Economics is a tragicomic praxis par excellence. Tragedy and comedy are seen by Aristotle as two different dramatic modes for talking of two opposite types of human action. The former deals with noble actions, the latter with mean actions. I propound that economics is even more Aristotelian than drama in that while the latter does not create the action it reflects on, the former as a fundamental human activity generates the actions it later encompasses as a discipline. Economics also deals with noble and mean actions with far-reaching significance equally stoically.
Economics is not simply a special way of being and acting in the world. It is also a codified depiction or narration of this mode of being. This economic mode relates to the construction of the world. Aristotle describes the origin and development of drama and poetry in two profound human instincts, namely, imitation and harmony. Imitation is propelled by repetition, in general. Economic activity strives towards harmony in the world through this repetitive imitation or imitative repetition. It is born in the incessant re-enactment of simple acts aimed at producing goods and services necessary for sustaining humanity. This simple repetition diachronically generates increasingly complex forms of social life.
Harmony as order and stability is sought through this vital iterative reproduction of actions by the differentiation of tasks and distribution of produced goods. However, this repetition, where it bestows order on the world on one hand, can also lead to chaos one the other as the countless repetitions lead to problems of forecasting, control, and information and communication lags in the social system keeping the possibility of conflict ever alive.
Aristotle also maintains that human beings are more imitative in their conduct than all other animals. Human consciousness and the capacity for recollection of one’s difference from others is a prerequisite for imitation because primarily that would be imitated which is not considered to be a part of one’s own self. Paulo Freire, the famous Brazilian educator, in his treatise on critical pedagogy, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, alludes to this distinction in his description of animal-nature interaction as passive and human-nature interaction as active and transformational. The repetitive production of life turns upon our crucial ability to act upon nature and by doing so transform the world, nature, and ourselves. This transformational interaction itself is built around repeated acts of creativity, invention and innovation aimed at superseding limits imposed by nature.
The primacy of plot over character is underscored in the Aristotelian view of drama. This corresponds roughly to the relationship between structure (supra-individual forms of social existence like the institutions of the market, state and civil society) and agency (the individual and collective capacity for change). If one looks at the internal coherence enjoyed by economic analysis, irrespective of the school or the type of analysis, one is astonished to find the same constructed completeness and self-sufficiency regarding its propositions, proofs necessarily following from these and the tools of analysis that is considered a prerequisite for the drama’s plot by Aristotle. Just like a bad plot, bad theory is also said to exhibit lack of coherence or specious induction.
Further, an attenuated unity of character is posited as opposed to a strong and rigid unity owing to the varying fortunes of human life. The economic subject is also one lacking a strict and impregnable unified centre of action and intention. He/she is endowed with a partially de-centred subject-hood. Divided between motivations pulling in opposite directions, she/he is forever shifting between the roles of buyer, seller, consumer, saver, producer, mediator, thinker etc., without ever being reduced to any one monolithic role.
Reversal of fortune shown through sharp shifts of action and the recognition of characters previously ignored or hidden accompanied by an on-stage spectacle of suffering that embodies pain and trauma is considered an inseparable ploy in the Aristotelian view of drama__ a strategy not much different from theories of social change that advocate a similar socio-economic turn-around for the poor and the social rehabilitation of the formerly marginalised segments of society. This adversarial view of social change clearly reminds us of the problems of poverty, unemployment, recessions, etc, engendered by economic inequity and iniquity and has serious implications for economic policy.
More space than is currently available is needed to trace the relevance of Aristotle’s conception of drama for economics. However, as a parting shot, it has to be mentioned that the job of the dramatist is seen in Aristotelian framework to consist in telling not what has already happened – the province proper of history according to our philosopher – but what may probably or necessarily transpire. Economists are assumed to be invested with a similar responsibility of making reasonable predictions about the probable impacts of allocative decisions on society as well as make sense of the art of iterative production of life in the present while performing the historian’s job whenever the need be.
The writer is a Senior Policy Analyst working for the OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and can be contacted at [email protected].
