The Emotional Logic of Capitalism

The folks at the critical theory podcast Always Already focused on Martijn Konings’ most recent book The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed in their January show. You can stream the discussion here or download the episode at the link below.

Blurb from Always Already:

Join us for Rachel’s triumphant return to the podcast as she, Emily, and John discuss a few chapters from Martijn Konings‘ The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed. As we attempt to unpack the major arguments and contributions of these chapters, we ask: is there a difference between ’emotional logic’ and ‘affect’, and what work does affect do in this book? How can we map the politics of Konings’ critique of Karl Polanyi and American progressivism? What is his critique of Foucault, and how should we position this work vis-a-vis critiques of neoliberalism? Can his work on capitalism’s emotional logic open up space to think white supremacy and patriarchy under capitalism?

Thanks to Nicholas Kiersey for recommending we read Konings. Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Thanks to Leah Dion for the intro music and to B for the outro music. Special thanks to NEW musical feature aster for between-segment music off of their album a l w a y s a l r e a d y (check it out on bandcamp!). Get the mp3 of the episode here.

The Emotional Logic of Capitalism at Stanford UP; Konings’ faculty site at the University of Sydney
Konings on American empire, in Jacobin (2013)
Polanyi for President in Dissent (2016)
Democracy on “The Forgotten Syllabus of American Progressivism“
Dan Riker on “The Beginning of American Progressivism” at Daily Kos

Author: Martijn Konings

Martijn Konings works in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Development of American Finance (Cambridge University Press, 2011), The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed (Stanford University Press, 2015), Neoliberalism (with Damien Cahill, Polity, 2017) and Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018). With Melinda Cooper, he edits the new Stanford University Press series Currencies: New Thinking for Financial Times.

On Capitalism’s Emotional Logics

At first blush, the title of Martijn Konings new book, The Emotional Logic of Capitalism, may seem a little perplexing. After all, we’re quite familiar with understanding capi...

Finance and Society: A new post-disciplinary journal

The nexus of finance and society is increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force – academics, politicians, and ...