Economic Subjectivity and Globalization

What kind of an ‘object’ is the economy and what is its status? This question has taken on a particular centrality since the rise of modernity. As the figure of God progressively receded, the thinkers of the Enlightenment began to put their faith in the analytic discovery of founding principles for the construction of a rational social order that would in turn secure the conditions for human emancipation. Such principles became the essential focus for an emerging ‘natural science’ of political economy. If the medieval period was dominated by a theological project of interpreting God’s laws, the success of the new age was largely seen in terms of working with what were perceived as the underlying laws of economic reality. In this way, the economy was idealised as an object of first principles, of a priori foundation, around which it was rationally and morally incumbent to construct the social order.