The Failure of Failure: on Constructivism, the Limits of Critique, and the Socio-Political Economy of Economics

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of failure for constructivism. Starting from the constructivist focus on ‘language in use’, it conceptualises ‘failure’ as a concept rather than as an observed end or result. Instead of explaining or understanding some empirical failure, the primary questions now become how this concept is being used, and what performative consequences can be observed from this use. As such, the article’s first section develops three ‘uses’ or ‘notions’ of failure: failure as a ‘wrong representation’ of an objectively given reality; failure to produce an inter-subjective understanding that allows actors ‘to go on’; and failure as ‘mode of organisation’ that highlights its discursive grammar, or rules of formation, and the importance of social imaginaries grounding this process. The article’s second section then reconstructs the performance of ‘failure’ in the context of global finance and shows how the market, as a social imaginary, determines questions of authority and expertise. In doing so, this article points to the need for a socio-political economic analysis of economics, and the performance of its concepts, models, and assumptions.