Resistance (and its Discontents): Finance, Regulation and Cultural Politics

Abstract

It is, of course, tempting here to turn to examples of resistance to finance and financialization. One hopes, nearing the end of a book such as this, to be treated to a dénouement of raucous street demonstrations, courageous political movements and daily acts of refusal and revolt. Certainly, there is no lack of resistance on the global scene, from the Occupy Movement to the Movements of the Squares, which contests the authority of finance and the terrible price it is exacting on whole nations and populations. Yet, as I have argued throughout this book, financialization is not simply some top-down authoritarian imposition orchestrated by elites. As such, “resistance” might not be quite as simple as we conventionally imagine. While I celebrate (and participate in) efforts to protest, decry and refuse what I have elsewhere called “financial totalitarianism” (2013c), I believe that, in order to make “resistance” more effective and politically successful, we need to take a closer look at what it might mean, and how the financial sector, and fictitious capital more broadly, may already integrate certain forms of resistance within its operations. Otherwise, we risk engaging a form of resistance which may succeed only in strengthening or rebalancing the system, rather than overthrowing it, which I believe to be necessary.