Commodification critiques became productive once reframed as questions of personhood

Evidence

Another, more productive line of inquiry eschewed spelunking the ontology of the commodity in favor of Radin’s astute observation that questions of commodification would themselves rapidly devolve into questions of the nature of personhood; and this resonated with all manner of feminist scholars, anthropologists, and cultural studies advocates. As this contingent pursued their empirical explorations of recent alterations in what it meant to be a free and autonomous agent in the modern world, they increasingly found themselves brought back into confrontation with neoliberal political economy. Their writing was pitched just about as far from formal disciplinary economics as it is possible to go in the contemporary academy; perhaps it was this fact that allowed them to more directly access accounts of the NTC as germane to their concerns. Once they made the connection, they uncovered all manner of unexpected facets of the new personhood. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 255

Categorization

• DEFINE: Radin’s move — commodification questions devolving into personhood questions — is introduced here as the framework the chapter will build on.
• XREF: connects to: Communitarian personhood defines identity through community rather than the Cartesian I — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 434; “The people” is itself a contested construct, not a fixed subject; Tempels’s personhood idea is communitarian rather than a force thesis — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 437

Broader Connections

• Communitarian personhood defines identity through community rather than the Cartesian I #expands (0.80) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 434
• “The people” is itself a contested construct, not a fixed subject #qualifies (0.75)
• Tempels’s personhood idea is communitarian rather than a force thesis #responds-to (0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 437