Subjects of Economy: Introduction

Abstract

This symposium reflects the multi-year conversation of participants in a seminar on “subjects of economy” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who were interested in theorizing and practicing a politics of economic transformation. In pursuit of their political and theoretical interests, the seminar participants embarked on an extended collective investigation into questions of subjectivity. They aspired to move beyond the identity theory that prevails in poststructuralist thought, seeking a more complex understanding of subjectivation as both a recalcitrant, stalemated state of being and an opening to transformation. What emerges in this symposium are some theoretical glimpses into class subjectivity, and particularly its communist or communal forms, as well as some insights into the micropolitical processes of class transformation.