production Archives - Orders Beyond Borders

April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 by Ananya Bordoloi

The Corona Outbreak and the Real

The Corona crisis lays bare the asymmetries in global capitalist production [Photo: GettyImages]

It is not surprising that in capitalist societies, especially with their neoliberal inflections, different forms of work have unequal worth. This inequity existed before the Corona outbreak and is only becoming more acute during it. Taking psychoanalysis’s reality principle – which emphasizes the need to be suspicious of any reality presenting itself as natural ((Zupancic cited in Fisher M 2009, Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative?, Zero Books, England, p. 17)) – and a Lacanian understanding of the Real, which argues that the Real is what any ‘reality’ must suppress ((ibid., p. 18)), one must see the Corona outbreak with all its articulations in the demand for certain workers over others as a crack – a fracture and inconsistency in the field of apparent reality under capitalism. This outbreak, therefore, invokes the Real, which is essentially a void that is usually unrepresented but can be glimpsed in the fractures underlying the reality that capitalism so wonderfully orchestrates and presents to us.

Continue reading “The Corona Outbreak and the Real”

Back to the future

A regression of economic globalization due to Corona seems unlikely [Photo: Bene A/GettyImages]

It is not only the elderly and those with pre-existing illnesses who are among the potential victims of the Corona pandemic. The end of globalization itself, too, is seen as a possible long-term effect. Crises are indeed moments of historical recalibration. However, not everything changes after a crisis.

It is indeed questionable that the pandemic will lead to the end of globalization, at least economically. Undoubtedly, there are alternatives to the global production chains, and a partial renationalization of economic cycles is possible. That, though, comes at high costs and welfare losses. Upon the return of normalcy, public and private debt will have skyrocketed. This kind of environment does not make further globalization less likely.

The situation looks a bit different with regards to political globalization. Many view the current crisis as the hour of the executive, while others point to the fact that we are witnessing a renaissance of political regulation rather than the return of the sovereign nation-state.

Until an accurate assessment can be made, many things will happen. The outcome of the crisis will be determined not only by objective facts, but to a large extent also by battles over their interpretation.

Read more on the global implications of the Corona pandemic in the full German article here.