With “The Fictions of Finance,” then, we mean to decipher a vast array of moral panics, conceptual revolutions, legal constructions, and discursive forms implicated and imbricated within the world histories of capital. This theme may point in many directions: genealogies of economic thought; the performativity of economic theory; finance capital’s institutional architectures, such as corporations and state bureaucracies; territorial sovereignties, geographical imaginaries or spatial materialities secured by finance capital; techniques of racial capitalism; and modes of imperialism and accumulation. We want this theme to mark out the space for an interdisciplinary conversation, rather than a strictly historical one, about the political economy of finance capitalism. We seek a cultural history, writ large, writ global, of the forms, concepts, subjects, and networks that finance capital elaborates. In other words, we’d like to emphasize critiques of capitalism and to foreground its logic, and, practically speaking, to emphasize provocative juxtapositions of topics.

Some possible topics this issue might explore include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Slave insurance, slave mortgages, and the corporealization of finance capital
• Speculation and risk as imperatives of capitalist citizenship
• “Time is money,” and other tropes of the transactionalism of everyday life
• Microfinance, credit-baiting, and primitive accumulation in the Global South
• Pin money and the domestication of finance
• FIRE economies and the rise of global cities
• “Ball pork”: the circulation of finance capital through built and natural environments
• Territorial and national sovereignties imagined by finance capital
• Shysters, Welfare Queens and other discourses of parasitism
• Radical critiques of finance capital, among theorists and activists around the world
• The grammar of finance, e.g., the categories of credit and debt (whether personal or national)
• The instruments of finance, e.g., double-entry bookkeeping and collateralized debt obligations
• Money as a narrative strategy, from the realist novel to conceptual art
• The personification of the market that speaks, sleeps, and stumbles
• Global cycles of finance capital and the temporality of history
• Finance capital and the scapes of modernity: HSBC as “The World’s Local Bank”
• The boundary between clean and dirty money
• The emergence of the concept of finance capital
• Homo Economicus: the productions of affect, desire, and subjectivity
• The legal “personhood” of business corporations

The RHR seeks scholarly, monographic research articles, but we also encourage such non-traditional contributions as photo essays, film and book review essays, interviews, brief interventions, “conversations” between scholars and/or activists, and teaching notes and annotated course syllabi for our Teaching Radical History section.

Visit the website at http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/rhr.htm

Conveners:
Karl Christian Führer
Kim Christian Priemel and
Cornelia Rauh

Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original papers to be presented at an interdisciplinary conference in Hanover, Germany, in January 2013. The conference will explore how economic actions come to be labelled as “speculation” in different societies and in diverse historical periods. It will specifically address questions such as how speculative trading was and is operated, how states and societies react to the phenomenon of “speculation”, and how the incurred profits or losses are publically assessed.

The basic definition of economic speculation appears to be innocent enough: speculators anticipate changes in prices for certain goods and try to take advantage of these up- or downswings. While such deals may well be regarded as one of the most common traits of any market economy, speculation has often – and most prominently in the recent financial crisis – become a widely applied and easily understood pejorative term in political discussions. More often than not it is used in a moralistic discourse and as a synonym for “greed,” “irresponsibility,” or “recklessness”.

Defence of speculation is rare and hardly part of topical debates. However, economists, including free-market sceptics such as Paul Krugman, have frequently argued that even high risk speculations intended to disrupt the exchange rates of currencies can have positive, if unintended economic effects. More generally, speculation is often seen as a mechanism by which technical innovations are financed and the allocation of goods and resources is optimised. In some, albeit few cases, moral counter-arguments have been advanced: from a radical free-market perspective speculation can and historically has been presented as a form of “superior individual freedom” and accordingly as an essential element of any free society. Papers presented in the conference should not aim to decide these political and ideological feuds (although they might wish to side with one or the other). Instead they should make these perceptions of and perspectives on economic speculation and speculators the very object of their analysis. As markets do not evolve according to eternal, quasi-mechanical rules but are culturally coded and socially negotiated, economic actions take place in a social context which is shaped and influenced by human perceptions, emotions, knowledge, and beliefs – and thus liable to changes, inconsistencies, and contradictions. Profit-seeking individuals therefore do not act as (more or less well but certainly not perfectly informed) agents of static economic laws, but as members of social formations which vary significantly in time and space.

