Capitalism and Freedom as Text/Antitext: Deconstructing and Decentering Friedman’s Neoliberal Canon

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art ›› 2014, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (6): 38-59.

• Studies in Western Literary Theory • Previous Articles Next Articles

Capitalism and Freedom as Text/Antitext: Deconstructing and Decentering Friedman’s Neoliberal Canon

Josef Gregory Mahoney

Politics, East China Normal University; Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (Beijing); Institute for Advanced Studies, Fudan University

Online:2014-11-25 Published:2014-12-07
About author:Josef Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics, East China Normal University; Senior Researcher, Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (Beijing); Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Fudan University; Assistant Editor, US-based Journal of Chinese Political Science; and Editor, the Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. His publications have appeared in Chinese and Western journals, including Marxism and Reality, Foreign Theoretical Trends, the Journal of Studies in Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, Science & Society, Rethinking Marxism, and others. He was a member of the Chinese team that translated Jiang Zemin's Selected Works into English.

Abstract

Abstract: An odd symmetry appears when reading Milton Friedman's canonical neoliberalism in tandem with Jacques Derrida's deconstructive techniques: both authors, it can be argued, are ensconced in a Heideggerian, capitalist hermeneutic. Both offer reactionary discourses for "justice" per their respective paradigms of a radical freedom of choice. This congruence marks a special opening — not just the standard invitation to deconstructive relativism — to re-read Friedman in a manner consistent with Derridean, subjective freedoms that Friedman would otherwise ascribe us in the marketplace. More importantly, this re-reading takes place following a ten-year period that saw global neoliberalism reach absurd heights of popularity among policymakers and in turn, spark a global financial crisis in 2008. Today, incredibly, we continue to hear calls from some corners to return to Friedman as we move forward and try to rebuild economically. Our purpose here, therefore, is to deconstruct Friedman's primary texts, and to do so in a manner that pushes back against the sort of destructive thinking he helped popularize worldwide.In doing so, we will reveal the inconsistencies one should expect from a still celebrated bourgeois economist who fancied himself a philosopher and Karl Marx's antithesis.

Key words: Derrida, Friedman, deconstruction, neoliberal canon, radical freedom of choice

Josef Gregory Mahoney. Capitalism and Freedom as Text/Antitext: Deconstructing and Decentering Friedman’s Neoliberal Canon[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014, 34(6): 38-59.

References

Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Boylan, Thomas A., and Paschal F. O’Gorman. Beyond Rhetoric and Realism in Economics: Towards a Reformulation of Economic Methodology. London: Routledge, 1995.
Breit, William, and Roger L. Ransom. The Academic Scribblers. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998.
--- “Milton Friedman.” Lives of the Laureates. MIT Press, 1990.
Derrida, Jacques. “Letter to a Japanese Friend.” A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. Ed. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
--- “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
--- The Politics of Friendship. Trans. George Collins. London: Verso, 2006.
--- “Positions: Interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta.” Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
--- “The Time is Out of Joint.” Deconstruction is/in America. Ed. Anselm Haverkamp. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
Dionne, E.J. Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
“Free Exchange: The Chicago Question,” The Economist, July 28, 2012, 60.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962/2002.
--- Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
--- “Supply-Side Policies: Where Do We Go from Here?” Supply-Side Economics in the 1980s: Conference Proceedings—Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Ed. William A. Fickling and William F. Ford. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1982.
--- Tax Limitation, Inflation, and the Role of Government. Dallas: The Fisher Institute, 1978.
--- “Why Government is the Problem.” Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1993.
Friedman, Milton, and Rose Friedman. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980.
Friedman, Milton, and Anna Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Hendry, David, and Neil R. Ericsson. Assertion without Empirical Basis: An Econometric Appraisal of Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz. London: Bank of England, 1983.
Jameson, Fredric. The Prison-House of Language. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Knight, Frank H. The Ethics of Competition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997.
Kristof, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn, Thunder from the East. New York: Vintage, 2000.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1962] 1996.
Landy, Marc. “The Heart of Politics.”Freedom Review September-October (1991).
Patel, Raj. The Value of Nothing (New York, HarperCollins, 2009).
Quine, W.V.O. From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper and Row, 1961.
Rothschild, Kurt W. Ethics and Economic Theory. Cambridge: Edward Elgar, 1993.
Searle, John R. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press, 1995.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House/The Modern Library, 1965.
Stiglitz, Joseph. Whither Socialism? Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.
Stone, Charles F., and Isabel V. Sawhill. Economic Policy in the Reagan Years.Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1984.

[1]	Xiao Jinlong. Jacques Derrida on Literary Language： A Case Study of Romeo and Juliet [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2023, 43(1): 70-78.
[2]	Fu Changling. A Genealogical Study of the Meaning Generation of Literary Text [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2022, 42(4): 201-210.
[3]	Xu Liang. Theory and Death [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2020, 40(5): 41-49.
[4]	Yuan Yuan . The Subject qua Other: A Hauntological Spell on Lacan [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2018, 38(4): 150-161.
[5]	Zhang Chunxiao . From Antihumanism to Posthuman: Beyond Anthropomorphical Dialectics [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2018, 38(3): 48-56.
[6]	Zhao Xuemei . Kristeva and the Generation of Postmodernist Literary Theory [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2018, 38(1): 69-79.
[7]	Liu Lianjie. Tactile Culture or Auditory Culture: A Different Future of the Post-Visual Culture [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2017, 37(3): 172-181.
[8]	Wang Wei. On Terry Eagleton's Revolutionary Criticism [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2017, 37(2): 193-199.
[9]	Lu Cheng. From the Text Game to the Source of Violence: the Idea of Mimesis in Derrida and Girard [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2016, 36(3): 128-135.
[10]	Chen Dan. Deconstructing Utopian Imagination: The Allegory of Solaris and Others [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2016, 36(1): 112-119.
[11]	Wang Yun. On the Modern Transformation of Ancient Literary Theory [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2015, 35(2): 58-67.
[12]	Feng Qing. Restraining in Theory: A Review of the Debate between Derrida and Searle [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014, 34(5): 154-160.
[13]	Li Yingzhi. Resistance and Its Possibility in the Perspective of Deconstructionism: Spivak's View on Subaltern and its Subjective Consciousness [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014, 34(4): 196-203.
[14]	Chen Xiaoming. The Dissemination of American Deconstruction and Its Reception in China [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2012, 32(6): 44-52.
[15]	Graham Allen. The Reversibility of Art, Lucretius, Gravity and Semâ Bekirovic's How to stop falling [J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2012, 32(6): 67-73.

Capitalism and Freedom as Text/Antitext: Deconstructing and Decentering Friedman’s Neoliberal Canon

PDF (PC)

Knowledge

Abstract

Cite this article

share this article

References

Related Articles 15

Recommended Articles

Metrics

Comments