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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
If it is the case that ‘every age adopts an image of itself—a certain horizon, however blurred and imprecise, which somehow unifies its whole experience’, then we may enquire: in what does such a contemporary image consist? Perry Anderson suggests, with characteristic elan, the following: ‘The radical internationalization of the forces of production—not to speak of circulation—that defines the spearhead forms of capital in the final years of the 20th century promises to render all national correctors. . . increasingly tenuous in the future. In that sense no society ...will be immune to the unpredictable tides and tempests of an uneven development whose elements are acquiring a well-nigh meteorological velocity around the world.’ The intimation of apocalyptic in this image of tides and tempests hints at the possibility of epochal change; and indeed, it is a feeling that has grown into a conviction on the part of many theorists, as the world economy lurches towards the 21st century. ‘Post-industrial’, ‘informational’ or ‘hyperreal’: however the revolutionary force of capitalism is to be described at the close of this century, it is becoming increasingly clear that the sheer magnitude of these changes are installing, not only new patterns of economic production and exchange, but also, and more profoundly, new realms of human experience. The world is changing, a feeling uncannily and often disturbingly present to many, as they search to establish the lineaments of the human in this Promethean age.
An earlier draft of this paper was presented to the conference: ‘Religion and the Resurgence of Capitalism’, Lancaster, July 1991.
2 ‘The Figures of Descent’, New Left Review, Jan–Feb 1987, p. 77.
3 There are of course a variety of types of exchanges other than that of the market. Karl Polanyi, in his pioneering work The Great Transformation (Beacon, 1944)Google Scholar, argues for a threefold typology: market, reciprocity and redistribution.
4 'Societies Collapse, Faiths Linger on', Encounter, March 1990, p. 3.
5 On ‘finality’ as ‘a relation to the end’, see Bernard Lonergan's helpful remarks in A Third Collection (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), p.24. The fabric metaphor comes, of course, from Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction (Cambridge: CUP, 1980), p.71Google Scholar, and so provides the context for my suggestion of ‘unravelling’.
6 See Laclau, Emesto New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), p. 4Google Scholar.
7 God As the Mystery of the World (Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark, 1983) p. 9Google Scholar.
8 The Marx‐Engels Reader ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), p. 478Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., p.297.
10 Carnavale, G. A. (ed.) Marx and Modern Economic Analysis I (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1991)Google Scholar.
11 ‘For a Critique Ff the Political Economy of the Sign’ in Baudrillard, Jean: Selected Writings ed. Poster, Mark (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), pp.57–97Google Scholar.
12 Levinas, Emmanuel Collected Philosophical papers (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p.45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Late Marxism (London: Verso, 1990), p.248Google Scholar.
14 Anti‐Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: The Athlone Press, 1984)Google Scholar.
15 ‘The Meanings of Choice in Reproductive Technology’ in Test‐Tube Women ed. Arditti, R., Klein, R. Duelli and Minden, S. (London: Pandora Press, 1989), p.33Google Scholar.
16 For an illuminating and theologically sensitive account of this process see the remarks of Rowan Williams on mysticism and incamation in his Teresa of Avila (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1991), p.156Google Scholar.
17 See Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), p.44Google Scholar.
18 The description of capitalism as ‘tautologous’ belongs to Jean‐François Lyotard in Economie Libidinale (Paris: Minuit, 1974)Google Scholar.
19 In Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. 388.
20 ‘Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions’ in Theological Investigations IV (London: DLT, 1966), p. 342Google Scholar.
21 Levinas Collected Philosophical Papers p.32.
22 Explorarions in Theology V (London: SCM Press, 1979), p.79Google Scholar.
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