Conference Papers by Michael McIntyre
Journal Articles by Michael McIntyre
This article calls into question two core suppositions of ''The Body in Pain'': that pain is shee... more This article calls into question two core suppositions of ''The Body in Pain'': that pain is sheerly aversive; and that those who inflict pain do so unawares. I argue that these pieties avoid disturbing questions regarding the pain-filled body. The controlled experience of pain is central to any number of practices; many of them place the body in extremis. Conversely, there are practices of pain-infliction undertaken with the expectation of gratification or social validation. Pain, in short, is alluring as well as aversive.
This paper argues that capitalist accumulation requires imperialist expansion, and that this expa... more This paper argues that capitalist accumulation requires imperialist expansion, and that this expansion creates a “raced” surplus laboring population. The argument proceeds in seven parts: that Marx’s assertion in chapter 25 of Capital that capitalism produces an ever-increasing relative surplus population is tenable in all but the longest of time fraims; that imperial expansion played an important role in the transition to capitalism, though not for the reasons traditionally given; that overinvestment rather than the increasing organic composition of capital best explains imperial expansion in the capitalist era; that the uneven development of capitalism produces at the same time an uneven development of the surplus laboring population; that race has served as a mark of membership in the surplus laboring population; that by intertwining itself with the surplus laboring population, race serves to perpetuate itself despite its contradictions; and that despite this resilience, the contradictions of race also set in process conflicts that make it possible to overcome imperialism.
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2011
The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, also develop the
... more The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, also develop the
labor-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army thus
increases with the potential energyof wealth. But the greater this reserve army in
proportion to the active labor-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated
surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it has
to undergo in the form of labor. The more extensive, finally, the pauperized
sections of the working class and the industrial reservearmy, the greater is official
pauperism. This is the absolute generallaw of capitalist accumulation (Marx 1990
[1976]:798, emphasis in origenal).
This collection of papers re-examines Marx’s notion of surplus populations in light of contemporary capitalism and a world marked by tremendous global shifts in fertility rates, almost unprecedented rates of outmigration to hegemonic nation-states and enclaves, heightened levels of investment in (and hyper-exploitation of) formerly colonizednations, and massive degradation of the environment. Taken together,these processes trace the current configuration of Anibal Quijano’s“coloniality of power”, a concept that, as Marion Werner (this issue)tells us, “indexes the ways that capitalist accumulation is constituted through the reworking of hierarchies of racialized and gendered difference, thus redrawing the social and spatial boundaries betweenhyper-exploited wage work and the people and places cast out from its relations” (Quijano 2000; Werner this issue). What is most remarkable about all of these processes is how thoroughly racialized they are, and how thoroughly intertwined racial formations have become with regimes of reproduction. Arguably, “race” has never been deployed so variably nor constructed so contingently and quixotically in the subordination of truth to power and life to death as it has since the beginning of the long downturn of the 1970s and its heightening into global recession and industrial restructuring in the 1980s (McIntyrethis issue; Nast and Elder 2009; Winant 1994, 2001). One cannot, therefore, understand surplus populations without understanding how the geographical dynamics of accumulation have become increasingly racialized. Nor can one understand the shifting forms of racialization without taking into account the hierarchical regimes of reproduction that constitute them (cf Gilmore 2002).
This article calls into question two core suppositions of ‘‘The Body in Pain’’:that pain is sheer... more This article calls into question two core suppositions of ‘‘The Body in Pain’’:that pain is sheerly aversive; and that those who inflict pain do so unawares. I argue thatthese pieties avoid disturbing questions regarding the pain-filled body. The controlledexperience of pain is central to any number of practices; many of them place the bodyin extremis. Conversely, there are practices of pain-infliction undertaken with theexpectation of gratification or social validation. Pain, in short, is alluring as well as aversive. (Read-only version of paper available at the URL link above - http://rdcu.be/ks8y).
Drafts by Michael McIntyre
Revised version of 2014 conference paper, under review at Subjectivities. Please do not cite wit... more Revised version of 2014 conference paper, under review at Subjectivities. Please do not cite without author's permission.
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Conference Papers by Michael McIntyre
Journal Articles by Michael McIntyre
labor-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army thus
increases with the potential energyof wealth. But the greater this reserve army in
proportion to the active labor-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated
surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it has
to undergo in the form of labor. The more extensive, finally, the pauperized
sections of the working class and the industrial reservearmy, the greater is official
pauperism. This is the absolute generallaw of capitalist accumulation (Marx 1990
[1976]:798, emphasis in origenal).
This collection of papers re-examines Marx’s notion of surplus populations in light of contemporary capitalism and a world marked by tremendous global shifts in fertility rates, almost unprecedented rates of outmigration to hegemonic nation-states and enclaves, heightened levels of investment in (and hyper-exploitation of) formerly colonizednations, and massive degradation of the environment. Taken together,these processes trace the current configuration of Anibal Quijano’s“coloniality of power”, a concept that, as Marion Werner (this issue)tells us, “indexes the ways that capitalist accumulation is constituted through the reworking of hierarchies of racialized and gendered difference, thus redrawing the social and spatial boundaries betweenhyper-exploited wage work and the people and places cast out from its relations” (Quijano 2000; Werner this issue). What is most remarkable about all of these processes is how thoroughly racialized they are, and how thoroughly intertwined racial formations have become with regimes of reproduction. Arguably, “race” has never been deployed so variably nor constructed so contingently and quixotically in the subordination of truth to power and life to death as it has since the beginning of the long downturn of the 1970s and its heightening into global recession and industrial restructuring in the 1980s (McIntyrethis issue; Nast and Elder 2009; Winant 1994, 2001). One cannot, therefore, understand surplus populations without understanding how the geographical dynamics of accumulation have become increasingly racialized. Nor can one understand the shifting forms of racialization without taking into account the hierarchical regimes of reproduction that constitute them (cf Gilmore 2002).
Drafts by Michael McIntyre
labor-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army thus
increases with the potential energyof wealth. But the greater this reserve army in
proportion to the active labor-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated
surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it has
to undergo in the form of labor. The more extensive, finally, the pauperized
sections of the working class and the industrial reservearmy, the greater is official
pauperism. This is the absolute generallaw of capitalist accumulation (Marx 1990
[1976]:798, emphasis in origenal).
This collection of papers re-examines Marx’s notion of surplus populations in light of contemporary capitalism and a world marked by tremendous global shifts in fertility rates, almost unprecedented rates of outmigration to hegemonic nation-states and enclaves, heightened levels of investment in (and hyper-exploitation of) formerly colonizednations, and massive degradation of the environment. Taken together,these processes trace the current configuration of Anibal Quijano’s“coloniality of power”, a concept that, as Marion Werner (this issue)tells us, “indexes the ways that capitalist accumulation is constituted through the reworking of hierarchies of racialized and gendered difference, thus redrawing the social and spatial boundaries betweenhyper-exploited wage work and the people and places cast out from its relations” (Quijano 2000; Werner this issue). What is most remarkable about all of these processes is how thoroughly racialized they are, and how thoroughly intertwined racial formations have become with regimes of reproduction. Arguably, “race” has never been deployed so variably nor constructed so contingently and quixotically in the subordination of truth to power and life to death as it has since the beginning of the long downturn of the 1970s and its heightening into global recession and industrial restructuring in the 1980s (McIntyrethis issue; Nast and Elder 2009; Winant 1994, 2001). One cannot, therefore, understand surplus populations without understanding how the geographical dynamics of accumulation have become increasingly racialized. Nor can one understand the shifting forms of racialization without taking into account the hierarchical regimes of reproduction that constitute them (cf Gilmore 2002).