Economic Forcing: Your Money or Your Life?
Course Proposal
"If one knew what the miser kept closed up in his pouch then we would know a lot about desire" /Simone Veil 1958
What are those forced choices that introduce us to an economy: Your money or your life? What is meant by money? What is meant by sex? Do the distortions and taboos on sex and money come to bear on a common object: the object of desire? Can such an interrogation be used as a way to rethink our modern economies at both the level of the individual and society? Can such questions make room for an economy of truth and desire that do not reduce to an economy of services and goods? Traditionally, such economies have been marginalized and left to an economy of the gift – the Mafia, Sects, Art, and Families – without examining their modes of production, enjoyment, debt, and potential for insanity or violence. But with a second look, do such marginal economies reveal a logic and structure that go beyond their normed boundaries? Are such marginalizations an alibi covering over a more crucial and general economy? To respond to such questions, it may be noticed that the traditional economic theories, from Smith to Marx, never define money as itself a productive force or view the relation of sexuality with regard to its function. To begin differently, I propose to define money in Lacan's logic of the signifier, then show how this logic leads directly to the problem of alienation and fetishization of merchandise in Marx. By isolating this logic of 'forcing', we bring out its correlation to Cohen's discovery in mathematical logic, then show how it may be used as a guide for anyone searching to render an economy coherent in a way that neither reduces to the dominant consumerism nor its margins. In order not to remain at the level of theory, this framework will be used to address forced choices of everyday economic life: rethinking the debt of education – paying for a university education that forces someone to get the kind of degree and job that only serves to pay back the banking institution and cooperate structures that gave the student loan, that sells the mortgage, that forces another market collapse, that forces the loss of a job, retirement, and a home, which makes such an 'education' worth nothing; of course, there is the forced choice of war and the economic war machine; or being forced to have money to make money (pay to work), being forced to rent what could be owned individually and collectively, depression and the anxiety of work as forced choices; the forcings of consumerist sex and the generalized peep show. Who and what is this invention of the Homo-Economicus?
Proposed time: 2-3 courses – Saturdays - late June early July. No previous familiarity with Lacan, Marx , or logic are required.
The course is free, open to the public, and if confirmed will be held at the Public School.
To register go to: http://thepublicschool.org/node/37353