‘Profit and
profanity: Walter Benjamin’s Capitalism as a Religion
revisited’
Bent Meier
Sørensen
Using Walter Benjamin’s fragment on Capitalism as Religion
as a point of departure, this presentation will outline how
capitalism has evolved as a religion, a pure cult, albeit
with a difference: it offers nothing like atonement. On the
contrary, its driving principle is the ceaseless production
of guilt. Against Benjamin, who described capitalism as a
religion without a theology, I argue that the dogmas of
capitalism are made sufficiently explicit by economics to
constitute our ‘account of God’. The social sciences are
themselves based on religious beliefs, but in economics
this has been taken to its logical conclusion. If
‘exchange’ is the praxis of this religion (we can call it
‘shopping’ or simply ‘life’), economists are its high
priests, defending and elaborating the dogma of capital,
the guilt of debt and the glory of profit. Organisation
theory, perhaps, provides an exegesis of its New Testament,
while critical theory offers an endless source of
exotica—everything from new age grooviness to old school
fundamentalism. Having outlined this story, I turn to
Giorgio Agamben’s idea of ‘profanation’, asking the obvious
question, “How can you swear in the church of capitalism?”
If profanation is the process of taking religious artefacts
and rites back to mundane life, then the profanation of
capitalism is a means of resistance, making each instant,
in Benjamin's words, the “small door through which the
Messiah enters.” A visual example of the new profanity will
be provided.
Bent Meier Sørensen is Associate Professor in Management
Philosophy at the Department of Management, Politics and
Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School. In 2006 he
published the co-edited volume Deleuze and the Social. His
research evolves around poststructuralist theory and
entrepreneurship. He is also engaged in developing a
practical, political theology, departing from St Paul and
today’s high capitalism. In the meantime, he cool hunts
with the rest of the ephemera collective.
‘Subjectivity in times
of abundance of choice’
Renata
Salecl
Today’s capitalist ideology is constantly encouraging the
individuals that everything in their lives is a matter of
choice, that they are free to make out of themselves what
they desire and that there are limitless ways to find
enjoyment in life. A simple look at advertising on the
streets shows that nowadays people are encouraged to choose
their identity. One London university tries to attract new
students with a slogan: “Become what you want to be.”; a
new music record is advertised with the saying, “I am who I
am.”; and even a beer company uses the logo “Be yourself!”
We live in the world that seems to have less social
prohibition in regard to how one is supposed to achieve
happiness, where there seem to be endless possibilities to
find fulfilment in life and where we are supposed to be
some kind of self-creators. The lecture will look at the
way the late capitalist ideology with its insistence on
self-fulfilment increases anxiety and feelings of guilt.
When people are encouraged to look at their life as a
particular type of a corporation (Me inc), they become
perceived as individually responsible for their successes
and failures. In this context, they also loose the
possibility for the critique of the social and political
organization of society.
Renata Salecl holds a PhD in Sociology of Culture from the
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is currently Senior
Researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law,
Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Centennial Professor at the London
School of Economics. She is a regular visiting professor at
Cardozo School of Law, New York, Fellow of
Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and Remarque Fellow at New
York University. Her books in English include The Spoils of
Freedom (Routledge, 1994), (Per)versions of Love and Hate
(Verso, 1998), On Anxiety (Routledge 2004) and her works
have been translated into German, Chinese, Korean, Swedish,
Croatian, Turkish, Portugese and Spanish. She has given
more than 200 major lectures at conferences and
universities around the globe. Projects in progress involve
a book on the tyranny of choice and establishing of a
research centre focusing on changes in subjectivity in the
post-industrial times.