Utopianism of the symbolic exchange models

The paper takes the perspective of Fredric Jameson’s thinking about utopia (from his Archeologies of the future) and is an attempt to answer the question of the status of the theories of symbolic exchange (Baudrillard, Goux) understood as specific iterations of the utopian thinking or the utopian impulse. Jameson sees today the power of the utopian narratives in the alternatives they give to the third stage of capitalism. That is why the main problem presented in this paper is precisely the alternative vision of social and economic relations projected by the researchers referring to the models of symbolic exchange in the primitive societies. Reading the concepts of Goux and Baudrillard in the light of the Jameson’s theory of utopia is to show their proximity with thinking about magical and religious practices on one hand, and, on the other hand, to the fundamental models of social relations in the primitive and ahistorical societies present in the fable and fantasy. These primitive societies believe in the possibility of exchange with the dead and do not surrender to the model of economy governed by the general equivalents: the phallus, the sovereign, the sign, the money.
 

The paper takes the perspective of Fredric Jameson’s thinking about utopia (from his Archeologies of the future) and is an attempt to answer the question of the status of the theories of symbolic exchange (Baudrillard, Goux) understood as specific iterations of the utopian thinking or the utopian impulse. Jameson sees today the power of the utopian narratives in the alternatives they give to the third stage of capitalism. That is why the main problem presented in this paper is precisely the alternative vision of social and economic relations projected by the researchers referring to the models of symbolic exchange in the primitive societies. Reading the concepts of Goux and Baudrillard in the light of the Jameson’s theory of utopia is to show their proximity with thinking about magical and religious practices on one hand, and, on the other hand, to the fundamental models of social relations in the primitive and ahistorical societies present in the fable and fantasy. These primitive societies believe in the possibility of exchange with the dead and do not surrender to the model of economy governed by the general equivalents: the phallus, the sovereign, the sign, the money.