The Specter of Capital (Cultural Memory in the Present)

In his brilliant interdisciplinary analysis of the global financial crisis, Joseph Vogl aims to demystify finance capitalism―with its bewildering array of new instruments―by tracing the historical stages through which the financial market achieved its current autonomy. Classical and neoclassical economic theorists have played a decisive role here. Ignoring early warnings about the instability of speculative finance markets, they have persisted in their belief in the inherent equilibrium of the market, describing even major crises as mere aberrations or adjustments and rationalizing dubious financial practices that escalate risk while seeking to manage it. "The market knows best": this is a secular version of Adam Smith's faith in the market's "invisible hand," his economic interpretation of eighteenth-century providentialist theodicy, which subsequently hardened into an "oikodicy," an unquestioning belief in the self-regulating beneficence of market forces. Vogl shows that financial theory, assisted by mathematical modeling and digital technology, itself operates as a "hidden hand," pushing economic reality into unknown territory. He challenges economic theorists to move beyond the neoclassical paradigm to discern the true contours of the current epoch of financial convulsions.

Business & Money

Vogl, Joseph

Economics

Stanford University Press

In his brilliant interdisciplinary analysis of the global financial crisis, Joseph Vogl aims to demystify finance capitalism―with its bewildering array of new instruments―by tracing the historical stages through which the financial market achieved its current autonomy. Classical and neoclassical economic theorists have played a decisive role here. Ignoring early warnings about the instability of speculative finance markets, they have persisted in their belief in the inherent equilibrium of the market, describing even major crises as mere aberrations or adjustments and rationalizing dubious financial practices that escalate risk while seeking to manage it. "The market knows best": this is a secular version of Adam Smith's faith in the market's "invisible hand," his economic interpretation of eighteenth-century providentialist theodicy, which subsequently hardened into an "oikodicy," an unquestioning belief in the self-regulating beneficence of market forces. Vogl shows that financial theory, assisted by mathematical modeling and digital technology, itself operates as a "hidden hand," pushing economic reality into unknown territory. He challenges economic theorists to move beyond the neoclassical paradigm to discern the true contours of the current epoch of financial convulsions.

About the Author\nJoseph Vogl is professor of modern German literature, cultural studies, and media at the Humboldt University in Berlin and is currently a visiting professor of German at Princeton University. His books include Place of Violence: Kafka’s Literary Ethics and Law and Judgement: Contributions to a Theory of Politics.\nWestern culture has been marked by deep divisions between action and contemplation, intervention and passivity, and decisiveness and withdrawal. Conceived as radical opposites, these terms structure the history of religion, philosophy, and political theory, and have left their imprint on the most intimate processes of individual decision-making and geo-political strategies. But, in On Tarrying, Joseph Vogl argues for a third way, a mode of thought that doesn’t insist on these divisive either/ors. Neither an active refusal to engage with the world nor a consistent strategy of resistance, tarrying, as defined by Vogl, defers, multiplies, and suspends the strictures of decision-making. 
In his far-ranging reflections Vogl shows that the traditional insistence on the exclusivity of these terms impoverishes and distorts the range of human responses to a world full of possibilities. His readings of texts by Freud, Sophocles, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka provide rich examples of how to resist the binary of activity and passivity through tarrying. This important book offers the first-ever extended analysis of tarrying as a mode of subversion and presents provocative new readings and interpretations of significant works of German literature and thought.

On Tarrying (The German List)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Seagull Books

The Ascendancy of Finance

The global financial crisis of 2008 ushered in a system of informal decision-making in the grey zone between economics and politics. Legitimized by a rhetoric of emergency, ad hoc bodies have usurped democratically elected governments. In line with the neoliberal credo, the recent crisis has been used to realize the politically impossible and to re-align executive power with the interests of the finance industry. In this important book, Joseph Vogl offers a much longer perspective on these developments, showing how the dynamics of modern finance capitalism have always rested on a complex and constantly evolving relationship between private creditors and the state. Combining historical and theoretical analysis, Vogl argues that over the last three centuries, finance has become a "fourth estate," marked by the systematic interconnection of treasury and finance, of political and private economic interests. Against this historical background, Vogl explores the latest phase in the financialization of government, namely the dramatic transfer of power from states to markets in the latter half of the 20th century. From the liberalization of credit and capital markets to the privatization of social security, he shows how policy has actively enabled a restructuring of the economy around the financial sector. Political systems are "imprisoned" by the regime of finance, while the corporate model suffuses society, enclosing populations in the production of financial capital. The Ascendancy of Finance provides valuable and unsettling insight into the genesis of modern power and where it truly resides.

Polity

Capital and Ressentiment: A Short Theory of the Present

The proliferation of social media has provided ideal conditions in which feelings of anger and frustration can be expressed and shared, forming a deep pool of ressentiment that is being drawn upon and exploited by populist and authoritarian leaders. In his new book, Joseph Vogl shows how this dynamic is rooted in the fusing of finance capital and information in a new form of information capitalism that is reshaping the affective economy of our societies.&nbsp; The capital accumulation strategies of powerful new platforms and social media are pushing people into fragmented, opposing, and conflictual communities where ressentiment is nurtured and grows.&nbsp; The feelings of grievance and rejection generated by capitalism are redirected into attacks on migrants, foreigners, and others, thereby deflecting their critical potential, and bolstering the system that is their source. It is the cunning of ressentiment that provides the key to understanding why, despite the profusion of communication in our social media age, global finance and information capital can be neither understood nor attacked as a totalizing power. This brilliant analysis of the ways in which information capitalism is transforming the affective economy of our societies will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the forces that are shaping our societies today.

Western culture has been marked by deep divisions between action and contemplation, intervention and passivity, and decisiveness and withdrawal. Conceived as radical opposites, these terms structure the history of religion, philosophy, and political theory, and have left their imprint on the most intimate processes of individual decision-making and geo-political strategies. But, in On Tarrying, Joseph Vogl argues for a third way, a mode of thought that doesn’t insist on these divisive either/ors. Neither an active refusal to engage with the world nor a consistent strategy of resistance, tarrying, as defined by Vogl, defers, multiplies, and suspends the strictures of decision-making.
In his far-ranging reflections Vogl shows that the traditional insistence on the exclusivity of these terms impoverishes and distorts the range of human responses to a world full of possibilities. His readings of texts by Freud, Sophocles, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka provide rich examples of how to resist the binary of activity and passivity through tarrying. This important book offers the first-ever extended analysis of tarrying as a mode of subversion and presents provocative new readings and interpretations of significant works of German literature and thought.

World Literature

Le spectre du capital (French Edition)

Diaphanes

Das Gespenst des Kapitals

Diaphanes Verlag

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Books by Vogl, Joseph

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vogl, Joseph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Specter of Capital (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Specter of Capital (Cultural Memory in the Present)

On Tarrying (The German List)

The Ascendancy of Finance

The Ascendancy of Finance

Capital and Ressentiment: A Short Theory of the Present

Capital and Ressentiment: A Short Theory of the Present

On Tarrying (The German List)

Le spectre du capital (French Edition)

Das Gespenst des Kapitals