Economy and aesthetic of public knowledge

Abstract

This paper places in anthropological perspective some of the conceptual assumptions behind the so-called new knowledge economy. In particular, I am interested in the rise of knowledge as a global political artefact: as an object that inhabits public spheres and that is rapidly acquiring public stature itself. There are two aspects to this political economy that concern me. First is the influence of a global economic philosophy of public choice on the conceptualisation and use of knowledge as an ethical commodity. The second aspect impinges on social theory and has to do with how we imagine our own sociological intelligence when confronting an epistemic regime where 'society' is said to already know itself as the product of a knowledge distribution. The reflexive turn evokes a playful reversibility (moving in and out of knowledge and society) whose effects for social theory the paper tries to elucidate at different points in the argument. The paper, in sum, explores the place where the politics, economy and intellectual aesthetics of new knowledge cross roads.