Zoom link
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/88045482054?pwd=V0hNbGpzMURCVUxrNE4vZnRGUjJ5UT09
This conference aims to foster an original and interdisciplinary ground for discussing the connection of philosophy, the humanities, and economics, and to engage members of the Philosophy of Economics working group who are interested in contemporary critical thought.
The reference to economic terminology is a massive and determining feature of a deconstructive approach. Since it describes a structure of reality based on a postulate of the non-conservation of any principle—whether energy, value, life, or meaning—deconstruction entails a critique of every law (nomos) of property and proximity (oikos). At the same time, Jacques Derrida was able to define the hallmark of his work, différance, as “the concept of economy,” provided, of course, “that one understands by this term something other than the classical economy of metaphysics or the classical metaphysics of economy” (Positions, 1972).
Economic metaphors and concepts thus shape the deconstructive theorization of perception, meaning, epistemology, ethics, and politics, as well as the very structure of experience. Of Grammatology (1967) highlights the empirical link between this approach and the historical connection between the rise of writing and the emergence of a “monetary and pre-monetary economy.” Later, the consideration of the relationship between gift, exchange, and money would shape all deconstructive reflection on ethics, politics, and law (particularly regarding the issue of hospitality), in the form of an open dialectic between the calculable and the incalculable, negotiation and the unconditional.
Yet
Zoom link
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/88045482054?pwd=V0hNbGpzMURCVUxrNE4vZnRGUjJ5UT09
This conference aims to foster an original and interdisciplinary ground for discussing the connection of philosophy, the humanities, and economics, and to engage members of the Philosophy of Economics working group who are interested in contemporary critical thought.
The reference to economic terminology is a massive and determining feature of a deconstructive approach. Since it describes a structure of reality based on a postulate of the non-conservation of any principle—whether energy, value, life, or meaning—deconstruction entails a critique of every law (nomos) of property and proximity (oikos). At the same time, Jacques Derrida was able to define the hallmark of his work, différance, as “the concept of economy,” provided, of course, “that one understands by this term something other than the classical economy of metaphysics or the classical metaphysics of economy” (Positions, 1972).
Economic metaphors and concepts thus shape the deconstructive theorization of perception, meaning, epistemology, ethics, and politics, as well as the very structure of experience. Of Grammatology (1967) highlights the empirical link between this approach and the historical connection between the rise of writing and the emergence of a “monetary and pre-monetary economy.” Later, the consideration of the relationship between gift, exchange, and money would shape all deconstructive reflection on ethics, politics, and law (particularly regarding the issue of hospitality), in the form of an open dialectic between the calculable and the incalculable, negotiation and the unconditional.
Yet this line of thought has rarely ever interrogated the discipline known as economics: neither economic phenomena, nor economists’ texts, nor documents marking economic history. Jacques Derrida himself authored only one article devoted to money and took part in a roundtable on the subject, published in the collective volume L’argent (ed. M. Drach, 2004). Among his readers, exceptions are few but significant (J.-J. Goux, N. Gernalzick, E. Berns).
The gap between the programmatic use of the economy motif and the absence of a positive thematization suggests a refusal to accredit the independence of this discipline—that is, also a refusal to consider economics as a regional science. But then, it’s as if deconstruction retains in reserve an alternative thinking of the economic, while deconstruction itself unfolds as an economic, rather than a nomic or “hyper-legal” undertaking (Du droit à la philosophie, 1990). In this gap, we must also read Derrida’s reticence toward contemporary perspectives parallel to his own: above all, the various Marxisms, as well as the constellation of what has been called post-structuralism—even if he shared its critique of liberal axiomatic thinking.
Despite this avoidance, the articulation between deconstruction and economy promises to be effective for addressing contemporary debates as well as key moments in the history of economic thought. It allows us to examine both the strengths and limits of orthodox and heterodox approaches, of theoretical as well as technical developments within the discipline. The invitation to interpret this conjunction can be heard in several ways, opening a broad field of investigation.
As an invitation to explore the implications of deconstructive thought for economic discourses and the history of economic thought.
