Community Economies

yahya m. madra

Contact Details:

ymadra@surplusthought.net

ymadra@gettysburg.edu

department of economics

gettysburg college

300 n. washington st.

gettysburg pa 17325

united states

Qualifications

assistant professor of economcis

Research Areas:

history of economic discourses, political economy of neoliberalism, political economy of oil, the intersection between Marxian political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis

Publications

Enjoyment as an Economic Factor: Reading Marx with Lacan

yahya m. madra

This paper takes issue with economic discourses that present excessive greed as the central cause of economic crises.  We argue that this focus on greed as the catalyst (when harnessed “appropriately”) or the enemy of social order keeps the public debate from deliberating on the particular modes of enjoyment (jouissance) which both shore up and destabilize the dynamics of production, appropriation, distribution and consumption under capitalism. We produce an analysis of the latest crisis of US capitalism that steers away not only from the theoretical humanist categories like "greed", but also from the residual reproductionism that continues to silently inform certain Lacanian analyses.


Madra, Y. M. and C. Özselçuk. Forthcoming 2010. Enjoyment as an Economic Factor: Reading Marx with Lacan, Subjectivity 3(3).