DESIRE AND DISEASE IN THE SPECULATIVE ECONOMY

Nicky Marsh

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2011, vol. 4, issue 3, 301-314

Abstract: This paper contrasts two kinds of representations of this relationship between crisis and risk, specifically focusing on their metaphorical displacement onto a sexualised and/or bodily discourse. In the first instance the author examines the ways in which the exuberant organic language of finance radically shifted following the financial crisis at the end of 2008, paying particular attention to how the discourses of financial regulation attempted to retrospectively distance themselves from their previous permissive attitudes. Secondly, the author examines how these ironies and inconsistencies were pre-figured and critiqued in fiction published in the years leading up to the crisis. It examines two novels, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Lawrence Chua's Gold by the Inch, which both use metaphors of illness to explore the contradictions of contemporary finance. Both novels – in very different ways – use this metaphorical slippage in order to critique its implications, pointing to the very limiting meanings of risk in contemporary finance culture.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2011.586851 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jculte:v:4:y:2011:i:3:p:301-314

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJCE20

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2011.586851

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Cultural Economy is currently edited by Michael Pryke, Joe Deville, Tony Bennett, Liz McFall and Melinda Cooper

More articles in Journal of Cultural Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().