Re/Presenting Labor: Economic Discourse, Value, Ethics

This dissertation is an attempt to rethink, represent, and reclaim labor for economic and social discourse. In the first essay, I analyze contemporary renditions of labor in nonacademic economic discourses' publications of international institutions' as well as postmodernist narratives to show that labor, rather than being a given category with a single definition, acquires different meanings in different theories, with different theoretical, economic and ethical implications. As it participates in the constitution of a unique discourse that renders certain aspects of reality visible, labor becomes a 'particular lens' with which one can understand, ascribe meanings to prevalent economic and social relations, and destabilize, subvert, and transform the status quo by potentiating counter-hegemonic discourses and mobilizing alternative movements. In the second essay, I argue that there is no labor in the singular in Marx's writings by tracing the different conceptions he advances throughout his works and their affectivities. That is, the productive activity through which human beings realize their human essence, or the creator of use-values which appears as an eternal condition of human existence, does not exhaust what labor is. Marx privileges another definition of labor' the performer of surplus' with which he elaborates a unique and unprecedented class analysis. However, none of these characteristics is an immediate property, essential quality of labor in and of itself; rather, Marx ascribes these meanings to labor, thus avoiding the fetishistic inversion he persistently criticized. With this definition, and building upon Amartya Sen's capabilities approach, I develop a labor theory of ethics in the third essay. I argue each should have the capability to perform surplus, and do so according to their ability; they also should have the capability to appropriate this surplus irrespective of their role in its production, and receive a portion of it in accordance with their needs. To the extent that no one is excluded from participating in, and there is always someone or some group who can join, this surplus economy, the communist ethics I elaborate transcends the capitalist normative framework of 'equal rights and equal exchange,' replacing it with a 'radical equality.'