How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now [Paperback]

Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the notion that capitalism has become too abstract for all but the most rarefied specialists to understand has been widely presupposed. Yet even in academic circles, the question of abstraction itself  of what exactly abstraction is, and does, under financialisation  seems to have gone largely unexplored  or has it? By putting the question of abstraction centre stage, How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now offers an indispensable counterpoint to the economic turn in the humanities, bringing together leading literary and cultural critics in order to propose that we may know far more about capitals myriad abstractions than we typically think we do. Through in-depth engagement with classic and cutting-edge theorists, agile analyses of recent Hollywood films, groundbreaking readings of David Foster Wallaces sprawling, unfinished novel, The Pale King, and even original poems, the contributors here suggest that the machinations and costs of finance  as well as alternatives to it  may already be hiding in plain sight. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

Introduction: Capitals abstractions  1. Paradise falls: a land lost in time: representing credit, debt and work after the crisis  2. To think without abstraction: on the problem of standpoint in cultural criticism  3. Materialism without matter: abstraction, absence and social form  4a. An exchange with Susan Stewart  4b. Abstraction set  5. From capitalist to communist abstraction: The Pale Kings cultural fix  6. The bodies in the bubble: David Foster Wallaces The Pale King  7. SlÃ"