Bakhtin and Voloshinov argued that dialogue is the intersubjective basis of consciousness, and of the creativity which makes historical changes in consciousness possible. The multiple dialogical relationships give every subject, who has developed through internalising them, the potential to distance him or herself from them. Consciousness is therefore an “unfinalised” process, always open to a possible future which would not merely reiterate the past. But this book explores its corollary: The relative openness is a field of conflict where rival discourses struggle for hegemony, by...

This book traces the genesis of the indebtedness of the nation-state in the West, arguing that it is a phenomenon which preceded the emergence of capitalism. Even prior to the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the ruling class of feudal landowners in the West were dependent on credit, and had to repay the loans provided by their international creditors. Those monetary loans were unavoidable, both for the defence of the emergent territorial state against its rivals and for its expansion in the struggle against them. However autonomous the early Western nation-states may appear to...