Amin Samman – författare

Critical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past continually circulates through and shapes the present, such that historical change emerges through a shifting panorama of historical associations, names, and dates. The result is a strange feedback loop between now and then, real and imaginary. Demonstrating how this idea can give us a better purchase on financial capitalism in the post-crisis era, History in Financial Times traces the diverse modes of history production at work in the spheres of financial journalism, policymaking, and popular culture. Paying particular attention to narrative and to notions of crisis, recurrence, and revelation, Amin Samman gives us a novel take on the relation between historical thinking and critique.

Critical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past continually circulates through and shapes the present, such that historical change emerges through a shifting panorama of historical associations, names, and dates. The result is a strange feedback loop between now and then, real and imaginary. Demonstrating how this idea can give us a better purchase on financial capitalism in the post-crisis era, History in Financial Times traces the diverse modes of history production at work in the spheres of financial journalism, policymaking, and popular culture. Paying particular attention to narrative and to notions of crisis, recurrence, and revelation, Amin Samman gives us a novel take on the relation between historical thinking and critique.

What happens to economic life when meaning and value come apart? Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche, E.M. Cioran, and Jean Baudrillard, this book shows how the latest trends in digital finance restage the dilemmas of nihilism in new ways. From cryptocurrencies and meme stocks to Silicon Valley venture capital and the global boom in artificial intelligence, economic life today thrives on the ambiguous allure of nothingness, annihilation, and disappearance.Samman brings the financial status of contemporary nihilism into focus, connecting its signal moods and sentiments to the system-logics of world finance. All the historical moods of nihilism now circulate through the financial system, he argues, and each further wave of technological advance provides yet more means of speculating on these moods. The result is a lucrative new culture of financial nihilism with no end in sight. For readers interested in philosophy and the history of capitalism, Currency of Nihilism offers an unsettling perspective on the nihilistic structures of feeling that underwrite the contemporary financial system.

What happens to economic life when meaning and value come apart? Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche, E.M. Cioran, and Jean Baudrillard, this book shows how the latest trends in digital finance restage the dilemmas of nihilism in new ways. From cryptocurrencies and meme stocks to Silicon Valley venture capital and the global boom in artificial intelligence, economic life today thrives on the ambiguous allure of nothingness, annihilation, and disappearance.Samman brings the financial status of contemporary nihilism into focus, connecting its signal moods and sentiments to the system-logics of world finance. All the historical moods of nihilism now circulate through the financial system, he argues, and each further wave of technological advance provides yet more means of speculating on these moods. The result is a lucrative new culture of financial nihilism with no end in sight. For readers interested in philosophy and the history of capitalism, Currency of Nihilism offers an unsettling perspective on the nihilistic structures of feeling that underwrite the contemporary financial system.

The notion of ‘clickbait’ speaks to the intersection of money, technology, and desire, suggesting a cunning ruse to profit from unsavoury inclinations of one kind or another. Clickbait capitalism pursues the idea that the entire contemporary economy is just such a ruse; an elaborate exercise in psychological capture and release.Pushing beyond rationalist accounts of economic life, this volume puts psychoanalysis and political economy into conversation with the cutting edges of capitalist development. Perennial questions of death, sex, aggression, enjoyment, despair, hope, and revenge are followed onto the terrain of the contemporary, with chapters devoted to social media, online dating apps, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and meme stocks. The result is a unique and compelling portrait of the latest institutions to stage, channel, or reconfigure the psychic energies of political and economic life.