‘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.