Keynes / 'jouissance'

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Nov 4 23:30:43 PST 1999


In message <v03130301b4481a00f29b@[140.254.113.75]>, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes


>I'd say 'jouissance' is akin to Keynes' comment on the game of professional
>investment: the point is to 'ape unreason proleptically' (qtd. in Henwood,
>_Wall Street_, p. 206).

I tried to argue that jouissance is just a particular theorisation of the surplus, where it is unproductively consumed in my pamphlet Need and Desire in the Postmaterial Economy. I mean that sense in which the realm of non-coerced playfulness, under Capitalism, could only refer to the ruling class' monopoly over free time.

I realise it is taboo here, but it was Masud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton that wrote the first sceptical stuff about the so-called 'ludic theory'.

On another tack, there's lots of stuff about redefining work as play in management theory. -- Jim heartfield



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