If one seeks to deconstruct a “classical metaphysics” of economy, how might the concepts of labor or production, value or money, exchange or consumption be reworked anew? What are the theoretical, epistemological, rhetorical consequences of such a gesture?
As an invitation to pluralize the understanding of the signifier “economy.”
If we can speak of psychic economy, aesthetic economy, the economy of thought, of nature, or of salvation—what are the histories, topologies, genealogies, and structures of these figures? How can we think the relations between political economy and psychic economy, or between political and aesthetic economy, without reducing one to the other? If we can disturb the “narrow” synonymy between economy and stewardship, management, or commercial administration, how can we measure the (critical, deconstructive, or hegemonic) effects of a “general” meaning of economy? In this context, what becomes of the human (and the animal), nature, rationality and capital, matter and value?
As an invitation to think the relationships between economy and its others—its outsides or margins.
What are the relations between economy and ecology? Economy and sovereignty? Economy and revolution? The economic and the anthropological, or the economic and the social? How can we address the relationship between economy and justice without opposing them or reducing justice to mere calculation? How can we resist the primitive accumulation undertaken by contemporary techno-financial oligarchies without hoping for the overcoming of the very conditions of all alienation? How can we think the reversals of capitalism without reducing them to the forgetting of a “common sense,” an original sense of oikonomia that must be reactivated?
As an invitation to reread the text of deconstruction through economic discourses.
If deconstruction enables the reinterpretation of economy, why couldn’t economic discourses, in turn, offer a new interpretation of différance? If deconstructive thought calibrates its movement to the text of what is, do economic phenomena not describe a deconstruction at work? Doesn’t the economy expose phenomena that exceed any metaphysics of economy and that dominant discourses repress or ignore?
If the text of deconstruction pushes us to dismantle the conventional meaning of what we call economy, conversely, the text of economy should allow us to open the text of deconstruction to unexplored perspectives, to put it to the test, and to push its limits further.
Giustino De Michele (Postdoctoral Researcher, CIELAM, Aix-Marseille University)
Thibault Mercier (PhD Candidate, IrePH, Université Paris Nanterre)
Participants:
| Isabelle Alfandary, professor of American literature and critical theory at Sorbonne Nouvelle University |
| Anne Alombert, associate professor of Philosophy at Paris 8 University |
| Marie Cuillerai, professor of Philosophy at Paris Cité University |
| Giustino De Michele, postdoctoral researcher at Aix-Marseille University |
| Anne-Laure Delatte, CNRS tenured researcher at Paris Dauphine University |
| Alain Deneault, professor of Philosophy at the University of Moncton |
| Ludovic Desmedt, professor of Economics at the Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté. |
| Fausto Fraisopi, professor of Philosophy at Aix-Marseille University |
| Nadja Gernalzick, professor of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna |
| Simon Glendinning, professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics |
| Jan Horst Keppler, professor of economics at the Université Paris Dauphine University |
| Apostolos Lampropoulos, professor of Comparative Literature at the University Bordeaux-Montaigne |
| Giuseppe Longo, CNRS research director emeritus at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris |
| Solange Manche, independent Researcher |
| Francesca Manzari, professor in Comparative Literature at Aix-Marseille University |
| Patrick Mardellat, professor of Economics at Sciences Po Lille |
| Thibault Mercier, PhD candidate in philosophy at Paris Nanterre University |
| Bertrand Ogilvie, professor emeritus in Philosophy at Paris 8 University |
| Luca Paltrinieri, associate professor of Political Philosophy at Rennes 1 University |
| Peter Szendy, professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Brown University |
| Carlo Vercellone, professor of Economics at Paris 8 University |
| Francesco Vitale, professor of Philosophy at the University of Salerno |
| Simon Morgan Wortham, professor in Humanities at Kingston University London |
This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 101034324, and from the French government under the France 2030 investment plan, as part of the Initiative d’Excellence d’Aix-Marseille Université – A*MIDEX, ref. AMX-22-COF-412.
