Postmodern Moments in Modern Economics PDF
Preview Postmodern Moments in Modern Economics
POSTMODERN MOMENTS IN MODERN ECONOMICS POSTMODERN MOMENTS IN MODERN ECONOMICS David F. Ruccio and Jack Amariglio PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright2003byPrincetonUniversityPress PublishedbyPrincetonUniversityPress,41WilliamStreet, Princeton,NewJersey08540 IntheUnitedKingdom:PrincetonUniversityPress, 3MarketPlace,Woodstock,OxfordshireOX201SY AllRightsReserved LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Ruccio,DavidF. Postmodernmomentsinmoderneconomics/DavidF.Ruccio, JackAmariglio p.cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN0-691-05870-9 1.Economics—History—20thcentury.I.Amariglio,Jack.II.Title. HB87.R832003 330.1—dc21 2002193066 BritishCataloging-in-PublicationDataisavailable ThisbookhasbeencomposedinSabon Printedonacid-freepaper.∞ www.pupress.princeton.edu PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 FOR Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff TO THE MEMORY OF Lydia C. Ruccio 1929–1999 Francis E. Ruccio 1926–2001 The end of one journey is simply the start of another. —Jose´ Saramago, Journey to Portugal Where there are people my business is certain to thrive Yo’, I’ve got a lifetime job, baby, You know, my trade must be plied by the last man alive. You see, I am a gravedigger. I dig, Gravely . . . —Kent Foreman, “Tradesman” Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii ChapterOne AnIntroductiontoPostmodernism,forEconomics 1 ChapterTwo Knowledge,Uncertainty,andKeynesianEconomics 55 ChapterThree TheBodyandNeoclassicalEconomics 92 ChapterFour FeministEconomics:(Re)GenderingKnowledgeandSubjectivity 137 ChapterFive ValuesandInstitutionalEconomics 171 ChapterSix Capitalism,Socialism,andMarxianEconomics 216 ChapterSeven AcademicandEverydayEconomicKnowledges 252 AppendixA 283 AppendixB 285 AppendixC 287 ChapterEight EconomicFragments 289 References 301 Index 333 Preface THEJOURNEYthatculminatedinthisbookbeganwithoutafixeddestina- tion.Asifononeofthosehallowedroadtripsalonginterstatesandmean- dering back roads, through out-of-the-way towns and stunning land- scapes,JackandIlettheimaginarybornwiththenewdaydeterminethe directionwewouldtravel.Westruckupconversationsinroadsidediners, orboardedatrainandtalkedwiththeotherpassengers,steppingoffnow andthentosoakupthesightsandsoundsaroundthestation.Thejour- ney—theunexpectedconversations,thegrowingandchangingcollabora- tion, the unpredictable discoveries—is what mattered. Only in its midst did an idea emerge: a study, written in collaboration, of the relation be- tweenpostmodernismandeconomics. When exactly the journey began is hard to say. We’ve known one anothersincegraduateschool,inthePh.D.programattheUniversityof MassachusettsatAmherst.(Jackwasafourth-yearstudentwhenIentered in 1977, one year out of college.) We worked with the same advisers (Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff) and in the same intellectual tradi- tion (a nondeterminist approach to Marxian theory that was being pro- ducedatUMassfromtheworkofLouisAlthusserandBarryHindessand Paul Hirst), but we took it in somewhat different directions: Jack, an inquiryinto“primitivecommunism”inrelationtotheIroquois;I,acri- tique of the methodological and epistemological underpinnings of the “optimizing”approachtosocialistplanning.Ourfirstrealcollaboration emergedfromourmembershipinthe“journalgroup,”amonthlyseminar that aquired an official name (AESA, the Association for Economic and Social Analysis), grew to sponsor academic conferences and summer re- treats,and,eventually,gaverisetotheeditorialboardofthejournalRe- thinking Marxism (of which we were both founding members and have servedaseditors). But we did not actually start writing together until much later, when wedecidedtoinventapapercalled“PostmodernismandtheCritiqueof PoliticalEconomy”andpresentitattheAlliedSocialScienceAssociation meetings (where both the American Economics Association and the Union for Radical Political Economics hold their annual gatherings) in 1992. Around that same time, we had been discussing the possibility of writing a book on the “problem” of postmodernism in relation to eco- nomicdiscourseintheworkofFredricJamesonandotherswithtwoclose friendsandintellectualcompanions,BruceNortonandJulieGraham.For a variety of reasons, that particular volume never came to pass (nor did xii PREFACE Jack andI ever publishthat first, jointpaper), but allof us did goon to explorevariousdimensionsoftheproblem,inseparatearticles,chapters, andbooks.1 The roots of our curiosity about postmodernism, together with our shared sense of its potential significance for economic and social dis- course,can,ofcourse,betracedbacktoearlierperiods.Growingupand goingtocollegeatroughlythesametimebutinverydifferentplaces,both ofuswereinterestedinthearts,involvedintheater,activeintheantiwar andotherleft-wingmovements,disenchantedwithtraditionalversionsof economicsandradicalsocialtheory,andlookingtochallengeandtrans- form the terms of the existing conversation—in many areas. And in the specialsettingofthePh.D.programatUMassduringthe1970sandearly 1980s,wewereallowedtoexplorethoseinterestsandconcernsindirec- tionsthatwerenotlimitedbytheusual(thenasnow)disciplinaryproto- cols of economics. Althusser’s Reading Capital and other, related texts that we worked our way through both opened up the question of the philosophicaldistinctivenessofMarxiantheory(beyondthestricturesim- posed by modernist versions of economics and social science) and ac- quainted us with other intellectual currents generally considered to be unrelated to economics, whether mainstream or radical. These included textsinpostpositivisthistoryofscienceandphilosophy,structuralismand poststructuralism,deconstruction,linquistics,anthropology,psychoanal- ysis,andpostmodernism,writtenbyThomasKuhn,RichardRorty,Mau- rice Godelier, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Alan Badiou, George Bataille, Dominique Lecourt, and manyothers.(Thisisperhapsoneofthereasonswhyourownreactions tomodernismhavemuchmoreofa“Frenchinflection”—focusedasthey areonquestionsofdiscourse,indeterminacy,andpower—thandothose ofourcolleaguesandfriendsArjoKlamerandDeirdreMcCloskey.)And then we were pleased to find that the situation in economics (at least in the areas of methodology and history of thought) had begun to change, withthepublicationofKlamer’sConversationswithEconomists(1983) andMcCloskey’s“TheRhetoricofEconomics”(1983).Ifwefoundour- selvesat(or,accordingtosome,outside)themarginsofthediscipline,at leastwehadsomecompany! I certainly don’t want to imply any necessary trajectory or teleology, whetherofour individualeffortsorofour eventualcollaboration, based on these “initial conditions.” But the fact is (as I look back and stitch togetheramoreorlesscoherentnarrative)bothofusdidbeginexploring the relation between postmodernism and economics and, eventually, 1See, e.g., Norton 1995, 2001; J. K. Gibson-Graham 1996; Amariglio 1998; Ruccio 1998;RuccioandCallari1996;andRuccio,Graham,andAmariglio1996.
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