Science for All, and Sense for Some: The Late-Romantic Convergence of Aesthetics and Economics in Peacock and De Quincey

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Brecht de Groote
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Aesthetic Ideology ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article studies two representative late-Romantic texts in which discourses of aesthetics and economics are opposed and ultimately brought into convergence, arguing that these texts aim to document and to contribute to widespread contemporary attempts to ensure the continued viability of Romantic-era social hierarchies by reinforcing the aesthetic ideology supporting the commercial state. The article provides a brief overview of the fractured state of public discourse in post-Waterloo Britain, demonstrating that the volatile political situation in the 1820s and 1830s rendered the growing divide between aesthetics and economics particularly problematic in that it obscured their interdependence in safeguarding the established political order. The argument then turns to Thomas Love Peacock's Crotchet Castle (1831), which allegorises the debates between literature and political economy at the time, as well as the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to bridge their disconnection. In reading Thomas De Quincey's ‘Ricardo Made Easy’ (1843) and The Logic of Political Economy (1844) through Peacock, the originality of De Quincey's attempted aestheticisation of economics fully appears, as do the reasons for his eventual failure.

Poverty and Prosperity: Political Economics in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Marc A. Hight
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Early Step ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Economic Thinking

AbstractI draw attention to a group of thinkers in Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century that made significant contributions to the philosophy of political economy. Loosely organized around the Dublin Philosophical Society founded in 1731, these individuals employed a similar set of assumptions and shared a common interest in the well-being of the Irish people. I focus on Samuel Madden (1686-1765), Arthur Dobbs (1689-1765), and Thomas Prior (1680–1751) and argue for two main theses. First, these Irish thinkers shared a number of commonalities with the English mercantilist thinkers of the eighteenth century, and to the degree that they did, their proposals to aid Ireland and reduce poverty were largely doomed to failure. Second, these Irish thinkers also importantly diverged from typical eighteenth-century mercantilist thinking in several ways. These modifications to mercantilism resulted in large part from the unusual political situation of Ireland (as a nation politically dependent on England) and helped orient their economic thinking along more institutional lines. In particular, the emphasis of the Irish on full employment and on the modification of social as well as political institutions is an early step forward in making political economy more sophisticated.

scholarly journals The rule of rules

Public Choice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Constitutional Political Economy ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Rule Based

AbstractRules are central to the constitutional political economy (CPE) approach. On this approach, rules, of a variety of types and forms, are necessary for the emergence of a political and social order, so that all genuine political order is rule-based. The central role of rules within the CPE approach is examined starting from an explicit definitional discussion of the concept of a rule and including discussion of the nature of rule-following behavior, the supply of rules, and rule enforcement.

scholarly journals The Nineties: Establishment of Polity

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-71
Author(s):  
S. I. Kaspe
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Stable Set ◽  
The Political ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
The Status ◽  
Territorial Organization

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, was established the Russian polity, which continues to exist to this day. In this paper polity is understood as a macro-social community, united by a certain political order i.e., by a stable set of institutions and actors, as well as normative standards for organizing their interactions, both formal and informal. Establishment is understood as a series of events that establish these most fundamental frameworks for political action, as well as a repertoire of its scenarios, behavioral stereotypes, strategies, and tactics. The negative myth about the nineties, which has dominated the Russian public discourse in the recent years, describes the 1990s as a time of catastrophe and degradation. It certainly has its reasons, but this myth almost completely ignores the fact that the same decade was also a time of creation. Thus, the current state of Russia cannot be understood without paying attention to the circumstances of its establishment. The article describes some of the key features of the modern Russian polity that emerged in the 1990s — the “main takeaway” of the constituent era. They are the following: the electoral legitimacy of the supreme political power; non-partisan presidency; capitalism as the economic foundation of the political order; federalism as a principle of territorial organization of political space; freedom of association; freedom of religion; open borders. This list is not exhaustive: there are other elements of the design of the Russian polity that can claim the status of constitutive ones. However, a radical change in all these institutions together or in any one of them individually would mean another re-establishment of the political community as a whole.

The sovereignty of political economy: The Garos in a pre-conquest and early conquest era

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-387
Author(s):  
Sanghamitra Misra
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
The Hill

The article is an inquiry into the elision of an image—that of the cotton-producing Garo—in the colonial archive. It situates this inquiry within the pre- and early colonial era where it is still possible to uncover elements of the irrefutable sovereign presence of Garos in eastern India as well as of the regional economic and political system through which the Garo social being makes itself historically visible. Parsing together a narrative of the Garo political order in this period, the article will discuss the ways in which the sovereignty of a people was pivoted around the production and trade in cotton. Rescuing the image of the cotton-producing Garo from the colonial archive is also a retracing of the seamless becoming of the Garo peasant, as adept at working with the hoe as with the plough, into a cotton trader who embarked on long journeys on foot and on boats every cotton season to the lowlands. The article will also probe into the germaneness of the concept of the ‘hill/forest tribe’ with the sedentary plainsman as its oppositional image and the embedding of ethnicity in circumscribed ‘natural’ habitats in eastern India by the colonial state.

The Critical-Linguistic Critique of the Aesthetic Ideology in the Late Writing of Paul de Man

Labyrinth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Jeremy Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Aesthetic Ideology ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
De Man ◽  
The Relationship

The focus of this essay is Paul de Man's provocative antipathy towards the category of the aesthetic in his late writings on philosophical aesthetics. I introduce de Man's critique of what he terms aesthetic ideology – a form of ideological communication – which he considers manifest in the aesthetics of Schiller in particular but also in more scrupulously critical philosophers. I begin the essay with Benjamin's well known observation that twentieth century fascisms aestheticized political practice as part of a defence of existing property relations. I introduce de Man's critique of aesthetic ideology as a way of developing or elaborating on what are relatively sketchy comments on the relationship aesthetics and politics in Benjamin's earlier essay.

The Social Mediation of Economic Discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-74
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Academic Journals ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Social Mediation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Creation

In the course of the nineteenth century, political economy shifted from a discourse printed in books and journals and directed primarily at ‘men of affairs’ to a stratified public discourse. Where argument had once appealed to ‘reason’, argument by authority now became more significant in the teaching and publications of academic economists. This chapter shows the media through which this transition was effected—clubs, societies, and associations, adult extension teaching, popular literature, the creation of examinations and professional qualifications, and, in some limited cases, certification for employment, plus the creation of specialised academic journals.

Feminist Commodity Activism: The New Political Economy of Feminist Protest

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jemima Repo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Choice Making ◽  
Street Protest ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Commodity Activism ◽  
Mass Marketing

Abstract This article theorizes the commodification of the recent resurgence of feminist activism through the concept of “feminist commodity activism.” The focus is on the mass popularization of feminist-themed commodities, with T-shirts as a particular focus. First, I discuss how the mass marketing of feminist goods ties in with: (a) commodity feminism, by refetishizing commodities and consumption as empowering for women; (b) neoliberal feminism, through the construction of the feminist as an economic and choice-making subject; and (c) commodity activism, by entangling feminism with the discourses and practices of ethical consumption. Building on these concepts, I propose “feminist commodity activism” as a way to capture and further analyze the current commodification of feminism activism occurring at their intersection. I argue that feminist commodity activism instigates three further shifts: the commodification of the aesthetic experience of feminist street protest; the transfer of feminist activist agency to companies, charities, and entrepreneurs; and the branding of the feminist as a subject of value. Finally, the article considers the challenges that these shifts pose for feminist critique and politics.

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