Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: The Politics of Interest -- 2 Property, Usury, and the Juridical Subject of Interest -- 3 Appeals to Interest in Seventeenth-Century England -- 4 Contesting Sovereignty: Interest in Thomas Hobbes -- 5 A Historiography of Liberal Interest and the Neoliberal Self -- 6 Interest in Political Studies: Action, Grouping, and Government -- Epilogue: The Language of Interest as a Critical Theory of Politics -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

The hundredth anniversary of Arthur Bentley's The Process of Government is an occasion to recover his distinctive but forgotten view of interest, namely, that an appeal to "interest" is an activity of provoking political identity and agency—an activity exemplified by the "group process" of politics. Bentley's insight has been lost as students of politics, as diversely inclined as David Truman, Bill Connolly, and many others, approach interests instead as a psychological bulwark and expression of sovereign agency. Reading Bentley prompts us to see how the language of "interest" undercuts such a picture, encouraging instead a critical theory of interests—and of politics more generally—that is sensitive to the active provocation of identity at sites of contestation.

The hundredth anniversary of Arthur Bentley's The Process of Government is an occasion to recover his distinctive but forgotten view of interest, namely, that an appeal to "interest" is an activity of provoking political identity and agency—an activity exemplified by the "group process" of politics. Bentley's insight has been lost as students of politics, as diversely inclined as David Truman, Bill Connolly, and many others, approach interests instead as a psychological bulwark and expression of sovereign agency. Reading Bentley prompts us to see how the language of "interest" undercuts such a picture, encouraging instead a critical theory of interests—and of politics more generally—that is sensitive to the active provocation of identity at sites of contestation.

In this essay I recover the juridical applications of `interest' in Roman law, and examine how their initial relationship to financial practices shifted, for a theoretical appreciation of interest-related subjectivity. Drawing on Hegel's discussion of Roman law, I explore the retrospective narrative of subjectivity constructed by the adjudication of interests before the term `interest' came to apply to money. Examining Albert Hirschman's argument that rationality of interest derives from its origins as a euphemism for usury, I describe how the verbal change reflects the incursion of money into legal terrain that previously excluded it, representing a moment of categorical erosion within the law. I argue that monetary inflation is a critical context for interpreting the effects of this categorical erosion on interest-related subjectivity. Inflation replaces the retrospective narrative of identity with one that is future-oriented and is no longer determined at any single site of adjudication, and therefore remains contested.

In this essay I recover the juridical applications of `interest' in Roman law, and examine how their initial relationship to financial practices shifted, for a theoretical appreciation of interest-related subjectivity. Drawing on Hegel's discussion of Roman law, I explore the retrospective narrative of subjectivity constructed by the adjudication of interests before the term `interest' came to apply to money. Examining Albert Hirschman's argument that rationality of interest derives from its origins as a euphemism for usury, I describe how the verbal change reflects the incursion of money into legal terrain that previously excluded it, representing a moment of categorical erosion within the law. I argue that monetary inflation is a critical context for interpreting the effects of this categorical erosion on interest-related subjectivity. Inflation replaces the retrospective narrative of identity with one that is future-oriented and is no longer determined at any single site of adjudication, and therefore remains contested.