourg" 👩‍🎓 @madalinamez.bsky.social was awarded a #PhD degree in #Geography from @uni.lu 🙏 Kudos to supervisor @douccap.bsky.social & jury!

📢 Upcoming Seminar at LISER Join us on 16 October 2025 for an engaging seminar with Prof. Dr. Desiree Fields (UC Berkeley). 📍 Location: LISER, Maison des Sciences Humaines, Belval 🗓️ Date & Time: 16 October 2025, 11:00 – 12:30 🔗 Learn more & register here: www.liser.lu/events/RSSUD...

Lydie Polfer lehnt ein Gebäuderegister für die Hauptstadt ab. Damit stößt die DP-Politikerin nicht nur ihren Parteikollegen Claude Meisch vor den Kopf. Ihre Haltung torpediert die Regierungspläne zur Einführung einer Leerstandsteuer – und könnte noch andere Folgen haben.

Not sure the sadism is performative! Perverse practices are constructed and repeated so as to give back to the Other (America) that which it is thought to be missing, the object a at the heart of the subject (greatness). A double imaginary move to legitimise cruelty and the pleasure it provides.

Sadism, the perverse subjective structure that is an essential infrastructure to the maintenance and legitimation of capitalist domination: …I don’t care about ameliorating my own wellbeing as long as ‘the others’ get only what they ‘deserve’…

Anyone up for some fieldwork to see if these 146 properties are still vacant? Un peu de travail de terrain pour voir si ces 146 biens sont toujours inoccupés ? leerstandsmelder.de/region/luxem...

Anyone up for some fieldwork to see if these 146 properties are still vacant? Un peu de travail de terrain pour voir si ces 146 biens sont toujours inoccupés ? leerstandsmelder.de/region/luxem...

…

I'm glad people are starting to use the word 'sadism'. because that is what this is.

📣 BOOK "The Political Economy of Housing: The Case of Turkey" authored by LISER researcher @sila-demirors.bsky.social ℹ️ Prof. Demirörs explores the analytical & historical process of how #housing, becomes an instrument of speculative finance to feed itself. 🔗 brill.com/display/titl... 1/3

🔎 Discover a NEW book review forum in the summer issue of IJHP 📘 Review by Prof. Zacarés @harveymurenow.bsky.social : www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 📘 Review by Prof. Berry: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 💡 Prof. Demirörs' response: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 2/3

Lovely day in Luxembourg then Dudelange then across border into France today with @douccap.bsky.social & @madalinamez.bsky.social learnt so much 😊

Sous les tam-tams sadique et masochiste, il y a bien la répétition comme puissance terrible […] Au lieu que la répétition soit commandée par l’idée d’un plaisir à retrouver ou à obtenir, voilà que la répétition se déchaîne, est devenue indépendante de tout plaisir préalable.

@madalinamez.bsky.social , @douccap.bsky.social and I in the Luxembourg papers for our recent @urbanstudiesjournal.com paper

Rien n’est plus étranger au sadique qu’une intention de persuader ou de convaincre […] Il s’agit de tout autre chose. Il s’agit de montrer que le raisonnement est lui-même une violence, qu’il est du côté des violents, avec toute sa rigueur, toute sa sérénité, tout son calme. Deleuze, Sacher-Masoch

“One can find the form of social alienation in action in all the reterritorializations of capitalism, inasmuch as they keep the flows from escaping the system, and maintain labor in the axiomatic framework of property”. Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 320

“If we have been able to speak of the intrinsically perverted nature of psychoanalysis, this is due to the fact that perversion in general is the artificial reterritorialization of the flows of desire, whose machines on the contrary are indices of deterritorialized production.” D&G Anti-Oedipus 314

“A medical student who wants to be admitted to the medical profession must offer satisfactory proof of his practical and theoretical knowledge of medicine [..] Every shoemaker, cabinet-maker, turner, mechanic, electrician, stone mason, construction worker, etc., has to fulfil strict requirements…

“Political irrationalism, which plagues, disfigures and destroys our life, is, in the true psychiatric sense of the word, a perversion of social life, a perversion brought about by the failure to recognize the natural functions of life”

If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because the fascist programme makes a greater impression on him than..

