How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now

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. How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now provides an indispensable counterpoint to the "economic turn" in the humanities, bringing together leading literary and cultural critics to reconsider the question of abstraction - an issue at the heart of the recent financial crisis, yet seldom addressed directly in the wealth of criticism to which it has given rise. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

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 capital’s 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 Wallace’s 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.