Speculation thus offers an excellent example to study economy as a historically contingent, socially constructed field of action. Its highly contested character clearly derives from a wide range of social interactions encompassing not only business protagonists (traders, brokers, shareholders, bankers, et al), but also politicians and state officials engaged in regulatory efforts as well as other stakeholders such as labour representatives, scholars, the lay public, and the media. As such, speculation offers a rich field for interdisciplinary and comparative studies. The conference, we hope, will be joined not only by historians and economists, but also by participants from Sociology, Anthropology, Theology, Criminology, and Media and Cultural Studies. Both papers on historical cases of speculation and on recent developments are welcome; internationally comparative presentations are especially encouraged. Participants should be prepared to give a 20 minute presentation at the conference followed by discussion.

Questions to be addressed in the papers may include: Which forms of “speculation” can be distinguished? Under what circumstances is speculation regarded as functional or as disruptive both in economic and in social terms? What are the differences between “speculators” and “ordinary” economic agents? Do the notions of “greed” and of “undeserved profits” necessarily form part of debates about speculation and speculators? Or is speculation only scandalized once it has failed? Can greed, as Gordon Gecko has it, be good?
In what way are speculation and its protagonists perceived by the general public of his or her time? Is there a public image of “the speculator” and – if so –who shapes that image at different times, in different places, and by what means? Is speculation a topic in high-brow art, the popular arts, and/or the media? Do economic actors conceive of themselves as speculators? Which efforts have public authorities historically made to prevent or check “speculation” and with what results? Are such policies tied to notions of a “moral economy” meant to control profits and self-interest for the sake of the “common good”?

Please send an abstract of 150 – 200 words of your paper along with a brief CV (one page at the most) to Cornelia.Rauh@hist.uni-hannover.de by February 15, 2012. All submissions should be sent as e-mail attachments (MS Word, Rtf, Pdf). At the moment, reimbursement of travel expanses cannot be guaranteed. However, we are optimistic that funding will be provided. There will be no conference fees.

Contributors: David Bennett, Geoff Boucher, Steven D. Brown, Paul Crosthwaite, Karl Figlio, Bruce Fink, Stephen Frosh, Jean-Joseph Goux, Campbell Jones, Viktor Mazin, Laura Mulvey, Benjamin Noys, Ian Parker, Daniel Ross, Matthew Sharpe, Bernard Stiegler, Tan Waelchli

CONTENTS

David Bennett
‘Money Is Laughing Gas To Me’ (Freud): A Critique Of Pure Reason In Economics And Psychoanalysis

Bruce Fink
Analysand And Analyst In The Global Economy, Or Why Anyone In Their Right Mind Would Pay For An Analysis

Karl Figlio
The Financial Crisis: A Psychoanalytic View Of Illusion, Greed And Reparation In Masculine Phantasy

Viktor Mazin
The Meaning of Money: Russia, the Ruble, the Dollar and Psychoanalysis

Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe
Financial Crisis, Social Pathologies And ‘Generalised Perversion’: Questioning Žižek’s Diagnosis Of The Times

Paul Crosthwaite
What A Waste Of Money: Expenditure, The Death Drive, And The Contemporary Art Market

Stephen Frosh
Psychoanalysis, Antisemitism And The Miser

Tan Waelchli
Psychoanalytic Reflections On The Nature Of Money: Authority, Regulation Of Standards, And The Law Of The Father

Jean-Joseph Goux
Pleasure And Pain: At The Crossroads Of Psychoanalysis And The Political Economy

Campbell Jones
What Kind Of Subject Is The Market?

