Òil nÕy a pas de
hors-texteÓ: deconstruction and economics
skidmore
college | november 1, 2004
yahya
m. madra
How could
this infamous formula be relevant for economics? To begin with, to my understanding, this formula does not
imply that there is no reality outside the text. Rather, at one level, it claims that there is no beyond of
the text, that the text can never come to an end, that it is extendable
forever. If we accept, along with
Derrida, that meaning is always differentially and contextually produced, that
there is no stable referent (outside of its textual articulation) to which we
can anchor our discourse, then the signifier ÒeconomicsÓ will cease to refer to
a unified discourse with a single and stable referent, the economy. In this presentation, I will briefly
elaborate on this thesis.
I
want to emphasize three distinct implications of this thesis. First, the argument has never been that
there is no economy. Rather, the
argument is that what counts as the object of economic knowledge, the economy,
is dependent upon the particular theory that we deploy. In other words, the referent is first
and foremost produced within particular discourses. This brings me to the second point: to claim that referent
is produced within discourse does not mean that it does not have material
effects. By informing economic
policy, institutional design, as well as the popular understandings of how
economy functions, different particular economic discourses struggle with one
another in their attempt to shape the reality. And finally, to claim that meaning is a purely contextual
phenomenon is the most thorough-going recognition of the material effectivity
of social circumstances over the meaning of a text. In this manner, a text is always prone to be re-signified,
re-interpreted under new political, economic, and institutional contexts.
To
recapitulate, by problematizing and complicating the way think the relation
between text and context, Derrida made it possible for us to see that the
co-existence of different and sometimes conflictual economic discourses
(neoclassical, Keynesian, institutional or Marxist) is not a mere
accident. In other words, if
economists disagree, it is not because they fail to represent accurately the
reality of the economy but because they conceptualize the economy in different
ways. Without doubt ideological
differences may go a long way in explaining why there are different economic
discourses, but we should be careful not to use the term ideology as a
pejorative term, as the other of science.
Because all scientific discourses are predicated upon an ideological
commitment, because the distinction between what is scientific and what is
ideological itself is an ideological distinction, their relation also needs to
be rethought.
So
much for economics as an ongoing and heterogeneous text. What about the economy? If our knowledge of the economy is not
reflective but performative of the economy, is economy outside or inside the
text? Or better, is economy a
text? In my opinion it would be
very productive to think of economy as a complex and layered text. We can begin with the concept of
price. What is price system if not
a system of signification, a relational and overdetermined system of
meaning? What about the data that
we collect in order to use in our regression analysis? Today, it is through statistical data
that we define economic problems and their solutions. One of the most important contributions of feminist
economists to confront the way the GDP is calculated (without counting the
hours and hours worth of household labor). What about contracts? We, economists, are very interested in
contracts without which exchange cannot happen, but then we spend very little
time actually reading them. Even
within the highly mathematical field of game theory and experimental economics,
some poststructuralist economists have begun to think through the necessity of
contextualization of meaning to understand the bargaining processes and their
undecideable outcomes. In
conclusion, introduction of the procedures of deconstruction into economics does
not mean that we should reduce the economy into a text. Rather, it is an invitation to
recognize its inevitably textual nature and to follow through the implications
of this recognition.