Finance wields power by forcing agency to express itself as debt

Evidence

Drawing on Foucault’s notion of the biopolitics of neoliberalism, Maurizzio Lazzarato (2012, 89–114) has sought to define finance less as a breed of economic action and more as a weapon of power which, through the production of debt, exhorts economic actors (both individuals and whole nation-states) into a form of subjectivation aimed at market integration, towards what Foucault dubbed an entrepreneurialism of the self (2008, 226). From this perspective, the biopolitics of financialization is not merely repressive and oppressive; it creates a situation in which all forms of agency are encouraged to articulate themselves in financialized form, and where financial “freedom” and power are held to be the fullest expression of liberty and acumen (see also Mitropoulos 2012). Indeed, for Lazzarato, debt and finance are two sides of the same coin, one whose inscription might read “securitize or else”: embrace your inner financier, distil the ethereal future into a saleable present-day commodity, or suffer the consequences. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 264

Categorization

• XREF: Lazzarato’s ‘securitize or else’ imperative is the coercive flip of the reader’s deWaard cultural frame — finance demanding self-fashioning as entrepreneur. — connects to: Finance operates as a disciplinary mechanism that mobilizes debt to exploit labor. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 58; Debt and finance work biopolitically to produce compliant self-financing subjectivities — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 90; Financial sector wealth derives from debts that discipline debtors into compliance — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 90 (+2 more)
• SEED: The debt-as-subjectivation thesis could seed an essay on how student or consumer debt re-engineers personal identity toward market integration.