Studying the Cultural Libidinal-Political Economy
[A revised version of the “purpose of study” I sent out when applying for the PhD, written with the feedback of professors, friends, and family]
I have taken a long and unusual route to decide what kind of work to do for the PhD. Partly this is due to my Third World background. Focused on financial concerns and lacking predecessors in my family, I had only later in life considered a career in the humanities. More important, however, was my feeling that academic departments were artificially divided, which left me confused as to where to pursue the scholarship I was interested in. This is perhaps not unfortunate. In the process, I was trained in the intellectual frameworks used in economics and history (my major and minor in college) as well as in literature and continental philosophy (in which I will obtain my MAs).
The complex intermingling of these disciplines gave my research interest its present form, which attained coherence in graduate school. After a few years of serious study, the common thread that emerged in my work is the capitalist cultural, political, and economic social formation. The lasting influence appears to be Karl Marx, especially in his critique of the political economy of his day that, in my undergraduate years, were imbued in me as (neo)classical and (neo)liberal economics. I will never forget my first encounters with Marx in graduate school when the issues he raised clashed with the economic dogma I was educated in. At first economics and Marxist criticism seemed diametrically opposed, until I realized that Marx was only taking the work of political economy to its full conclusion by, ironically enough, looking at what it took for granted as “natural” and relegated to the outside.
This intellectual background developed in me a sharp eye insatiably curious about the workings of the capitalist social economy. Like Marx (with Nietzsche), I am interested in tracing the genealogy of political economies. This would help me, I think, shed light into the capitalism of our day, specifically to its deliberate construction and the symptoms that accompany it: e.g. consumerism, inequality, globalization, imperialism, and revolution. Especially interesting to me in this regard are the evolving dynamics of power and desire that maintain and change the way in which the social is organized. More than Marx, however, I would like to pay attention to components of the social formation other than the economic. This perhaps betrays the influence of literary theory (mainly structuralism and philosophies of language) and cultural Marxism (mostly the Frankfurt School). I believe that equally potent in the social economy are cultural artifacts/performances—“discursive” ones such as literature, popular culture, politics; “material” ones such as social institutions, family structure, city shapes, tools, and bodies—which sometimes lead to culture wars. These “cultural” matters, I believe, are pertinent objects of study, especially in how they reinforce and contradict the strictly “economic.”
My reading of Marx and approach to the social has tended to be influenced by “postmodern” thought. I find the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, for example, pertinent in stressing not only class divisions but also contentions in sexuality and race (and the subdivisions therein). Focusing on these molecular aspects not only bring in other traditions (e.g. psychoanalysis and bastard philosophies and anthropologies) into the inquiry but also allows a more comprehensive analysis by, among other things, raising issues not only of material things but also of the intellect and desire, providing a fuller picture of what is a libidinal-political cultural economy. Another influence is Michel Foucault with his dissociation of power from particular persons or orders. It is arguable whether these thinkers are in fact “postmodern,” but there is in them, I find, attempts to refuse definiteness or systematic accessibility in order to think flows in their complexity. This shadow of Nietzsche over Hegel in these thinkers, I feel, is a promising supplement to (or is perhaps a trace of) Marx’s own work. This is not to say that I have not been influenced by “modern” schools. In fact, if I had to list my theoretical/philosophical influences, they would include critical Marxism, deconstructed psycho/schizoanalysis, Nietzschean poststructuralism, and Heideggerian phenomenology—the “modern” and the “postmodern” in monstrous combinations.
Inquiry into the conflicts inherent in capitalism, however, would remain incomplete if it examined only the conflicts between how capitalism is thought about. That, one can argue (as Marx did with political economy), is still remaining within the established system. Responses not solely intellectual have been and are being mounted against the “system,” whether they be effective or counterproductive. Examples include past and ongoing political struggles and social movements, especially those that assert ethnic and state nationalisms and fascisms, religious belief, and lifestyle and gender identities. These things must also be thought, I think, especially when it comes to how sometimes they emulate the workings of power and desire in the very order that they seek to undermine. Like capitalism itself, I would like to submit its discontents to theoretical inquiry.
In order to do this, I would like to further deepen my education in theory, looking in particular at key concepts such as power and desire, materiality and ideology, economy and culture, performance and identity, the (systematized) same and the (different) Other, the individual and the group. Even as it guides me in how I grapple with cultural phenomena, however, I would like to read theory itself like a literary text. That is to say, I would like to examine theory through some of its own critical lenses, looking at the discursive formation of different schools, critiquing them when necessary, twisting them perhaps, and combining them with other theories in order to develop them further. The University of California at Irvine, with its renowned tradition in theory, would be the best place to do this.
I choose the department of comparative literature for many reasons. Traditionally the home of theory, comparative literature is also the site of interdisciplinary study, whether it be across languages, cultural traditions, cultural mediums, or academic disciplines. Nonetheless, even as I keep sight of its intertextuality, my main material remains “creative literature.” The particular literary field I am to focus on is still to be worked out. This is in huge part because of my reluctance to pick a particular period or region, although more and more I find myself drawn to studies of imperialism, coloniality, globalization, revolution, and imagination/experimentation. In having creative literature as the main cultural phenomenon from which I examine these issues, I would thus study literature in the context of the libidinal-political economy in which it is produced as well as the social movements of which it is either the symptom or the support—all the while that I am engaging with theoretical developments. Thus my approach is like a double-edged sword directed to both theory and creative literature (in their contexts)—“literature” in the comprehensive sense, i.e. the way that it is studied at UCI—which, I believe, would enable me to make advances in my study of capitalism and its discontents.
I have been introduced to many elements of my inquiry by excellent scholars at LSU, who provided me not only good training but also many opportunities. In addition to work as a student and researcher, I have had the benefit of gaining experience in undergraduate teaching, which is to culminate in a senior-level class I’m teaching with a dear mentor next semester on Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and their twentieth-century reception. Spending a year abroad in Heidelberg also enabled me to read philosophy in German as well as get acquainted with the intellectual atmosphere there, not in the least by attending university lectures and presentations by visiting figures such as Slavoj Zizek and Gayatri Spivak. Together with my writing skills, my dedication, my multidisciplinary background and interdisciplinary work, this, I think, puts me in a timely position to embark on this step in my scholarly development.
