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Shock and subjectivity in the age of globalization

Marginalization, exclusion, and the problem of resistance

University of California, Los Angeles, USA, jrfriedman{at}ucla.edu

This article considers the nature of `shock' as both an experiential category and as a strategy used in the processes of globalization. I examine the trope of shock in the lives of coal miners in Romania's Jiu Valley region. The argument contrasts two definitions of shock — the `mimetic' view and the `productive' view (the latter embodied in Ferenczi's notion of Erschütterung) — and shows that, while the strategic goals of globalizing economic institutions (IMF, World Bank) and empire-building states strive for a `productive' shock, what global processes tend to produce in communities marginalized from global flows is a `mimetic' shock and a `shocked subjectivity'.

Key Words: abjection • globalization • Jiu Valley • marginalization • mimesis • Romania • shock • subjectivity

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 7, No. 4, 421-448 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499607083428


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