Daniel Ross
Translator’s Introduction To Bernard Stiegler’s ‘Pharmacology Of Desire’ Drive-based Capitalism And Libidinal Dis-economy’

Bernard Stiegler
Pharmacology Of Desire: Drive-Based Capitalism And Libidinal Dis- Economy

Introduction: Reflecting on History when Markets Tumble, Scott Reynolds Nelson

The Politics of Economic Crises: The Panic of 1873, the End of Reconstruction, and the Realignment of American Politics, Nicolas Barreyre

A Financial Crisis in Prints and Cartoons, Scott Reynolds Nelson

The Freaks of Fortune: Moral Responsibility for Booms and Busts in Nineteenth-Century America, Jonathan Levy

A Storm of Cheap Goods: New American Commodities and the Panic of 1873 , Scott Reynolds Nelson

Cotton Booms, Cotton Busts, and the Civil War in West Africa , Andrew Zimmerman

Boom and Bust: A Comment , Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Date: June 7-8, 2012

Location: Library Company of Philadelphia

“Capitalism by Gaslight: The Shadow Economies of Nineteenth-Century
America,” an exhibition currently installed at the Library Company of
Philadelphia, showcases the many ways in which Americans earned a living
through economic transactions made beyond the spheres of “legitimate”
commerce. Entrepreneurs of this sort included everyone from prostitutes
and card sharps to confidence men, mock auctioneers, pickpockets, fences
of stolen goods, and many others.

Although these shadow economies may have unfolded “off the books,” they
were anything but marginal. Instead, they were crucially important parts
of the mainstream economy, bound up in the development of commercial and
industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century America. The shadow economy’s
successful entrepreneurs-women, people of color, and children among
them-had to be even more creative, flexible, and adaptive than
“respectable” counterparts. During this critical period, the rules of
“legitimate” economic engagement were still being established. What
separated legal from illegal, moral from immoral, acceptable from
disdained activities were far from settled issues. The practices,
networks, and goods that constituted shadow economies often paralleled and
in some instances overlapped with those found in wholesale and retail
businesses, calling into question the morality and legitimacy of legal
economic transactions.

To highlight not only the innovative research being done by historians of
capitalism and its culture but also the rich collections of the Library
Company that support study of these topics, the conveners seek paper
proposals for a conference on Thursday, June 7 – Friday, June 8, 2012,
that explore how shadow economies operated in the nineteenth-century
United States and examine the meanings Americans gave to them.

Please send a 2-3 page abstract and c.v. both to Wendy Woloson at
wewo99@gmail.com and Brian Luskey at brian.luskey@mail.wvu.edu no later
than January 15, 2012, to ensure consideration.

Besides these contemporary discussions, there is an older line of thought in which capitalism is on the one hand associated with the emergence of a specific emotional culture. On the other hand, the idea that certain emotional practices were constitutive for the development of capitalism is not new either. For over 250 years these questions have been discussed in disciplines like philosophy, economics and sociology. What these debates have in common is not only a skeptical stance towards emotions, but also an understanding that emotions are “natural”, “universal” entities. This understanding has been challenged lately: emotions have become a lively object of current research in the humanities and the social sciences; this research has highlighted the fact that emotions are culturally coded and therefore subject to change in history. Research on capitalism has undergone similar revisions as a consequence of several “turns” in the humanities: the homo oeconomicus no longer counts as a compelling explanatory model and the traditional conceptionalizations of capitalism, its types and phases have been rethought – a process from which new research agendas have emerged taking capitalist cultures as a conceptual point of departure rather than “capitalism” as an allegedly homogeneous phenomenon.

However, the question how emotions were and are shaped in capitalist cultures and vice versa: how capitalist cultures are shaped through emotional discourses and practices is still widely under-researched. The conference on emotions and capitalism wants to help to fill this gap: the aim is to offer a platform for new perspectives on the intimate connections which exist between emotional and capitalist practices. To approach this agenda, five major foci have been set for the conference:

In a first step, the conference will analyze the hitherto produced meta-narratives of capitalism and the assumptions they produced regarding the relationship between emotions and capitalism.

The following three sections will be concerned with the interdependencies of emotional and capitalist practices in three central loci – the market, the work place and the field of consumption.

The last section on subjectification and habitus asks about the modes and contents of becoming an emotional being in capitalism.

