The Twin Towers of Financialization: Entanglements of Political and Cultural Economies

Abstract

Financialization, a moment in the genealogy of capital, does extend and refine accumulation, but it also elaborates mutual indebtedness as a more general feature of human sociality from labor to lived experience. More than a shift from one axis to another, it is the way that capital speaks its social relations. Risk becomes not simply a form of calculation, a way of knowing, but also invites a kind of being. The boundaries between being and value, sheer quality ceaseless quantity have become blurred. The heroic entrepreneur, whose genius inspires mass assemblies, yields to the arbitrager and hedge fund managers who stealthily stalk opportunity. The model of agency and social life by which small investments of capacity can be leveraged to substantial and increasingly volatile effects, whether this entails deployments of special forces, infrastructure repair, hedge fund investments, or political action termed terrorist, points to the efficacy of the derivative across seemingly disconnected practical domains. Conceptually speaking, financialization discloses the power of a derivative discourse that joins and travels through interdisciplinary worlds. Its intellectual force permits a fuller circulation of critical thought and engagement.