Earl Gammon

Affect and the Rise of the Self-Regulating Market

This article outlines a post-rationalist approach to international political economy that factors in the role of affect in social causation. There are key historical junctures where social transformations cannot be neatly explained by instrumental logics, such as the profit motive or the pursuit of increasing productive efficiency. Affect, in the form of anxiety and aggression, overdetermines social behaviour in ways that belie conventional notions of rationality, premised on a clear ordering of needs or preferences by social actors. This analysis specifically reassesses the role of affect in the rise of market civilisation in Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century. It critiques Karl Polanyis account, which privileges technology and pecuniary greed as the expedients of the institution of the self-regulating market. As an alternative, this article explains the rise of the self-regulating market as a retributive mechanism, whereby the market became conceived as a means of punishing and disciplining social behaviour in the early Victorian period. The market, I argue, was an aggressive response to anxiety that plagued Victorian society regarding social order, an anxiety precipitated by the waning belief in a natural moral economy guided by the hand of Providence.

The Psycho- and Sociogenesis of Neoliberalism

This analysis examines the psycho-social pressures that gave rise to neoliberal subjectivity in the 1970s, drawing insights from the work of Norbert Elias, Sigmund Freud and Georges Bataille. Specifically, it looks to new codes of shame regarding feelings of superiority that were developing with the civil and women’s rights movements as pivotal in neoliberalism’s ascendancy. These codes of shame heightened psychical tensions for the normalized Fordist subject by making taboo entrenched registers of social hierarchy. The transition to neoliberal subjectivity, with its emphasis on hyper-individualism and the increasing mediation of social relations by impersonal market forces, reflected a compensatory strategy for organizing selfhood. The neoliberal subject, while nominally adhering to notions of political equality, sublimated aggression through a form of economic sociality that reinforced historical inequalities. As the article concludes, neoliberalism is akin to a narcissistic neurosis, obstructing identification with others, and manifests itself in a dispassionate social destructiveness.

Libidinal International Political Economy

In ‘Libidinal Economy,’ a reflection that was conceived in response to Deleuze and Guattari’s seminal studies on ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia’ (1984; 1987), Jean-Francois Lyotard (1993) observes that capital is the only remaining totalizing force in modern society. He adds, ‘everyone knows’ that ‘state officials’ primary duty nowadays is to ensure the health and long term stability of capital. The idea that capital is the principal structuring force in the modern world, a force that determines in a complex and multifaceted manner the set of options available to states and governments is, of course, a shared theme among the disparate range of theories of political economy, and by extension International Political Economy (IPE). But if capital is considered the only remaining totalizing force in modern society, the nature of capital itself remains curiously a mystery (Bichler and Nitzan 1996).

Veblen, Bataille and Financial Innovation

This article advances towards the reconceptualization of financial innovation. It examines the calamitous role of financial innovation in the global financial crisis, developing a non-rational theorization of finance within the social economy that factors in the role of affect. Outlining the foundations for such an approach, the analysis draws on Thorstein Veblen and Georges Bataille, whose work encompasses psycho-social conceptions of political-economic agency. From the more anthropological lens of Veblen and Batailles theorizations, it is possible to move beyond instrumentalist accounts of financial innovation premised on pecuniary expedients and aspirations of market completion. As we argue, in a broader affective economy, contemporary financial innovation serves invidious ends, providing a means of attaining social distinction, constituting a medium for violent expenditure and bestowing access to sovereign expression on its purveyors. Highlighting the non-rational dimension of financial markets prompts a reconsideration of the nature of crisis and the means of its redress.

Narcissistic rage and neoliberal reproduction

Combining political economy and depth psychology, this article seeks to elucidate the socio-psychical underpinnings of neoliberalism’s resilience following the global financial crisis. In explicating neoliberalism’s reproduction, the analysis employs self psychologist Heinz Kohut’s theorisation of narcissistic development. Kohut conceives narcissism as a normal condition driving self-formation, but claims that obstructions in its development result in impaired self-esteem and self-confidence, a lack of empathy and aggression against others and the self. The article argues that neoliberalism fosters and is reinforced by narcissistic configurations that impede the attainment of a more stable sense of self. The inability to attain narcissistic fulfilment through neoliberal sociality contributes to defensive and compensatory reactions that entrench neoliberalism’s logic and, through economic performativity, manifest in what Kohut termed narcissistic rage. As an exemplar of this phenomenon, the article examines the emergence of popular neoliberalism in the form of the Tea Party.

Aesthetic International Political Economy

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Pathological Vulnerability and the Politics of Climate Change

We have entered a period of earth history referred to — without dint of hyperbole — as the anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2001). Despite what one may encounter in the popular press, and despite the claims of a small yet highly vocal group of contrarian scientists, the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists is that average global temperatures are rising due to human intervention in the environment (Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009). While the label of anthropocene is suggestive of humanity’s technological prowess, it also speaks of our vulnerability and finitude. The technological foundations of the current epoch, which have helped to significantly reduce mortality and increase longevity, expanding populations worldwide, are now potentially exposing billions to inadvertent threats from a changing climate.