At least a couple of Net-timers heard me give a talk in Rio de Janeiro last April elaborating on the argument that many of the developments causing the global financial crisis result from the development of financial instruments that are hyperreal in nature, lacking the types of referentiality that make it possible to make grounded judgments of any kind at all about the relative level of risk of any given investment. That argument is included in a chapter currently in press as "The Representational Economy and the Global Information Policy Regime" in the volume edited by Sarita Albagli and Luca Maciel, //Information, Power and Politics: New Institutional and Technological Mediations" (Lexingtoon Books/UNESCO).
The trick is being clear about causality. The wandering away from referentiality in the arts and social theory did not cause the financial crisis. The wandering away from referentiality is a characteristic of the current era that has myriad manifestations, that include but also go far beyond these domains. In other work, I examine the way in which the law has also turned away from facticity. The law, not just legal theory. The most recent study of this type is also currently in press, "Anti-Terrorism and the Harmonization of Media and Communication Policy," in the volume edited by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy, //Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy// (Blackwell). Sandra Braman Patrice Riemens wrote: > A funny pass in Edward Chancellor's review of John Lanchester's "Whoops! > on the financial crisis and its causes. The art-cult-net (in)crowd will > probably appreciate... ;-) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
