Capitalism’s Other

In Socialist Review 28, the Community Economies Collective writes of a desire “to step outside the confines of economic monism, where capitalism is everywhere and its opposite (a now discredited socialism) is the only alternative” (95), and looks forward to “a different world, one in which the economy is something we do, not just something that does things to us” (107). It seems to me that my project is nearly the diametrical opposite: I want to show how capitalist discourses of class are very much present in the composition classroom, a space historically thought to be free of such crassly materialistic concerns, and how various economies manipulate many of the other elements of the classroom. (At the risk of becoming tiresome, I’ll point out yet again that both of these tendencies are foregrounded in examinations of the role computers play in the classroom.)

Now: I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit behind the remarks of the Community Economies Collective. Capitalism is not an immutable force of nature, and I think there are imaginable alternatives to the gross injuries it inflicts upon so many people. And while the economy is our term for an abstract and monolithic collectivity of commerce-related individual human actions, it cannot exist without those individual human actions. It relies on those actions, some of which may be taken in the writing classroom.

So am I just trying to have my cake and eat it too in posing a previously unseen domination as a problem in order to present resistance in heterogeneity as a possible solution?

Crap, I sound like a fat-head pompous graduate student.

Capitalism’s Other

3 thoughts on “Capitalism’s Other

  • October 20, 2003 at 10:33 pm
    Permalink

    As usual, you’re over my fat head. But at least I got to end of that post so I’m doing the self-congratulatory dance over here.

    Can I offer: it sounds good and hang in there, man! ?

  • October 24, 2003 at 7:19 pm
    Permalink

    Thanks for the words of encouragement, Michelle. And I know the deeper into this stuff I get, the more the language will seem natural to me, so I think I really need an occasional reality check, which leads me to ask: which of those paragraphs is the worst for you in terms of opaqueness (opacity?) and too-thick theory-speak? ‘Cause I know I’m bridging a number of disciplines, and I’m worried that the languages might be incompatible, and I’d like this stuff to be able to be read by somebody (and, hell, I’d love for it to be readable enough by a lot of people that it might be able to be turned into a post-dissertation book manuscript).

  • October 30, 2003 at 11:22 am
    Permalink

    There is a sentence that does a lovely job of mobilizing the jargon against itself with exquiste rhetorical florish:

    quote>
    And while the economy is our term for an abstract and monolithic collectivity of commerce-related individual human actions, it cannot exist without those individual human actions.

Comments are closed.