Economies of Refusal

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. This phrase, originally attributed to Frederic Jameson, has been repeated so widely that it became a postmodernist adage, gesturing to a paralysis in the political imagination. This course traces alternative economic imaginaries to contemporary global capitalism and their complexities. When we say other worlds are possible, what does that look like in practice? In what ways can we challenge self-evident assumptions about the nature of economy and society? How do divergent configurations of capital, empire, race, class, and gender give rise to collective futures and transnational solidarities? Bringing together insights from economic anthropology, Global South Marxism, the Black feminist tradition, and speculative radical fiction, we will be answering these questions in relation to the theme of refusal. We will be exploring the many lives of refusal under capitalism, whether in its arbitrariness and marginality, like in the absurdist fiction of Albert Cossery, or through material and epistemological critiques articulated against modern economics, extraction, the tyranny of reproduction, and Eurocentric imperatives of growth. Throughout the course, participants will develop anthropological and historically contingent understandings of contemporary capitalism and its colonial architectures, with occasional focus on Egypt and the Middle East. Together, we will examine anti-capitalist experiments, the possibilities they present, and their limits. This course is an invitation to creatively reflect on worldmaking possibilities and to conjure kinder, more just worlds, beyond the impasse of capitalist-imperialist violence and liberal common sense.

On discussion-based learning

In this course, discussion-based learning will draw on feminist pedagogy; it will be geared towards cultivating wonder and the collaborative exploration of ideas, connecting theory to contemporary issues and everyday encounters. Through a mixture of prompts and reflective exercises, sessions will move beyond mere comprehension, establishing familiarity with the course material while inviting students to question, iterate and remix ideas on their own terms. As the course is centred around the powers of the imagination, we will be experimenting with form by making a zine together. Incorporating zines as a pedagogical tool will engage students in a creative, participatory and personalized mode of knowledge production that takes their voices seriously, rendering the familiar strange through poetry, drawings, memes, prose and collages and unsettling the dynamics of a traditional academic classroom.