ABSTRACT
Imagine that something is happening in the world that’s not about an actual, measurable phenomenon called “globalization.” I am thinking here of the ascendancy of what might be called the “global imaginary” and its implications for how we feel, act, and identify. Perhaps a global régime is consolidating itself not so much through institutional initiatives but through subjects who experience themselves as increasingly subsumed to a global order—enter here the world economic system, known also as the market, or neoliberalism, or capitalism. Becoming part of the imagined global community involves our subjection to this order, our (re)constitution not primarily as national citizens but as economic subjects—productive or less so, competitive or not, winning or losing on the economic terrain.
