Finance Fictions: Realism and Psychosis in a Time of Economic Crisis

Arne De Boever

Published by Fordham University Press 2018

Finance Fictions

Realism and Psychosis in a Time of Economic Crisis

Arne De Boever

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823279197

Overview
Contents

About this book

Finance Fictions examines the tension between psychosis and realism in the contemporary finance novel and shows that compared to earlier instances of the genre (Wolfe; Ellis), the 21st-century finance novel (Alger; Harris; Houellebecq; Lerner) develops a new realist approach to a contemporary economy of financial instruments and automated trading.

A powerful reading of a mode of popular fiction made especially salient in an age of increasing financialization.

Author / Editor information

De Boever Arne :

Arne De Boever is Faculty in the School of Critical Studies and Director of the Aesthetics and Politics program at the California Institute of the Arts. He is the author of States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel (2012), Narrative Care (2013), and Plastic Sovereignties (2016).Arne De Boever is Faculty in the School of Critical Studies and Director of the Aesthetics and Politics program at the California Institute of the Arts. He is the author of States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel (2012), Narrative Care (2013), and Plastic Sovereignties (2016).

Reviews

In his new book, Finance Fictions: Realism and Psychosis in a Time of Economic Crisis, Arne De Boever asks whether and how an economic reality that seems to defy representation can be captured by realist fiction... His answer is that the only realism able to represent contemporary finance is a realism of psychosis.

Several thinkers have pointed out that literary realism has historically always been chummy with capitalism; today, capitalism may even have confiscated realism to the extent that capital simply is realism itself, the only realism. Yet Finance Fictions impresses upon its readers that this is not the whole story about literary realism. If the economy is, partly, the stuff of fictions, then it is only as fiction that literature will be equal to the task of not only capturing but of challenging the logic of financial capitalism and its psychotic consequences.

David Golumbia:
Finance Fictions is a remarkable achievement. Arne De Boever blends detailed attention to high finance with close readings of an unexpected array of contemporary novels. Along the way he touches on work by many of the leading figures in contemporary literary studies and theory, from American Psycho to Quentin Meillassoux’s writings on science fiction. The book offers an original and necessary perspective on the fate of the realist novel in an age of collateralized debt obligations, and raises provocative questions about what De Boever calls the 'financialization of the novel itself.'

Geert Lovink and Patricia de Vries, Institute of Network Cultures:
Finance Fictions is a very strong, very well-written book that overflows with ideas. De Boever weaves together at least three different disciplines, which makes the book difficult to place. That’s not a criticism, but a compliment! At times reminiscent of work by Jack Halberstam and Mark Fisher, the book is bound to frustrate narrowly empirical sociological or economic approaches, in part because it takes its lead from literature and art to think finance differently. For a book that is focused on traditional media, it develops a highly contemporary critical imagination.

Annie McClanahan, author of Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture:
Finance Fictions believes steadfastly in description, and its insistence that literature (and literary critics) can explain "what is going on" offers a useful rebuttal to the familiar bromide that the most we can know about late capitalism is that it is hard to know anything about it.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Revisiting The Bonfire of the Vanities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. Psychotic Realism in (American) Psycho Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
3. Financial Realism in The Fear Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
4. The Financial Universe (After Meillassoux) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
5. Michel Houellebecq, Finance Novelist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
6. Financing the Novel: Ben Lerner’s 10:04 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 10
- Other: 10
Keywords: Biopolitics; Finance; Finance Novels; Marxism; Neoliberalism; Popular fiction; Psychosis; Realism; Speculative Realism; Wall Street

eBook

Published: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 9780823279197