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Arial                       a journal of economics, culture & society     ArialVol 18 No 2 ArialApril   2006   Arial  IN THIS ISSUE:  Arial0000,8080,8080Editors’ Introduction Arial      ArialSYMPOSIUM: Subjects of Economy Arial  Arial0000,8080,8080Subjects of Economy: Introduction Arial  ArialJulie Graham, Jack Amariglio ArialThis symposium reflects the multi-year conversation of participants in a seminar on “subjects of economy” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who were interested in theorizing and practicing a politics of economic transformation. In pursuit of their political and theoretical interests, the seminar participants embarked on an extended collective investigation into questions of subjectivity. They aspired to move beyond the identity theory that prevails in poststructuralist thought, seeking a more complex understanding of subjectivation as both a recalcitrant, stalemated state of being and an opening to transformation. What emerges in this symposium are some theoretical glimpses into class subjectivity, and particularly its communist or communal forms, as well as some insights into the micropolitical processes of class transformation.Arial    Arial0000,8080,8080Questions of Communism: Ethics, Ontology, Subjectivity Arial  ArialYahya M. Madra ArialThis paper is both a critique and an affirmation of the “postmodern” Marxist debates on communism. It claims that any serious discussion of ethico-political concepts, such as exploitation and class justice, should include how subjectivity animates class. In particular, it insists that communism is predicated upon a shift at the level of subjectivity, in the very ideological coordinates that define what is just and what is unjust. Rethinking class analysis by locating the question of sexual difference at the ethico-political and theoretical core of class analysis makes it possible to differentiate exploitative class structures and communist class structures as two distinct modes in which communities fail to domesticate the Real of class antagonism.Arial    Arial0000,8080,8080Mourning, Melancholy, and the Politics of Class Transformation Arial  ArialCeren Özselçuk ArialIn recent attempts to problematize the relation between radical social change and identity politics, social theorists have drawn attention to affective attachments to an injured identity that are said to foreclose political transformation. This essay, while taking these critiques of identity politics seriously, questions the political demand for a “death of identity” that is often implied by such critiques. Specifically, it raises the following issues for class-transformative politics as they apply to the contexts of economic dislocation and loss: given that there is no easy or ready-made way to move beyond an identity politics riveted to loss and injury, how can we rethink the relationship between identity politics and class transformation? What politically empowering modalities are capable of addressing loss, such that they assist rather than stunt classed resubjectivation? This essay mobilizes the concepts of melancholy and mourning from Freudian psychoanalysis in order to formulate a response to these questions. The objective is to expand upon current political strategies of transformation in order to move from capitalist exploitation toward communism while at the same time placing the issue of resubjectivation and the register of affects at the forefront of revolutionary politics.   Arial0000,8080,8080Cooperative Subjects: Toward a Post-Fantasmatic Enjoyment of the Economy Arial  ArialKen Byrne, Stephen Healy ArialThis piece explores practices within some cooperative firms as attempts to foster a subject who has a particular relationship with work and with the community economy. We call this relationship identifying or working in the gap: deriving satisfaction from engaging with the various antagonisms, conflicts, and contingencies that attend the cooperative and its relationship with the community in which it is constituted. Drawing on complementary strains of poststructuralist Marxian theory and Lacanian psychoanalytic thought, we speculate that such subjects are post-fantasmatic in relation to the economy—not in the sense that they no longer have narratives that explain their working lives, but that these narratives do not revolve around capitalocentric economic fantasy and its various symptoms and resentments. We offer a few brief examples of worker coop members working in and identifying with the gap, attempting to keep the negativity of communal production intact through the different phases of collective economic activity.   Arial0000,8080,8080The Economy of Joyful Passions: A Political Economic Ethics of the Virtual Arial  ArialJoseph T. Rebello ArialThis paper draws an ethics of theorizing and representing the economy from Gilles Deleuze's concept of the virtual. Using Deleuze's work with Félix Guattari, I propose that social representations correspond, in mutual constitution, with modes of subjective investment. This implies that the problem of subjectivity, in particular the subject's relation to economy, is critical for those interested in the production and effects of economic discourse. After outlining what this ethics demands from theories of the economy, I show how antiessentialist class analysis provides a way of producing a Deleuzian political economy in line with these demands.    