Every dominant image of the human is defined against the possibilities it excludes

Evidence

To say that it figures man as fundamentally driven and oriented by economic concerns begs two crucial questions. First, there is the question of homo oeconomicus’s constitutive outside. Every image of man is defined against other possibilities — thus, the idea of man as fundamentally economic is drawn against the idea of him as fundamentally political, loving, religious, ethical, social, moral, tribal, or something else. Even when one image becomes hegemonic, it carves itself against a range of other possibilities — tacitly arguing with them, keeping them at bay, or subordinating them. So it is not enough to know that humans are economic in their drives and motivations — we must know what this means we are not, and especially what has been sent packing, what we are adamantly not. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 162

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘constitutive outside’ — a key analytical concept for understanding homo oeconomicus by what it expels rather than only what it asserts.
• XREF: The ‘constitutive outside’ concept echoes poststructuralist thought (Derrida, Butler) and connects to the book’s overall thesis about what democracy’s subject is being replaced by. — connects to: Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not; Every identity is constituted relationally through what it excludes — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 371; What a society refuses to investigate reveals its self-image — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1967 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #corroborates (0.90)
• Every identity is constituted relationally through what it excludes #corroborates (0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 371
• What a society refuses to investigate reveals its self-image #exemplifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1967
• Modern identity is constituted through the exclusion of its own opposite #exemplifies (0.75)
• Representation of the Other is an act of domination without consent #exemplifies (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 60
• The power to not-see is constitutive of seeing itself #epitomizes (0.70)