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this seems like a strange conversation. i don't see how rejecting certain positions outlined by economists or scientists amounts to denying the physical existence of economics as a discipline housed in certain buildings in certain areas that does certain things. nor does rejecting particular theories or explanations based on them outlined by the scientists of your choice is the same as denying the physical existence of science as a set of institutions.
and economics as a field of academic inquiry is a product of the 19th century. it mutated out of political economy. when the americans got hold of it, they stripped out the history and sociology bits of political economy and replaced them with the "neutral" language of number. economics as a subfield of academic work is not the same as thinking about economic activity---which is a subset of broader forms of social activity in any event (obviously).
i understand the position that strange famous appears to be arguing for...it's a mangled version of a marxist critique of science as it functions within a capitalist context. there are points to be made in this direction--he's just not making any of them, and the points he does try to make aren't particular considered.
it's not rocket science to say that in many areas of inquiry, scientific activity is entirely an extension of more general forms of capitalist rationality and in the repeating of this rationality scientific activity can and has produced politically and materially problematic outcomes.
but that's not the same as saying "science is hooey, all it does is wreck things."
and that's not the direction the marxist critique of the sciences ever headed in.
it's a kind of mangling then.
one done in a way that resembles the way my dryer wrinkles clothes--it does it as if wrinkling them were it's job. so here mangling a marxist critique of science as an institution within a capitalist context is being done as if mangling it were the point.
most curious.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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