Enjoyment as a Political Force: Why Your Culture Strategy Has to Go Deeper Than “Values”
In an age of culture wars, polarised media and weaponised outrage, most organisations still talk about culture in terms of values, behaviours and comms. Yet as Derek Hook’s article “What Is ‘Enjoyment as a Political Factor’?” shows, there is another, more volatile layer at work: the enjoyment people get from their political and cultural positions – including the enjoyment of anger, resentment and transgression.
If you are trying to navigate today’s cultural sphere – as an employer, campaigner, public body or brand – you cannot afford to ignore this libidinal economy.
This piece explores what Hook calls enjoyment (jouissance), why it matters politically, and how organisations can work more intelligently with the “rules of enjoyment” shaping contemporary conflicts.
From “Values” to Enjoyment: What Organisations Are Missing
Hook’s core claim is that ideology does not bind people only through ideas or values; it binds them through the enjoyment attached to those ideas. That enjoyment is often:
Bodily and affective – a rush, a thrill, a righteous high.
Mixed with pain – “negative pleasure” that can feel traumatic and addictive at once.
Tied to transgression – the kick of crossing what is morally or socially forbidden.
He uses examples like war being “a drug”, the exhilaration of rage, and the voluptuousness of moral outrage to show how subjects can be excited by the very affects they publicly describe as distressing.
For organisations, this means:
You are not just dealing with opinions about culture and politics; you are dealing with enjoyments people are reluctant to give up.
Attempts at culture change that focus only on messaging, policy and “rational persuasion” will run aground if they ignore what people get off on – the thrills of anger, contempt or being “on the right side”.
Key culture insight: If your strategy doesn’t ask “where’s the enjoyment here?” it is likely to misread the intensity and persistence of resistance.
The Obscene Underside of “Doing the Right Thing”
One of Hook’s most unsettling points is that there is no simple opposition between progressive norms and problematic enjoyment. In his discussion of racism, he shows how:
Subjects may publicly condemn racism while privately enjoying racist thoughts or jokes as a “guilty pleasure”.
The very prohibition of racism heightens its illicit thrill; the more something is forbidden, the more enjoyment can attach to transgressing it.
He calls attention to how liberal anti‑racist attitudes can coexist with a “jolt of hatred” that feels illicitly satisfying. In other words, a moral stance can sit on top of – and even feed – a disavowed enjoyment.
This has clear implications for organisations:
Espoused values (EDI statements, ethical codes, sustainability pledges) may live side by side with organisational enjoyments that contradict them: the pleasure of scapegoating, the thrill of aggressive competition, the righteousness of “calling out” others.
Compliance culture can unintentionally intensify the enjoyment of breaking, bending or cynically performing the rules.
Key culture insight: Don’t assume that proclaiming values reduces harmful enjoyment. It may simply push it underground and make it more intense.
The “Contract of Enjoyments”: Why People Stick With Bad Systems
Hook introduces a powerful idea: a “contract of enjoyments”. We accept sacrifices and forms of servitude so long as we’re granted certain pockets of enjoyment in return – even if the broader structure is not in our interest.
He illustrates this through:
Nelson Mandela’s decision to wear the Springbok rugby jersey in 1995 – a gesture that recognised white South Africans’ “national enjoyment” and ensured political change did not appear to threaten it.
Carnival‑like festivals of excess that seem subversive but actually stabilise the social order by offering regulated moments of transgression and an “obligation to enjoy”.
Translate this to organisational life, and you see:
People will tolerate hierarchy, overwork, or opaque decision‑making if certain enjoyments remain untouched: the banter, the rituals of competition, the right to complain, the shared enemy.
“Culture initiatives” that take away these informal enjoyments without recognising their function can easily provoke backlash – or drive enjoyment into more toxic spaces.
Key culture insight: Every institution is held together not just by rules and incentives but by an implicit contract about who gets to enjoy what, where and at whose expense.
Rules of Enjoyment: How Culture Wars Are Organised
Hook argues that enjoyment is not random or purely individual; it is organised by fantasies and “rules of enjoyment” that specify who is allowed to enjoy what, and where others’ enjoyment becomes intolerable.
In his work on racism, he shows how:
Racist fantasies often revolve around the idea that the “other” is stealing our enjoyment – having illicit sexual or cultural pleasures at our expense.
Apartheid, for instance, involved strict separations of “appropriate” domains of enjoyment, with rage triggered when Black people appeared to intrude on spaces reserved for white libidinal privilege.
More broadly, he suggests that:
Nations and groups cohere by partaking in shared forms of enjoyment, transmitted through myths, rituals and practices.
There is “no jouissance as such” – only historically specific patterns of enjoyment structured by fantasy.
For organisations navigating today’s cultural sphere, this means:
Many conflicts (over race, gender, climate, national identity, free speech) are also conflicts over enjoyment: whose fun, pride, outrage or rituals get to define the space.
