The Critical Theory of Finance

For the last 50 years, finance played an ever-larger role on both the public and private sides of the world economy. And yet, finance hardly has a place in critical and philosophical accounts of capitalism. What Baran and Sweezy said about finance in 1966 still seems to apply in critical theory: "Since no new questions of principle are involved, there is no need for lengthy discussion of these activities and their economic significance.” In this dialogue, we will discuss the ways finance does affect questions of principle. At a minimum, in the financial age, economic control is taken out of the hands of industry and government and put into the hands of investors and asset managers, and this alone is an enormous shift. In this event, Wendy Brown, Melinda Cooper, Stefan Eich, Aaron Benanev and Paul North will discuss interest, credit, exotic debt instruments, portfolio culture, and a world economy that by some estimates is 60% finance-related.

About the Speakers:

• Aaron Benanev is Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. He works at the intersection of history, sociology, and economic and social theory. His research focuses on global unemployment, underemployment, and informality; automation and the future of work; global histories of social and economic development; the history of economic and social statistics; and alternative institutional arrangements for organizing economic life.
• Wendy Brown is Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her fields of interests include the history of political theory, feminist theory, contemporary critical theories of law, nineteenth and twentieth century Continental theory, and contemporary American political culture. In recent years, her scholarship has focused on neoliberalism and the political formations to which it gives rise.
• Melinda Cooper is Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on the interaction between neoliberal and new conservative philosophies of power.
• Stefan Eich is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. University. His research is in political theory and the history of political thought, in particular the political theory of money and financial capitalism.

The Moderator:

• Paul North is Professor of German at Yale University. He writes and teaches on literature and other media, continental philosophy, literary and critical theory. He is editor (along with Paul Reitter) of a new translation of Marx’s Capital.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. It is open to the public and held on Zoom. The event is free to attend but the Zoom registration page has, by default, an optional donation amount that you can change to zero (or whatever you wish). Donations go to The Philosopher magazine to cover our costs and expand the scope of our series.

Please send feedback or comments about our events directly to thephilosopher1923@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.