Unemployment and the gift in the South African context: Towards an economics of recognition and humility

Abstract

Summary: Unemployment is a serious problem in South Africa that is probably being exacerbated by the destabilising tension between neo-liberal and Marxist perspectives (and in some cases neo-Marxist perspectives) that is being used to address this situation. This tension is based on reductions that may arise from the embedded ontologies that inform these economic philosophies and limit dialogue because of the binary nature of these ontological reductions. The purpose of this study is to enquire whether deconstruction and specifically Jacques Derrida's view of the gift can provide an alternative for the destructive tension between neo-liberal and Marxist perspectives. In this regard it will be argued that the impossibility of the gift, according to Derrida, provides the basis for hospitable narcissism - an economics of recognition and humility.