In contemporary discourse, the financialization of life is often described through various frameworks that highlight its oppressive nature. These include terms such as crack-up capitalism, organized abandonment, late fascism, disaster nationalism, enshittification, and neoliberalism from below. The complexity of these systems demands a multifaceted approach to understanding not only their theoretical underpinnings but also how they are experienced in daily life. Financialization affects everyone, from bounced checks to untraceable housing management companies replacing public services. Recognizing this, the editors of Finance Aesthetics suggest that scrutinizing global financialization requires perspectives beyond traditional economic analysis.

Marina Vishmidt's work emphasizes the intersection of financialization with creative production, offering new ways to analyze capitalist modes of production. She argues that creativity functions as a form of capitalist populism, aligning workers' and artists' interests with those of capital. This perspective challenges orthodox Marxist views by considering artistic labor as part of capitalist valorization. Furthermore, the book Finance Aesthetics explores concepts through unconventional means, such as poetry and fiction, suggesting that literary and aesthetic tools are essential for comprehending financial capital's fictional qualities. It also examines potential forms of resistance against techno-financialization, advocating for disruptive actions outside traditional production sites.

Understanding Financialization Through Creative Production

Vishmidt's exploration of speculation as a mode of production highlights the interplay between artistic and financial logics. By recognizing the creative dimensions of capitalist valorization, her work offers insights into how financialization transforms both production and perception. This approach reveals how financial instruments themselves serve as representations, necessitating new methods to decode their performative power. Understanding financialization thus involves developing fresh senses to decipher technopower's speech and fostering solidarity.

The concept of financialization extends beyond economic activities, encompassing vast interconnected infrastructures that shape ideology and material reality. Vishmidt's analysis underscores how financialized capital incorporates artistic labor, blurring boundaries between productivity and exploitation. Her argument challenges conventional notions of what constitutes productive labor, proposing that artistic endeavors contribute to capitalist expansion. In Speculation as a Mode of Production, she illustrates how expectations drive financial market decisions, emphasizing their fictional nature. This insight prompts a reevaluation of abstractions within capitalist structures, encouraging recognition of their world-building and -destroying capabilities. By integrating literary and aesthetic tools, Vishmidt provides a framework for understanding financialization's impact on society and culture, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary approaches to address its complexities.

Resisting Techno-Financialization Through Disruptive Actions

Clover and McClanahan's entry on organization advocates for alternative forms of disruption, focusing on confrontations outside traditional production sites. They propose that riots and other forms of circulation struggles can effectively challenge financialization's goals. By rejecting the separation between organization and spontaneity, they highlight movements like the Yellow Vests uprising and actions by coal miners, gig workers, and sex workers during the pandemic. These examples demonstrate how revolutionary movements spread across multiple locations, sharing common ground due to shared conditions. Such disruptions offer opportunities to negate extraction, casualization, absorption, policing, and surveillance processes.

The breadth of entries in Finance Aesthetics illustrates the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches to comprehend contested terrains where financialization exerts its influence. From Musk's transfer of governance technologies to corporate raiders' privatization strategies, the glossary reveals how financialization permeates various sectors, transforming them into vehicles for speculation. Resisting this transformation requires innovative tactics that disrupt expected returns on investment, creating spaces for solidarity and care. Clover and McClanahan's emphasis on mutual aid infrastructures and alliance-building showcases the potential for collective action to counter financialization's oppressive mechanisms. Their work suggests that by embracing spontaneity and organization, movements can effectively challenge the domination of techno-financialization, fostering environments where human needs take precedence over profit motives. This perspective encourages a rethinking of resistance strategies, promoting actions that actively negate financialization's harmful effects while building supportive communities.