Blincoe, Nicholas Joseph (1992) Derrida and economics : the economics of depression. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Derrida and Economics analyses two essays of Jacques Derrida on the
Public and Democracy, alongside other essays reflecting these
political works. However, Derrida's political thought will be taken
seriously by emphasising Economics before Politics. Economics will be
viewed as a detour, a detour inflecting every attempt to present a
meaningful political position or stable political realm. For Derrida,
economics has the force of an oblique ruse.
Derrida ADd BconoDdcs aligns Derrida's view of economics with the
Eighteenth Century realisation that a stable SOciety, analogous to
the Antique ideal of the Polis, is neither a common goal nor a proper
object for Political philosophy. Here, Classical economics emerges as
an oblique attempt to construct the conditions for the possibility of
a political body through economic relations. This epistemological 'en
passant' is familiar, in Britain, as Adam Smith's' Invisible Hand'.
For Derrida, the equi valent Continental ruse is distinguished by a
faith in 'dialectical idealisation'; a process bent upon securing an
idealised po 11 tical space, but unable to limit its more speculati ve
drifts.
If Classical economics represents an attempt to construct the
possibility of the Body Politic, Derrida's political essays
deconstruct this possibility. His emphasiS upon the 'possible'
highlights the effects of risk and competition in an economy that
could never comfortably be identified wi th a stable Polt tical realm.
For Derrida, economics is not simply an attempt to secure or rewrite
more direct Political discourses. As he argues, its every detour is
haunted by the possibility of speculative failure. Derrida argues an
enthusiasm for economics can also imply a preoccupation with the
finitude of the Body Politic. This observation allows him to comment
upon the valorisation of death or redundancy in certain poli tical
discourses; i. e. those analyses that, in the throes of Depression,
remain devoted to the idea of redundancy as though to the object of a
renewed political will.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Derrida, Jacques -- Criticism and interpretation
Official Date:	May 1992
Dates:	Date Event May 1992 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Philosophy
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Extent:	264 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/57034

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