Conceptualizing the "Economic" through Ontologies of the Limit in Contemporary French Philosophy from the 1970s to the Present

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A theory of the "economic" or the "economic sphere" does not exist outside philosophical discourse, but implicitly draws aline through it. In my dissertation, the fundamental research question that I wish to address is how the configuration ofthe "economic" is constituted through ontologies of the limit from the 1970s to the present in French philosophy. For acontribution to the field of contemporary political economy from a decidedly philosophical perspective, I propose ananalysis of virulent concepts of the "economic" (with focus on the work of Deleuze, Bataille, Serres and Malabou) toinvestigate both problematic and connecting points for a critical perspective towards processes of economic organizationand agency. Both the literature dedicated directly to (political) economy and to an understanding of the "economic" viathe concept of the limit, boundary and border, contribute to my examination. The variety of the concept of "limits" offersthe coordinates for my research and will be linked to the question of the "economic" in four conceptual fields: desire, timeand history, the non-economic and the boundary of economy. I consider this investigation worthy of research on severaldivergent fronts: as a contribution to a poststructuralist critique of economic conditions regarding the financial crisis of2008; as a resonance to the problem of critiques of capitalism since the 1960s and as a sign of the connection betweenthe economic and the ecological crisis.