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Marx.Groucho,thatis. PlayingDoctor
Hackenbushin A Day at the Races (1937),
Recall
ВУ
Groucho Marx findsa patientlyingsupine on
JOHN COMAROFF
the floor.Takingthe unconsciousmans wristin
hishand,he putshis timepieceto his ear,listens
and says,"Eitherhe is dead or mywatch
briefly,
has stopped."
The analogyis rich. Is neoliberalismdead?
Or have our watches stopped? More to the
point,are we watchingforthe rightsymptoms
as homo economicus capitalis lies prostrate?
Or are our fingerspressed to the wrongpulse,
Concluding Thoughts
None of thisis to suggestthatneoliberaleconomicswillpersistunchanged.It
is quite possiblethatwe will see some minorreregulationof the financeindustry,
especiallyin favoroflong-term wealth-generationinsteadof short-term profiteer-
ing; marginally greatercitizenprotectionagainstthe cons of the corporateworld,
particularly in the domain of credit;adjustmentsto regimesof taxation;and fur-
therstateintervention in the marketunderthe guise ofpublic-privateinitiatives.
Will therebe anythingmore? Hard to say.But it is not highlylikely.Not unless a
counterpolitics, a praxisof deep insurgency, impels us towarda historyof the
futuredistinctly different fromthe one we are livingthrough,in the continuous
present.Onlytimewilltellwhether,and whence,thatmightarise.
Historyhas taughtus repeatedlyto be humble beforeit, a lesson as apposite
todayas it has ever been. If we are to seek out possible alternativesto the neo-
liberaltendency,ifwe are to fashionotherfutures,it is criticalto graspfullythe
natureof the beast and of its capillaries- and theireffectsnotjust on our lives
but on our thoughtprocesses. Afterall, those forcescovered by the adjective
neoliberal, not to mentionits adverbsof practice,are no less colonizingthanthe
formsofempiretowhichtheglobalSouthhas been subjectedbeforenow.As Frantz
Fanon mighthave insisted,decolonizingour habitsof thinking - sometimes a
by
violentreconsiderationof its mostfoundationalassumptions - is the first
step to
decolonizingthe worldintowhichhistoryhas interpolatedus.
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