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Specters of Finance and the Black Box City

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Narrating the Global Financial Crisis

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society ((PSGCS))

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Abstract

This chapter draws on recent elaborations of the “spectral metaphor” in cultural theory in order to explore imaginaries of urban spectrality in Global Financial Crisis (GFC) narratives. Comparing “black box scenarios” in Marije Meerman’s finance documentaries: Money and Speed: Inside the Blackbox and The Wall Street Code with motifs of urban haunting in journalistic crisis photographs; the novels: Sunset Park (Paul Auster, 2010); The Big Short (Michael Lewis, 2010); This Bleeding City (Alex Preston, 2010); Capital (John Lancaster, 2010) and Get Me Out of Here (Henry Sutton, 2010); and the film Margin Call (J.C. Chandor 2011), the chapter develops a more general theory on the politics of myth.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1845923,00.html.

  2. 2.

    Unfortunately, the image cannot be displayed here, but it can be accessed on http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/pictures/sculpture-of-a-sinking-yacht-sits-under-the-sky-scrapers-of-news-photo-83061673.

  3. 3.

    Unfortunately, the image cannot be displayed here, but it can be accessed on: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/73744.html.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Miriam Meissner

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Meissner, M. (2017). Specters of Finance and the Black Box City. In: Narrating the Global Financial Crisis. Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45411-5_6

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