Brewarrina: An Australian Story

This short paper discusses Barry Morris's account of the ‘riot’ at Brewarrina, New South Wales, in 1987 and its legal aftermath, which continued for some years. An iconic event in Australian race relations, much can be learnt from its various dimensions, a fact that Morris amply demonstrates. Notwithstanding, this discussion questions a related narrative in his book, which interprets capitalism's impact on self‐determination simply in terms of neoliberalism's ‘political effects’. The paper seeks to broaden the discussion of the relations between the state and self‐determination, and between capitalism and race.     

Aratea: a review of the literature concerning MS. Vossianus lat. q. 79 in Leiden University Library

The beautiful, well-known, but highly problematical, illuminated Carolingian MS. of the classical astronomical work called the Aratea or the Syntagma Arateorum, once owned by Isaac Vossius, has long been a prized possession of Leiden's University Library. Aratos of Soli, the Greek poet (about 315-270/23;9 B.C), was the author of the earliest version of this work, which he called the Phaenomena; Germanicus Caesar, Cicero and Festus Rufus Avienus produced Latin translations of it. Over the years an extensive literature has developed concerning the many problems raised by this MS. This literature is reviewed in detail in what follows and an attempt made, as it were, to clear the air ready for the further research which is shown to be necessary.     

Archaeology in Antarctica: Nineteenth-Century Capitalism Expansion Strategies

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered in the early nineteenth century. In order to become acquainted with the process of incorporation of Antarctica to the scope of the capitalist system we have focused on particularity: i.e., specific economic and technological and ideological aspects of everyday life in sealer camps spread along the coastline of the South Shetland Islands. Archaeological research in Byers Peninsula–Livingston Island provides an approach to the mechanisms implemented to organize the first resource exploitation in these lands.     

‘The Next Wave of Italians Has Come to America’: Italian Investments and Business in the United States, 1980-2013

Abstract

This article examines the economic and socio-cultural impact of Italian investments and business in the United Stated from the 1980s onwards. It investigates flows, networks and ideas that have cut national boundaries and politically-defined spaces. The article argues that the last three decades of Italian investments and business in the USA have re-defined the symbolic space held by Italy and Italians in the American imagination. It also argues that the distinctive Italian contribution to the American business environment lies in the so-called ‘fourth capitalism’ and in the family business aspects of Italian Capitalism.     

Nationalism,economic crisis and ‘realistic revolution’ in 1980s Mexico*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how the Mexican state drew upon nationalist discourse for legitimacy following the 1982 debt crisis. The analytical framework situates Mexico within the context of Latin American nationalism and explores the structural and conjunctural factors that contributed to the endurance and effectiveness of Mexican revolutionary nationalism as a hegemonic nationalist discourse. Historical commemorations during the Miguel de la Madrid administration (1982–88) are then examined to show how the state evoked nationalist motifs as it dealt with economic crisis, pressure from the USA, domestic political opposition and the implementation of neoliberal reforms. The relative effectiveness of sometimes counterintuitive appeals to nationalist legitimacy is found to be neither wholly ‘rational’ nor ‘irrational’, in this case having its basis in a history of elite and popular negotiation through the revolutionary nationalist framework, the continuity of the post‐revolutionary Partido de la Revolución Institutional (PRI) state model and the lack of a viable competing paradigm.     

A Loving Attack on Caputo’s ‘Caputolism’ and his Refusal of Communism

Abstract

For various reasons, John D. Caputo is one of my favorite philosophers. However, one may identify two basic weaknesses or contradictions when it comes to his thoughts on political economy: (1) Caputo insists on capitalism—even if it be a significantly transformed capitalism (what I will be calling here “Caputolism”)—but he does not question whether capitalism can accommodate the required reforms; and (2) Caputo’s refusal to entertain the possibility of communism as a good/better alternative to capitalism, even though he has referred to an earthly “Kingdom of God” composed of a “radical community of equals”—which (strongly) resembles communism, thus rendering his refusal of communism all the more perplexing.     

2. CAN THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM BE ANTIHUMANIST?

This essay argues that to understand Foucault's attraction to neoliberalism, we must understand the elective theoretical affinities that he perceived between this current in economic thought and one of the central elements of his own philosophical project: the critique of humanism or “anthropologism” (that is, the tendency in modern thought to sift all knowledge through human knowledge). Specifically, the essay examines moments in Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures when Foucault clearly refers to the arguments of his earlier work, The Order of Things, the locus classicus of his philosophical antihumanism. In particular, Foucault claimed that economists of the Chicago School developed a theory of labor that escaped the limitations of the “anthropological” theory of labor associated with Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. He also interpreted the notion of homo oeconomicus and Smith's idea of the market's “invisible hand” as critiques of the characteristically modern attempt to make transcendental claims on the basis of human nature. The essay concludes by asking if Foucault's philosophical antihumanism provides an adequate vantage point from which to critique contemporary capitalism.     

‘It’s Like Biting Your Own Tail’: Pedro Lemebel’s Queer Response to the Challenge of Subversion in Neoliberal Times

Using the methods of textual analysis and in conversation with both Latin American cultural studies and queer studies, the essay examines the ways that Pedro Lemebel’s diverse body of work – ranging from live performances, fiction, non-fictional crónicas, and interviews – engages the limits of subversion in neoliberal times. On the one hand, Lemebel’s work has been routinely framed in terms of its subversion of gendered, sexual, and political norms. On the other hand, scholars and commentators have not deeply engaged the many ways that Lemebel’s own work comments on and represents the challenges of producing subversive cultural productions in a globalized, late capitalist environment in which subversion, including his own, can be undone precisely when it is most celebrated, valued, and commodified. Reading Lemebel’s commentaries and interviews as producing cultural criticism that complements his better-known crónicas’ and performances’ ideological narratives, the essay argues that Lemebel’s oeuvre repeatedly addresses the challenges of performing a delicate dance between resistance and co-optation, given his acknowledged inseparability from the market. Taking Lemebel as a model for this balancing act, the essay ultimately aims to reveal and critique some of the ways that we academics tend to read sexual dissidence as successful subversion without recognizing its complications and limits.