Bringing criticism to account: economy, exchange and cultural theory

This essay comprises four sections. The first raises the question of the interdisciplinary nature of cultural analysis, particularly in relation to the complex interchange between the economy of such criticism-the exchange undertaken between the formation and development of its academic field and the recognition and appropriation of other forms and spaces of knowledge-and the location and deployment of the field of economics itself within this intellectual and discursive economy. In order to account for the problematic yet productive interaction between cultural criticism's own economy and the field of economics, the second section turns to the question of gift exchange that has so interested theorists this century working across the various disciplines of anthropology sociology, economics, semiotics and philosophy. Here it is argued that the question of the gift, as formulated by Derrida in particular, raises important questions of the economy and exchange of academic discourse generally; and, more specifically, through his reading of Mauss, suggests that cultural criticism is itself organized around the concept of the gift as a prime mover in the shift from cruder forms of economic determinism to the formation and analysis of the 'symbolicity' df the economic that underpins a discourse of culture. While section two tracks the philosophical dimensions and exegesis of Derrida's problem of the gift, the third section focuses more specifically on the implications for cultural criticism of the close relationship between the concept of the gift and that of culture itself arising from Derrida's discussion. The final section traces a line of reflection between the concerns found in Derrida's recent work on the gift and some of the themes emerging earlier in 'Violence and metaphysics', in order to pose the question of critical responsibility in the context of the problematic relationship between the economy of cultural discourse and analysis and the concept and field of culture as constituted by the 'symbolicity' of the economic.