Financial affect

Abstract

Critical theory has often remained unduly beholden to accounts of capitalist development that emphasize its homogenizing effects and the tendency of its financial logic to destroy the complexity and organic connectedness of human life. This paper suggests that we may move beyond the impasse of this style of critique by analyzing money, capitalism's quintessential sign, as an icon – a sign that represents a paradoxical coincidence of potentiality and contingency and so organizes a particular logic of affective investments. Whereas critical theory tends to associate capitalist development with the decline of affect, this essay suggests that a more paradoxical logic is at work, one whereby economic rationalization generates an affective logic that is distinctly secular and performative but no less powerful than traditional modes of rule and in fact commands a paradoxical binding force. The paper situates the notion of iconicity vis-à-vis some key notions in modern social theory and proceeds to examine its emotional and psychological modalities through an engagement with theorizations of narcissism, a paradoxical affective structure that deploys its reflexive powers to elaborate its attachment to a sign that it experiences as problematic. It then explores the logic of financial affect through a selective analysis of neoliberalism's public culture of self-help, moving beyond a focus on disciplinary individualization to emphasize the associative production of emotional investments. The paper concludes with some considerations on the political implications of the analysis.