Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Responding to Jacques Rancière’s reassignment of the terms ‘politics’ and ‘police,’ this paper ponders the implications for justice were we to reassess international political economy as international ‘police’ economy. I argue that contemporary capitalism is a totalitarian system that negates the meaning of justice and outside in relation to totality. There are four parts. First, I deal with the circumscription of politics through state sovereignty and the contours of policing. Using spatial metaphors to denote sovereign boundaries, I demonstrate the contingency of political authority. Second, I argue that markets have their own self-justificatory sovereignty and are today able to overdetermine political state sovereignty with their own policing. Markets, under the mimetic logic of the price mechanism, produce sovereignty legitimated through rationality. Third, I characterize international police economy as a totalitarian system, arguing that totalitarianism is a thin-centered ideology akin to a mobilization strategy and takes form only in conjunction with other ideologies. Finally, I assess issues relating to historical theory and practice, showing the latter always exceeds the former, and that if capitalism were based on universally acceptable values policing would be unnecessary. I therefore consider whether an ‘outside’ is visible or available to us: is international political economy possible, or are we condemned to international police economy? My argument is that historical reality as a ‘coming to be’ always exceeds ideas as ‘being,’ and any form of totalitarianism based on fixed ideas will be rendered obsolete unless it can recalibrate itself, as the mimetic market appears capable of doing.

Presenters

Mark Howard
Ph.D Student, Graduate Student Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Politics, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, United States