‘Identities’ and Instabilities of Neoliberal Marketization:
Arguing for the Necessity of Critical Poststructuralism
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V. Spike Peterson
Professor, Department of Political Science
University of Arizona, Tucson Arizona, USA -
## email not listed ##
Prepared for Presentation at the 46
th
Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association
Panel: Global Political Economy: Gendered Bodies, Practices, and Ideologies
March 2005 - Honolulu, Hawai’i
T h e c o m p l i c i t y b e t w e e n c u l t u r a l a n d e c o n o m i c v a l u e s y s t e m s i s a c t e d o u t i n a l m o s t e v e r y d e c i s i o n w e
m a k e ( S p i v a k 1 9 8 7 , 1 6 6 ) .
The study of global political economy -- or more explicitly, neoliberal marketization, – is
dominated by scholars who continue to resist poststructuralist approaches and interventions. I attempt to
overcome some of that resistance by demonstrating not only the relevance but the necessity of critical
poststructuralist approaches for making sense of, and responding critically to, neoliberal globalization.
Moving beyond theoretical debates, this paper focuses on a central issue for the theory/practice of global
political economy (GPE) today: the purported hegemony, hence presumed stability, of neoliberalism.
Through a critical poststructuralist lens I analyze actually existing–‘real’--conditions of GPE to reveal that
neoliberal hegemony is not what it claims in theory or practice, and simultaneously generates exclusions
and marginalizations that belie its purported stability, in theory and practice.
To develop the argument I draw on theoretical framing and empirical data from my recent
book, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and
Virtual Economies (2003). The paper first addresses theoretical issues regarding poststructuralism, the
discursive construction of ‘stability’ as it relates to hegemony, and instabilities as they relate to neoliberal
globalization. I then briefly introduce the book and its analytical innovations, and schematically
describe the three (reproductive, productive, and virtual) economies, major trends (‘real’
conditions) within them, and linkages among them. A final section summarizes how neoliberalism is
neither hegemonic nor stable and how critical poststructuralism is necessary for seeing this reality
and revising our theory/practice accordingly.
Theory as Practice and Neoliberalism as Politics
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I deploy ‘identities’ in two senses. First and more obvious, the paper explores how actual conditions of GPE are
disrupting and reconfiguring ‘embodied’ identities (e.g., women as ‘workers’ and ‘breadwinners,’ how migrations
for work involve hybrid identities, and how technologies are producing new identities. Second, poststsructuralists
reject a positivist/referential understanding of language that assumes an ‘identity’ (correspondence, without
difference ) between signifiers and that which is signified. Reference to plural ‘identities’ in the title gestures toward
the ambiguity and inconstancy of meaning that the paper elaborates in regard to neoliberal marketization.
O n e t h i n g i s e s s e n t i a l m e t h o d o l o g i c a l l y a n d e v e n m o r e i m p o r t a n t p o l i t i c a l l y : n o t t o t a k e a n y t h i n g f o r
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