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Abstract
This paper explores the motivations behind the outward foreign direct investment (ofdi) decisions in the past decade of an East Asian government-linked corporation (glc), the largest company of its kind in the world in terms of sectoral specialisation. This glc has travelled far from its origins as an agent of European imperialism to its current controversial role spearheading postcolonial extra-territorialisation strategies. I argue that financial predation is the synechdoche for territorialisation in the new imperialism. Consequently emerging economies pre-empt the financial siege by embarking on ofdi strategies themselves to create economic buffer territory. I construct a psychoanalytical framework for examining how anxiety is acted out in the global economy. I apply concepts of the traumatic moment, anxiety and the defence mechanisms of disavowal, splitting, introjection and projection to analyse the glc’s investments as territorial displacements of the libidinal economy.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the support of DePaul University and the Department of Geography. I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments; all errors are of course my own. Most of all, I thank Lee Yoke Har for facilitating many of the interviews.
Notes
1. Johnson, miti, 25 (emphasis edited by author).
2. Aw, Five Star Billionaire, 110.
3. A glc is a company where controlling ownership is in the hands of the state.
4. A number of people contacted decline do to be interviewed and even those interviewed cited statutory laws, under which purview the topic could (emphasis mine) fall.
5. Aw, Five Star Billionaire, 110.
6. Johnson, miti, 25.
7. In the psychoanalytic literature ‘affect’ is used in the sense of emotion.
8. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 183.
9. Goldstein and Pavanond, “Singapore Inc.,” 419.
11. This argument can only be made within certain perceived shared historico-political contexts and, therefore, does not apply to glcs in other regions. Moreover, even within a single country, glc s may appear to act according to different policies but, in fact, have coordinated their policies as part of a national strategy. For example, one glc may have to take on money-losing propositions to appease the host country for the actions of another glc from the same home country. This is not to say that glcs are money-losing propositions, since three of them are in the top three mncs internationally. I focus on this particular venture because the contradictions are most apparent.
12. I use the term ‘international’ to emphasise that ‘nation’, as political category signifying cultural difference, still has purchase in public discourse.
13. The term comes from Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 47. He used it to indicate the disempowered’s mastery of the language and culture of those in power.
14. Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, xiv.
15. Kasese-Hara, “Human Development in ‘Underdeveloped’ Contexts,” 545.
16. Žižek, “Muticulturalism,” 29. Primary repression involves total denial.
17. Freud, Group Psychology, 8.
18. Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, ix.
19. Escobar, Encountering Development.
20. Hiddlestone, Understanding Postcolonialism, 6.
21. Ramamurti, “Why Study Emerging-market Multinationals?”
22. Ibid.
23. Ghesquire, Singapore’s Success; and Williamson and Zheng, “Chinese Multinationals.” Among the criticisms of governments supporting glcs in emerging economies (Western glcs notably escape these criticisms) are the charges of crony capitalism, patronage and corruption.
24. Buckley, et al., “Explaining China’s Outward fdi.”
26. Ibid.
27. Harvey, Limits to Capital; and Harvey, The Enigma of Capital.
28. Kallis, “In Defence of Growth.”
29. Kunkel, “How Much is too Much?”, 12.
30. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights.
31. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, 205.
32. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 6, 11, 14, 220, 227; and Foucault, Order of Things, 3−16, 218.
33. Hook, “Fanon,” 214.
34. Mitchell, “Economics.”
35. Hiddlestone, Understanding Postcolonialism, 4.
36. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 84.
37. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 58.
38. Kahn, Basic Freud, 8−9.
39. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 103, 110, 116.
40. Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 340
41. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 118
42. Jacques, When China Rules the World, 72.
43. Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; and Freud, Group Psychology.
44. Cooper and Murphy, “Libidinal Economics.”
45. Layton, “What Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Mean to Me.”
46. Hook, “Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko,” 15.
47. Layton, “What Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Mean to Me,” 147−148.
48. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 134.
49. Ibid.
50. Sioh, “The Hollow Within.”
51. Lacan, Ecrits, 181.
52. Adamson and Clark, “Introduction,” 8−9.
53. Ibid., 183.
54. Layton,“What Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Mean to Me,”149.
55. Hollander, “State Terrorism,” 175.
56. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 18, 43−47, 111, 161−165.
57. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 104.
58. In “Multiculturalism” Žižek appears to distinguish between discourse, which is used without the awareness of what is left out, and ideology, in which the politically contingent dimension is evident.
59. Žižek, “Multiculturalism,” 29.
60. Ibid. Žižek uses the Freudian spelling ‘phantasy’ in his designation of the imagined ideal.
61. Ibid., 44.
62. Hollander, “State Terrorism,” 174−175.
63. Layton, “What Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Mean to Me,” 147–149.
64. Žižek, “Multiculturalism,” 44.
65. Cooper and Murphy, “Libidinal Economics.”
66. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.
67. Lim et al., Hidden Agenda, 97 (emphasis added).
68. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 118.
69. “China’s foreign reserves,” January 28, 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-28/china-s-foreign-reserves-investment-chief-said-to-depart.html; Evans-Pritchard, “Asia’s $6.4 trillion,” June 27, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9310489/Asias-6.4-trillion-in-foreign-reserves-a-threat-to-stability.html; and Nam and Lee, “US Debt Default?” Reuters, 11 October 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/11/us-asia-economy-reserves-idUSBRE99A09O20131011.
70. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 103, 110, 116—118.
71. Kahn, Basic Freud, 8−9.
72. Hollander, “State Terrorism,”175.
73. Layton, “What Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Mean to Me,” 149.
74. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 134.
75. Žižek, “Multiculturalism,” 29.
76. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 18, 43−47, 111, 161−165.
77. Žižek, “Multiculturalism,” 44.
78. Johnson, miti, 25.