Unmasking globalisation: From rhetoric to political economy ‐ the case of Brazil*

Abstract

Globalisation as a process of increasing internationalisation based on the dominance of finance capital is a material process. This article, however, focuses on globalisation as a discourse, distinguishing between discursive strategies as the deliberate efforts of social actors and discursive structures as stabilised social orders unaffected by simplistic voluntarist attempts at change. Taking Brazil and a presidential speech as a case study, three discursive strategies can be identified: globalisation is portrayed as radically new, as unjust but unavoidable and as a power field only accessible by the elite. Globalisation as a discursive structure is shown, in the Foucauldian tradition, to be structured similarly to the dispositive of sexuality, as a flexible arrangement of actor‐less and borderless markets, hereby abandoning the old discursive structure of development which was focused on sovereignity and territory. Using Marxist political economy I will unmask this rhetoric as a sophisticated power game that hides the deep‐rooted dominant structure of capital and state. Only then can we fully understand the decisive role that social struggles play in the making of history and geography.