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Economic Rhetoric as Taxis

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  • Catherine Chaput
  • Joshua S. Hanan

Abstract

This essay expands the rhetoric of economics conversation started by economist Deirdre McCloskey. Through a close engagement with Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France from 1975 to 1979, concerning the dual problematics of liberalism and biopolitics, we argue for theorizing economic rhetoric as a governmental problem of order, or taxis, which arranges value among divergent subjects beyond the dichotomies of material/cultural and global/local. This approach toward rhetoric, we further contend, takes as its strategic form what Foucault and Agamben have called a dispositif. We demonstrate this premise through a case study of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt's notion of freakonomics, suggesting that it can be understood as a rhetorical dispositif working within the broader political rationality of neoliberal governmentality. We end by gesturing toward a rhetoric of the common as an alternative to the dispositif of freakonomics.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Chaput & Joshua S. Hanan, 2015. "Economic Rhetoric as Taxis," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 42-61, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:8:y:2015:i:1:p:42-61
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2014.942349
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