The Creative and the Derivative

Abstract

This essay seeks to draw connections between, on the one hand, the financialization of the global economy and everyday life in the post – Bretton Woods era (post-1973) and, on the other, the simultaneous rise to prominence of discourses of creativity in the “new economy.” It argues that the financial sector both orchestrates a fundamentally unequal global division of creative labor and lays claim to an inherent creative power and a duty to unleash “creative destruction” on social and economic life. The essay suggests that the idea of the derivative can help illuminate the wooly rhetoric of “creative capitalism,” “creative cities,” and the “creative economy,” as well as the stark realities of precariousness and self-exploitation that animate labor today. Not only is the derivative the emblematic technology of a financial system based on the quasi-scientific management of risk, it also names creativity's antonym, and the tension between the two allows one to reconceive both the financial system and the idea of creativity itself.

‘Crises of Modernity’ Discourses and the Rise of Financial Technologies in a Contested Mechanized World

“…Contemporary thinkers have noted the loss of legitimacy of the post-Keynesian constellation, which has failed to prevent and solve the many financial crises of the financialized world (Castree 2009). The lack of creativity to imagine and create alternative, legitimate, and democratic arrangements of things has also been noted (Haiven 2014b). The anti-intellectualism that determines the direction of financialization is mainly reinforced by further mechanization that is governed by the financial interests of the ruling political and corporate elites of the financialized world.…”

“…The producers of real wealth (industry, agriculture, and so on) had been superseded by powerful financial operators. Finance, financial technology, speculation, insurance, real estate, branding, consultancy, and ICT and data business were the new engines of wealth creation (Jessop 2010;Christophers 2012;Markantonatou 2013;Walby 2013;Berend 2013: 2;Haiven 2014b;Perrotini 2015;Bertolotti and Magnani 2015). The major profits were now reaped from loanable capital (banking sector, financial markets) and the circulation of capital.…”