We invite researchers (PhD level or advanced) to a productive exchange among the disciplines of history, sociology, ethnology, economics, culture and literature studies as well as all others who want contribute on the matter.

The conference is organised by Sabine Donauer and Anne Schmidt in cooperation with Christoph Conrad (University of Geneva) and will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin from 27 to 30 June 2012.

Further information here.

Final essays due Winter 2012 (4,000-8,000 words)

In the throes of a double-dip recession and the wake of the Dot-Com crash, we seek proposals for an edited collection tentatively titled Bust Culture: Notes from the Great Recession, with completed essays due in Winter 2012. We are soliciting articles on cultural artifacts from all forms of media (televisual, cinematic, literary, musical, as well as videogames, websites, fine art) that reflect, refract, and/or respond to the recessionary times of the 21st century. Considering that the current economic downturn is ongoing, we hope this collection offers a timely foray into comprehending contemporary “bust culture.” Possible topics include but are not limited to:

* Television (Critical-Realist, Reactionary, Reality: Breaking Bad, Pawn Stars, etc.)
* Films (Up in the Air, Wall St. 2, Larry Crowne, Horrible Bosses, etc.)
* Documentary Responses (Capitalism: A Love Story, Inside Job, etc.)
* Satirical News Sources (The Onion, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, etc.)
* CEO Portraits, Corporate Personhood, and White-Collar Crime
* Informal Economies, Black Markets, Prison Culture, Narcocultura
* Migrant Workers, Immigration, and Outsourcing
* Unions, Union-Busting, and the Legacy of Ronald Reagan
* Neoliberalism (Harvey), “Disaster Capitalism” (Klein), and Tea Party Politics
* “House Hunters” and Other Forms of Wealth Voyeurism
* “Mancession” and Blue-Collar Nostalgia
* Women in the New Economy
* Race and Racism in the Great Recession
* End of the “American Century”
* Bubbles (housing, dot.com, gold, energy)
* Financialization, Derivatives, and Computerized Stock Trading
* Cognitive Mappings of Bust Geography and Architecture
* Consumption: Advertising, Shopping, Fashion, and Marketing Trends
* DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Culture
* Religion and Apocalyptic Discourse
* Sports as Big Business

We aim to assemble a diverse collection of academically rigorous pieces accessible to the general public (non-academics are encouraged to submit). For further information, visit www.bustculture.com and https://twitter.com/#!/BustCulture. Please direct all queries, questions, and submissions to bustculture@gmail.com.

Kirk Boyle (UNC Asheville) and Daniel Mrozowski (Trinity College)

Deadline: Please submit a short paper of not more than 3,000 words (incl.references and all other materials) by January 16, 2012 at the EGOS
website: http://www.egos2012.net
Helsinki, July 2–7, 2012

Markets in the Making: Observing, Measuring and Performing Economic Exchange

Convenors
Liz McFall, Open University, UK, e.r.mcfall@open.ac.uk
Steven Kahl, University of Chicago, USA, steven.kahl@chicagobooth.edu
Joeri Mol, University of Melbourne, Australia, jmol@unimelb.edu.au

The questions we ask are:

• Where do markets come from and what are their historical origins (Braudel, 1982; White, 1981)?
• Who are the market makers and what role do expert systems play in economic exchange (Hsu, 2006; Riles, 2010)?
• How do market devices perform economic exchange (Callon 2007, McFall, 2009)?
• How do facts get produced and how are markets ‘prepared’ (Pryke et al., 2007)?
• If we do not give primacy to the social (Maurer, 2008), how does materiality feature in and become generative of the way we enact economic exchange (Callon, 1998; MacKenzie et al., 2007)?
• How does ‘number’ materialize in markets (cf. Verran, 2001)?
• What is the epistemological and ontological status of ‘value’ as well as the market categories by which it is expressed (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Kahl, 2007)?
• How does economic exchange within organizational boundaries differ from economic exchange within markets (Mol & Wijnberg, 2011; Stark, 1986)?

Full details are available here.