Tianren Luo (Brown University)
tian@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel will include papers exploring the relationship between bodies and finance by tracing how such a relationship could be seen and felt (therefore, be “translated”) in films, fiction, poems, games, or other forms of media across different periods and areas. Building on this basis, we hope to develop an economics of bodies in the age of financial capitalism. Besides, papers that challenge or respond to previous theorization of financial capitalism from corporeal perspectives are also welcomed. We encourage contributors to approach this topic from a non-Euro-American context.

In her recent works, Emily Apter warns against the peril of “the increasing financialization of every aspect of life” that ultimately leads to the “vanquishing of homo politicus into homo economicus” (213). Scholars working in the field of critical finance studies have long attended to how the logic of finance re-frames our very subjectivity – e.g., Randy Martin’s theory on the financialization of everyday life, Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma’s analysis of “monetized subjectivity,” Arjun Appadurai’s account of predatory dividualization of finance capital, or Michel Feher’s critiques of “investee subject,” etc. Although subjectivity production or subjectivation has been the central focus of critical finance studies, the significant roles of bodies often tend to be overlooked in relevant discussions. However, it is precisely bodies that “translates” both the unseen forces at play in this process of subjectivation and the highly abstract categories of finance capital at work into what is visible and tangible.

On the other side, while there has been a growing scholarly interest in the aesthetics of finance, bodies again go unnoticed when critics scrutinize the representation of finance in fiction, poems, films, performances, games, or visual art. Existing scholarship on the aesthetics of finance seems to be too preoccupied with “forms” or abstractions, therefore it would be helpful to re-introduce a more material perspective, i.e., that of bodies, to supplement it.

This panel invites reflections on the relationship between bodies and finance in the broadest sense by examining how such a relationship could be seen and felt in literature, artworks, cinema, or other forms of media across different periods and areas. The term “bodies” here is open to multiple interpretations: as a center of affects, as the site of phenomenological experiences, as what is vulnerable, as what with plasticity, etc. Hence, a wide range of questions could be put forward: how the process of financialization could be rendered visible and tangible and how its forces could be felt and seen through bodies; how finance capital shapes/colonizes/appropriates bodies; whether bodies work for/against the finance capital; how to read the bodily experience as a symptom of finance culture and financial capitalism; how to bring the dimensions of affects and emotions into the critique of financial capitalism, etc. We are particularly interested in papers exploring these problems or other issues related. Besides, papers that challenge or respond to previous theorization of financial capitalism from the corporeal perspectives are also welcomed.