You need to map not just “stakeholders” and “issues” but the fantasies and enjoyments that make those issues feel existential.
Key culture insight: Culture wars are often enjoyment wars. Strategy needs an “analytics of enjoyment”, not just stakeholder mapping.
Law, Superego and the Command to Enjoy
Hook connects enjoyment to law and the superego – the internalised, punishing moral agency. Several dynamics matter for organisations:
No enjoyment without law
Enjoyment depends on limits; it feeds on what is off‑limits.
“Without a transgression there is no access to jouissance”; laws create the conditions for enjoyment by defining what counts as illicit.
The obscene underside of rules
Public laws and norms are shadowed by an “obscene nightly law” – the superego imperative to enjoy and to punish.
People can become aroused by enforcing rules, watching others punished, or policing boundary transgressions.
The double bind of culture change
Subjects are bound to the law by both their identification with it and the suffering they experience under its demands.
This helps explain why systems can appear to “take on a life of their own” beyond formal structures: they are fuelled by superegoic enjoyment.
For leaders and culture practitioners, this suggests:
Every new code, policy or norm will have an obscene underside: subtle permissions, new enjoyments in enforcement, new guilts and resentments.
“Be authentic”, “bring your whole self to work” and “have fun” can function as superegoic commands to enjoy – generating anxiety and performance rather than genuine vitality.
Key culture insight: When you introduce or tighten norms, ask: what new forms of enjoyment (including cruel or punitive ones) are you inadvertently creating?
Towards an Analytics of Enjoyment for Organisations
Hook ends by calling for a methodological “analytics of enjoyment” – a systematic way of analysing how enjoyment functions in racist, nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic or misogynist formations. He proposes questions that translate remarkably well into organisational diagnostics:
What are the “rights to enjoy” in this context – who is perceived as having the legitimate claim to certain pleasures, spaces or symbols?
What “illegitimate” or threatening enjoyments are attributed to others (internally or externally)?
What sacrosanct libidinal treasures does the group fear losing – what forms of enjoyment feel non‑negotiable?
What tacit rules govern enjoyment here – where, how and with whom are certain affects permissible?
What fantasies organise these rules – stories about “who we are”, “who they are” and what each enjoys at the expense of the other?
He also gestures toward the possibility of “traversing the fantasy” – strategically weakening harmful fantasies so their associated enjoyment loses its grip.
For organisations, this offers a powerful extension of culture work:
Move from surface‑level sentiment analysis (“how do people feel?”) to mapping how enjoyment circulates: where anger is pleasurable, where resentment is bonding, where guilt is oddly cherished.
Design interventions that alter the conditions and scripts of enjoyment, not just the messaging around them.
Practical Steps: Working With Enjoyment in Your Culture Strategy
To make this actionable for organisations navigating today’s cultural sphere, you might:
Map your “enjoyment hotspots”
Identify rituals, practices and spaces where intensity runs high: town halls, away days, online channels, performance reviews, campaign launches.
Ask explicitly: what do people enjoy here – including what they would be reluctant to admit? Whose expense funds that enjoyment?
Surface the fantasy structures
Listen for recurring stories about “who we are” and “who threatens us”.
Notice where others’ enjoyment is cast as excessive, unfair or dangerous – for example, how particular demographics, activists, customers or regions are talked about.
Audit the contract of enjoyments
What unofficial enjoyments does your system trade in (e.g. tolerated bullying cloaked as banter, heroic overwork as a badge of pride, ritual humiliation disguised as feedback)?
What official changes are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as attacks on those enjoyments?
Design different enjoyments, not just different messages
Create new shared rituals that channel intensity differently – for instance, collective problem‑solving instead of ritualised complaint, structured agonism instead of personalised feuds.
Make it more enjoyable to participate in inclusive, future‑oriented practices than in nostalgic or exclusionary ones.
Watch the superego
Be wary of cultural messaging that becomes a command (“you must be inclusive/innovative/authentic”); notice where shame and anxiety spike.
Build spaces where people can speak honestly about ambivalence, resentment and fatigue without being shamed, so enjoyment can be reworked rather than simply repressed.
Call to Action: Build Your Own Analytics of Enjoyment
If you are responsible for organisational culture, political communications, or brand leadership, the challenge Hook sets is clear: stop treating culture as a neutral layer of values and start seeing it as a contested field of enjoyment.
At strat4, we work with organisations to:
Map the hidden “rules of enjoyment” underpinning their internal culture and external positioning.
Diagnose where culture wars, backlash and polarisation are being fuelled by disavowed enjoyments rather than overt disagreements.
Design strategies, narratives and practices that redirect libidinal energy toward more generative, equitable and future‑facing forms of belonging.
If you recognise that your current culture, comms or change programmes are hitting invisible resistance, it may be time to develop your own analytics of enjoyment.
Get in touch with us to explore a tailored enjoyment‑in‑culture audit and strategy workshop for your organisation – and start working with, not against, the forces that really bind people to your institutions.