SUBJECTS OF ECONOMY

A conference organized by Rethinking Marxism
November 8 and 9, 2002
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Subjects of Economy can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways. On the one hand, it can evoke a conception of the economy as that which subjugates us , the subjects, to its inexorably capricious dictates. On the other hand, it may conjure up an image of the economy as the playground of immutably sovereign individuals, the subjects. The paranoia lurking behind the former image is matched only by the megalomania underlying the latter.

This conference will try to explore the ways in which we can and/or do entertain relationships to economy that go beyond the stifling dichotomy portrayed above. To that end, it will bring together papers and presentations that draw on the insights of marxism, overdetermination, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis. Papers will explore the convergences as well as divergences among these traditions as they relate to the oft-neglected intersection between theories of subject and theories of economy. Such an encounter is urgently needed as millions around the world - in Seattle, Geneva, Porto Alegre, and elsewhere- seek fervently for a new language that will give voice to their dissent and economic visions, and thereby lend a new meaning to the phrase Subjects of Economy.

You can access the conference program from here.

You can access the syllabus of the graduate seminar that led to the conference from here.

Some of the conference papers found their way to print as a special issue of Rethinking Marxism (Vol. 18, No. 2). You can access the Editor's Introduction for this issue from here.