Economics Foundation

One of my goals in this blog is to examine the interplay between certain postmodern theories and certain economic theories that, due to certain political and demographic realities, might never be considered together. In Constituting Feminist Subjects, Kathi Weeks points out that there is a “paradigm debate” between modernists and postmodernists that makes it difficult to constructively combine elements of, for instance, Foucault and Marx. However, someone whose area of interest is feminist politics would be highly likely to, in their course of study, come across somewhat favorable accounts of both of these thinkers. Perhaps socialist feminism and postmodern feminism would be presented as opposing movements, but they oppose each other only in their approach to meeting ostensibly similar goals. Thus the logic of Weeks’ attempt to bring some degree of reconciliation to the two.

This same student of feminist thought would be very unlikely to encounter certain other
theories, thinkers, or schools of thought, or if they were encountered, they’d be likely to be presented negatively, misrepresented, or dismissed as irrelevant for one reason or another. This is not an attack on the feminist movement – merely an observation that, in any movement or school of thought, there are areas of particular interest that are studied in great depth, and there are areas of no particular interest that are not studied at all. I could easily level the same critique against economics. In fact, I arguably already have, when I said that Libertarian thought needed to be reevaluated in the face of certain postmodern theories. I’ve spoken a bit about some of the formulations of power that will inform this project of deconstruction and reconstruction, so now, I’d like to talk a little bit about the economic side of things. My project here is to begin to lay the foundations for my postmodern theory of economics.