On Economic Anarchy: Originary Practice and The Discordance of Times
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Authors
To circumvent both historicism and utopianism, Reiner Schürmann develops an account of a three-tiered temporal difference in which the entitative and the event-like are connected by an “economy of presence.” This paper investigates Schürmann’s notion of “economy” to draw out the historical-systematic status of what he construes as “economic anarchy” in distinction from both Giorgio Agamben’s idea of a “true anarchy” purged of all oikonomia and from Miguel Vatter’s rights-based notion of “politico-legal anarchy.” What is at stake in “economic anarchy” is the preparation of a place that puts an end to domination by first principles without fantasizing a clean cut that ends up reproducing hegemonic fantasms. Rather, Schürmann insists on the aporetic and incongruous nature of that “caesura-place” in which the synchronic and the diachronic, universalization and singularization, are bound together. At variance with both Agamben’s appeal to a destituent potential and Vatter’s assertion of constituent power, Schürmann draws out the discordance of times that is implied by what he calls originary or individual practice. The paper concludes with a brief confrontation of Schürmann’s critique of epochal economy with a Marxian critique of political economy.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Philosophy Today |
Volume | 68 |
Issue number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | 785-800 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISSN | 0031-8256 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Special Issue: Reiner Schürmann Today
- Digital media - temporal difference, Giorgio Agamben, Miguel Vatter, strategy, place, judgment, constituent power, destituent potential, peremption
- Philosophy