Arial0000,8080,8080Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development: Preliminary Thoughts on a New Approach to Postdevelopment ArialChizu Sato ArialOver the past two decades postdevelopment critics, who often draw on the analysis of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, have challenged developmentalism by making visible mechanisms of power within the apparatus of development. While these analyses have opened certain fields of the possible, the continued strength of developmentalism suggests that we must extend the postdevelopment project. This essay draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism to illuminate one set of possibilities not visible within the existing postdevelopment analytic. Working with Development as a social fantasy, this paper examines the formation of the subject and the role of enjoyment in stabilizing modern and postmodern society. The last section of this paper tentatively maps a few directions in which this approach may extend the postdevelopment project.    Arial0000,8080,8080Orientalization of Exploitation: A Class-Analytical Critique of the Sweatshop Discourse Arial  ArialKenan Erçel ArialHaving long been confined to the lexicon of labor historians, the term ‘sweatshop’ is back in common parlance. Conjuring up an image of squalid premises where a host of dreadful working conditions and abusive labor practices prevail, the term has been instrumental in galvanizing great numbers of Western consumers against world-renowned brand names and retailers for mercilessly exploiting Third World workers. Commendable as its agenda is, the enchantment of the antisweatshop movement with the appalling labor practices and dismal working circumstances overseas is problematic insofar as it normalizes and thus lends justification to production relations at home. A Marxian critique of the orientalist underpinnings of the sweatshop discourse also calls into question the widely held conviction that Third World labor is ‘exploited’ by Western capital. By shifting the focus of attention from unequal exchange—whereby the Third World is understood to be short-changed by Western-based multinationals—to exploitative relations within the Third World, a class-analytical approach puts on the map a level of analysis that is typically short-circuited in the sweatshop literature, i.e. the local conflict between capital and labor.   ArialALSO IN THIS ISSUE:   Arial0000,8080,8080Possible Models ArialJenny Perlin Arial  ArialThe fantasies offered by global capitalism assume a variety of forms. One of the most enticing, at least during the past half-century, has been the enclosed shopping mall. While many older malls have died (those in the United States can be tracked at deadmalls.com), creating urban and suburban greyfields, other, even more elaborate and larger, ones are being constructed and expanded, from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (where the biggest shopping mall in North America is located) to Beijing, China (site of the world's largest mall, with even grander ones projected for Wenzhou and Qingdao). Here, Jenny Perlin uses stills and text from “Possible Models,” a 16-mm stop-motion animation, to probe the allure of freedom in capitalism's ongoing attempts to create economic and social paradises: the failure of the Southdale Center to live up to its designer's dream of a utopian urban environment, replete with parks, schools, and apartment buildings; the Mall of America and the Mall of Dubai as examples of the new transcultural, supranational, theme-park super-mall; and the plans for a “freedom ship,” a floating, self-sustained, tax-free, mall-based community that encircles the globe. Arial  Arial0000,8080,8080Remarx Arial  ArialGuglielmo Carchedi ArialThis essay examines whether the European Union, already the most powerful economic and financial rival of the United States, can develop its military arm to a level compatible with its economic and financial weight. It concludes by suggesting a parallel between European currency and the European military. The ECU started as virtual money that evolved into the Euro to become a real danger for the U.S. dollar. At this point, the nascent EU army is only a potential threat to a still unchallenged U.S. military power, but a parallel and ominous evolution is under way.   Arial0000,8080,8080Reviews Arial    ArialEconomics in Real Time: A Theoretical Reconstruction, by John McDermott ArialAsatar Bair ArialPostmodernism, Economics, and Knowledge, by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio, and David F. Ruccio ArialJoseph Childers    Arial0000,8080,8080Notes on Contributors Arial  Arial  ArialIf you are not a current subscriber to this publication, you can request a free sample issue 0000,8080,8080here. ArialTo subscribe to this journal, please email: 0000,8080,8080[log in to unmask] ArialFFFF,0000,0000RE8080,8080,8080THINKING FFFF,0000,0000MARXISM 2006   ArialWe want to take this opportunity to remind readers that now is the time to send their proposals and to register for the sixth in the series of international conferences sponsored by RM, Rethinking Marxism 2006, which will be held from 26 to 28 October at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The conference web site, 0000,8080,8080www.rethinkingmarxism2006.org, includes the official Call for Papers, as well as additional information concerning the submission of proposals and preregistration. The sessions, workshops, and events planned for the conference w ill serve as a unique opportunity for scholars, students, and activists to gather in one place to critically examine the state of contemporary Marxism and its ability to confront—by recognizing and learning from, as well as expressing and shaping—the new demands for economic and social justice in the world today. We look forward to seeing you there.