This explains why the man who has been inculcated with mystical or nationalistic ‘ethics’ is so accessible to political reactionary catchwords, such as honour, purity, etc. He is continually forced to remind himself to be honourable and pure. Reich, MPF

Desire knows nothing of exchange, it knows only theft and gift. Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 186

If hysteria does not stifle unresolved excitation in nervous impotence, or a compulsive neurosis does not stifle the same excitation in futile and grotesque compulsive symptoms, the patriarchal-authoritarian compulsive order offers sufficient opportunity for sadistic mystical discharges. Reich, MPF

📢 WE ARE HIRING! . LISER is looking for a Research Associate (Post-doc) who will play a key role in developing high quality, scientific and policy-relevant work within the Urban Development and Mobility department. . ✍️ Learn more and apply for the job: shorturl.at/ijhgi

“What has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don’t steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don’t strike.” Reich, Mass psychology of fascism

“God demands constant enjoyment […] It is my duty to provide Him with it in the form of highly developed soul-voluptuousness […] If I can get a little sensuous pleasure in this process, I feel I am entitled to it as a small compensation for [my] excess of suffering and privation” Schreber, Memoirs

📣Online Event: #Gender & economic #insecurity 📅 March 3: 15h-17h 🗣️ LISER researcher @douccap.bsky.social will share insights on the intersection of #housing & gender #inequalities 💡Join discussions on gender differences/commonalities w/ experts across various fields. ℹ️ www.uni.lu/en/events/ge...

New job alert! 2-year post-doc in Housing Studies @liser.lu A chance to develop your research agenda and advance the analyses conducted in the Housing Observatory, a multi-annual collaboration with the Luxembourg Housing Ministry. Happy to answer questions! jobs.liser.lu/job/Esch-sur...

New job alert! 2-year post-doc in Housing Studies @liser.lu A chance to develop your research agenda and advance the analyses conducted in the Housing Observatory, a multi-annual collaboration with the Luxembourg Housing Ministry. Happy to answer questions! jobs.liser.lu/job/Esch-sur...

Our Urban Studies article is now open access! 🔓 We introduce ‘gentrification regimes’—using 50 years of property data to reveal how Luxembourg’s housing market shifted from ownership-driven to investor-led, with national fiscal policies fueling buy-to-let gentrification. 📖 tinyurl.com/ycyhd6kk

“The social axiomatic of modern societies is caught between two poles […] the Urstaat that they would like to resuscitate as an overcoding and reterritorializing unity, and the unfettered flows that carry them toward an absolute threshold […] paranoia and schizophrenia”. D&G, AO, 260

“Desire can never be deceived. Interests can be deceived, unrecognized, or betrayed, but not desire. Whence Reich's cry: no, the masses were not deceived, they desired fascism, and that is what has to be explained.” Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 257

You are not concerned as to whether the Other – that is something blind, and perhaps dead – enjoys. But him, the exhibitionist, it interests him. Lacan, S16, 2006: 256

The whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respect Protestant Asceticism added in itself nothing new…

It is with the thing, capitalism, that the unavowable begins: there is not a single economic or financial operation that, assuming it is translated in terms of a code, would not lay bare its own unavowable nature, that is, intrinsic perversion or essential cynicism. D&G, AO: 247

Impulsive enjoyment of life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from religion, was as such the enemy of rational asceticism, whether in the form of seigneurial sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public-house of the common man. Weber, PE, 113

New job alert! 2-year post-doc on the history of property inequalities (renewable up to 4 years) at LISER, Luxembourg. HIST_PROP, funded by @csllux.bsky.social, will analyse land and property ownership data in Luxembourg (1824-1938). Happy to answer questions! jobs.liser.lu/job/Esch-sur...

If the capitalist is not defined by enjoyment, the reason is that his aim is not merely the ‘production for production’s sake’ that generates surplus value, but also its actual realization: an unrealized SV of flows is as if not produced, and is embodied in unemployment and stagnation. D&G, AO: 235

New job alert! 2-year post-doc on the history of property inequalities (renewable up to 4 years) at LISER, Luxembourg. HIST_PROP, funded by @csllux.bsky.social, will analyse land and property ownership data in Luxembourg (1824-1938). Happy to answer questions! jobs.liser.lu/job/Esch-sur...

“Surplus enjoyment is a function of the renunciation of enjoyment under the effect of discourse” Lacan, S16, 2006: 18

“Christian asceticism […] strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world.” Weber, PE, 101

Capitalists "extort the production of a surplus value: they first contribute to the creation of that from which they take away. A part of the value created without [their] labor can be appropriated […] without violating the corresponding right to the exchange of commodities” D&G, ATP, 1987: 568