Fortnightly research seminars series presented by David Bennett:

Thursdays, 12.00-2.00 p.m., on 30 Oct., 13 Nov., 27 Nov. and 11 Dec., 2008.

Location: Tillotson Room, 30 Russell Square

What is ‘libidinal economy’ and how has it informed ideas about subjectivity, desire, commerce and subversion since the rise of consumer culture in the eighteenth century? These four research seminars will investigate a tradition of thinking sexuality through the trope of economy which figures desire or libido as something quantifiable that may be spent, saved, squandered or profitably invested. Since ‘to spend’ became the standard vernacular term for orgasm in the late seventeenth century, the metaphoric commerce/intercourse between the languages of money and sex has been richly promiscuous, producing such influential bodies of theory as Freudianism’s economic model of the psyche. These seminars will examine how libidinal economy has operated in discourses as disparate as Victorian pornography and self-help manuals, psychoanalysis, radical political philosophy, market research and advertising. They will consider how the ‘homo oeconomicus’ model of the citizen-subject-on which both classical political economy and neo-classical economics are predicated-has shaped explanations of sexual desire, deviancy and pleasure, and how changing accounts of the costs and benefits of expending libido have interacted with the producer and consumer ethics in the transition from liberal capitalism to late consumer culture.Each seminar (talk + discussion) will focus on a different aspect of the sex-money nexus that libidinal economists have undertaken to interpret, regulate or exploit.

Click here for full information: Libidinal Economy.