Every year we have taught a module called Globalization, Governance and Civil Society. This year I took it over and oriented it away from a focus on the problem (the usual suspects: financialized globalisation, neo-liberalism, rule by the 1%, inequality, poverty and ecological collapse) to a focus on ways of thinking about alternatives. Rooted in long-wave thinking, I tried to stitch together a framework of thinking that drew inspiration from across the spectrum – from the Marxists (like Harvey, who are not good when it comes to alternatives so not much to say), through the neo-Keynesians (e.g. Mazzucato), to the post-capitalists (Mason), and on into the ‘sacred economics’ camp (e.g. Eisenstein, Korten). I brought in the uncategorizable Brazilian radical Roberto Unger whose conception of change in still unparalleled and deeply empowering – but he is, of course, underappreciated largely because he seems to refuse to use anyone else’s language. I threaded some posthumanism (Braidotti) into the week, largely as a way of bringing in the discussion about ‘what is means to be human in today’s world’. If we want to reject homo economicus as a myth, we need a substitute – but what is that. I find the posthumanists the most satisfying when they point out that Vitruvian man’s other – the racialised, the sexualised and the naturalised – no longer exists because of postcolonial narratives that contest racialisation, feminism that contested sexualisation, and political ecology that contested naturalisation. So what does it mean to be human? Herewith some useful quotes from the week that students picked up on their essays:

“The human of Humanism is neither an ideal nor an objective statistical average or middle ground. It rather spells out a systematized standard of recognizability – of Sameness – by which all others can be assessed, regulated and allotted to a designated social location. The human is a normative convention, which does not make it inherently negative, just highly regulatory and hence instrumental to practices of exclusion and discrimination. The human norm stands for normality, normalcy and normativity. It functions by transposing a specific mode of being human into a generalized standard, which acquires transcendent values as the human: from male to masculine and onto human as the universalized format of humanity. This standard is posited as categorically and qualitatively distinct from the sexualized, racialized, naturalized others and also in opposition to the technological artefact. The human is a historical construct that became a social convention about ‘human nature’. My anti-humanism leads me to object to the unitary subject of Humanism, including its socialist variables, and to replace it with a more complex and relational subject framed by embodiment, sexuality, affectivity, empathy and desire as core qualities.” Braidotti , Rosi. The Posthuman (p. 26). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.’ ~ Friedman, 1962 (in Konzelmann 2011). Konzelmann, S. 2011. Anglo-saxon capitalism in crisis? Models of liberal capitalism and the preconditions for financial stability. Working paper no. 422. Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.

“Moreover, the political economy of global capitalism consists in multiplying and distributing differences for the sake of profit. It produces ever-shifting waves of genderisation and sexualisation, racialisation and naturalisation of multiple ‘others’. It has thus effectively disrupted the traditional dialectical relationship between the empirical referents of Otherness – women, natives and animal or earth others – and the processes of discursive formation of genderisation/racialisation/naturalisation. Once this dialectical bond is unhinged, advanced capitalism looks like a system that promotes feminism without women, racism without races, natural laws without nature, reproduction without sex, sexuality without genders, multiculturalism without ending racism, economic growth without development, and cash flow without money. Late capitalism also produces fat-free ice creams and alcohol-free beer next to genetically modified health food, companion species alongside computer viruses, new animal and human immunity breakdowns and deficiencies, and the increased longevity of these who inhabit the advanced world. Welcome to capitalism as schizophrenia!” » Rosi Braidotti, Affirming the Affirmative: On Nomadic Affectivity, Rhizomes » Issue 11/12 (Fall 2005/Spring 2006)

“Fantastical? The mind is afraid to hope for anything too good. If this description evokes anger, despair, or grief, then it has touched our common wound, the wound of separation. Yet the knowledge of what is possible lives on inside each of us, inextinguishable. Let us trust this knowing, hold each other in it, and organize our lives around it. Do we really have any choice, as the old world falls apart? Shall we settle for anything less than a sacred world?” (Eisenstein 2011:202)

“In short, today’s performative failure can be part of the basis for tomorrow’s performative success, since all social conventions require iteration and repeat performance for their on-going force and credibility…however, this sort of performative chain can be gradual, discontinuous and spread out over months and years, rather than over seconds and minutes. Its social life is hard to predict, but it is possible to make some characterizations of this sort of event post facto.” (Appadurai 2011:9)