Video Archives - Lunchtime Talk with Bill Dixon (2010)
09-27-2014(Featured Image Source: Catholic Social Teaching in Action)
Wednesday, September 29, 2010: Lunchtime Talk with Bill Dixon
Participants: Bill Dixon, then a post-doctoral fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College
In his Lunchtime Talk, Bill Dixon outlines a new critique of globalization.
The talk is based on his paper “Why Globalization Abhors a Vacuum”, which is adapted from Aristotle’s statement that “nature abhors a vacuum” (Physics). Much as classical physics has been replaced by recent scientific discoveries and new theoretical models, Dixon aims to render as obsolete the view that it is natural for globalized capitalism to demand accelerated growth and to impose increasing interdependence on all people for the sake of capital. “Nature may not abhor a vacuum,” says Dixon, “but globalization certainly does.” He sees globalization as a manufactured process. Critiques of globalization, he observes, all too often accept capitalism as pseudo-teleology and, as such, refuse to challenge it at an essential level. Dixon’s goal is to therefore reinvigorate the global political economic discourse with empirical research. Such a move would help emphasize that expanding markets are not de facto good or necessary.
[caption id="attachment_14422" align="alignleft" width="300"]
(Source: McKinsey & Company)[/caption]
Dixon’s new theoretical framing of capitalism stresses not only the convergences forged by capital but also the divergences wrought by it. Just as capital integrates markets, it disintegrates social institutions. He then digs deeper, seeking to identify elements of totalitarianism in the functions of capitalism. He refers to the work of contemporary Arendtians in particular, who have at times asserted that the contemporary American political condition exhibits real totalitarian aspects. Dixon uses as an example the story of the Treasury Department, which was granted extraordinary privileges and legal immunities to carry out the TARP bailout following the 2008 financial disaster despite there being no substantive public debate about its implementation. Asserting that American power takes the old European imperialist model that Arendt critiqued and then updates it for the age of the neoliberal world market, Dixon suggests that we must lead the common understanding of globalization to a focus more actively engaged against the excesses of capital. At stake is the stability of global society and the potential for future cosmopolitanism.
For anyone interested in the role Arendt’s critique of imperialism has come to play in contemporary political theory, discussions of geopolitics, and global political economy, this talk provides useful insight.
Analysis by Dan Perlman
You can watch Dixon's talk and the Q&A session in full below:
Wednesday Lunchtime Discussions: Why Globalization Abhors A Vaccum from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.
Wednesday Lunchtime Discussions: Why Globalization Abhors A Vaccum (Q&A pt. 1) from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.
Wednesday Lunchtime Discussions: Why Globalization Abhors A Vaccum (Q&A pt. 2) from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.