we gotta take the power back!

It is a common (po-mo/po-co) academic trope to insist that if something is a reaction to something else before it, the reaction is merely a product of the something before it, not something actually new, and therefore suffers the same flaws as the very thing it is a reaction against.
To give some specific examples:
"Romanticism is still functioning within an Enlightenment framework",
"Children who rebel against their parents are still being controlled by their parents' values",
"The extremely modest garb worn by nuns ends up over-emphasizing the importance of their bodies in the same way as those who would lust after them do",
and lastly - this really gets my goat - are the myriad ideas that 'seem' to be anti-capitalistic but as a matter of fact only reify the structures of capitalism. Zizek tends to be toward the head of this train:
The postmodern cultural artifact—the "critique," the "incredulity"—is itself merely a symptom/commodity/fetish. Thus has capital commodified even the cynicism that purports to unmask its "reality," to "emancipate."
-taken from wikipedia, but everything I've ever read by Zizek, which is admittedly not a great deal, sounds just like this

This sort of thinking may seem to be quite smart, and indeed seems to find its impetus in the desired freedom of the oppressed by pitching the necessity of some third, new way to break their chains.
But I don't think any of this is the case. If anything - such thoughts seem to affirm the oppressor's hold on the oppressed:
If the kid who chooses the opposite of what his parents chose is led to believe that his actions reveal his current subservience, he is then trapped in the knowledge that nothing he can do can release him, and the mental hold his parents have is regained.
I'm sorry but rebellion is rebellion, not submission.
Modesty is modesty; no one (bar maybe the deviant) has ended up lusting after a nun. Mission accomplished! Romanticism championed the Enlightenment; they were using the language/mindset given to them, as we all do, but they wanted the opposite, and that is what they got.
Now, I agree that if reactions are only knee-jerk reactions, then yes, they are in some way less 'free', but 1) reacting conversely can be a choice, and 2) knees do that for a reason.

Things can be fought - it is only the Big Dog who would want us to think other wise. Let's not give him (male pronoun intentional) the power back with our academic ramblings, and let's call a molotov cocktail a molotov cocktail.