Amin Samman
Biographic Data
| ID | 104826 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amin Samman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amin |
| FAMILY NAME | Samman |
| SIGNATURE | SAMMAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | City, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4721-4877 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Obscene finance
Political economists continue to imagine the twentieth century in terms of three interlocking transformations: the neoclassical revolution in economics, the political triumph of neoliberalism, and the financialisation of the world economy. In his new book, The Sexual Economy of Capitalism, Noam Yuran tells a completely different story, identifying an obscene financial kernel already present at the dawn of modern capitalism and tracing the effects…
The void in finance
There is no proper place within economic thought for the void. It appears nowhere in the canonical texts of political economy, let alone the discourse of conventional economics. Yet one cannot shake the sense that it is implied in most if not all financial commentary. At the very least, the void exerts a magnetic pull on a range of related terms in the lexicon. Could it be that through these it grounds the financial imagination in fundamental way…
Edges of the financial imagination
Neither external nor internal to finance, the financial imagination marks out a space where the theoretical and practical aspects of finance come together in the inner life of the subject. That means there is something about financial subjectivity that escapes a functional view on the imagination. The purpose of this forum is to probe the contours of the financial imagination in terms of its perimeters and blind spots, its fantasies and delusions
Financial Eschatology and the Libidinal Economy of Leverage
Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial specu…
Systemic Unreason: A Psychic History of States and Corporations
The history of capitalism has long been told as a story of structural laws and behavioural axioms. In this essay, we sketch a general theory of order and change that instead foregrounds the path-shaping power of the fictive and the irrational. Our key claim is that any collective body is underwritten by psychological investment in a foundational delusion and that this cuts two ways. Visions of wholeness and narratives of closure are what bind ind…
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
Eternal return on capital: Nihilistic repetition in the asset economy
What can the idea of eternal return tell us about contemporary financial society? In this essay I follow Nietzsche by deploying it as an existential provocation, linking the prospect of endless recurrence to the daily routines of the asset economy. This entails a departure from simple notions of cyclical time, typically associated with political economy and the study of economic history, in favor of a more complex view that sees recurrence and re…
History in Financial Times
Critical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past co…
Strange loops: Producing history in financial times
In this rejoinder, I discuss three fundamental deadlocks raised by contributors to this forum. These relate to the status of historical discourse, financial market logics, and above all the figure of the 'strange loop', which I put forward as a means of reorienting historical thought. I also offer some preliminary remarks on why History in Financial Times departs from conventional forms of historicism in political economy, as well as a further se…
Conjuring the spirit of multilateralism: Histories of crisis management during the ‘great credit crash’
In recent years, critical scholars have emphasised how the recollection of past events as traumas can both constrain and widen the political possibilities of a present. This article builds on such research by suggesting that the management of contemporary financial crises is reliant on a ritual work of repetition, wherein prior ‘crisis’ episodes are called upon to identify and authorise specific sites and modes of crisis management. In order to d…
The specter of capital
oikodicy') into the practices and technologies of financial markets.1 Polanyi (1947, p. 109) does veer close to Vogl when he observes that 'Science itself is haunted by insanity'.This, however, is not a point he develops at much length
Crisis theory and the historical imagination
This article makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and cultural political economy literatures on crisis. While these new approaches have highlighted the imaginary dimensions of crisis, they have neglected the specifically historical forms of imagination through which events are construed and constructed as crises. In particular, they have yet to adequately theorise how the recollection of prior crises might interact with efforts …
Introduction: Money's other worlds
Since at least the nineteenth century, economists have imagined the market as a profoundly rational way of organizing society. These visions betray a mechanical conception of economy. In many ways the contemporary financial economy does look like a machine. But if global finance is a machine, then there is something irrational, something supernatural - even magical - about the way it operates. It is not just the periodic bouts of mania, panic, an…
For a post-disciplinary study of finance and society
The financial crisis of 2007-8 sparked a variety of responses from elites and popular movements across the world. Its legacy also continues to shape capitalist societies through ongoing processes of regulatory reform, state restructuring, and financial innovation. While these processes are open-ended, they are increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force - academics, politicians, and…
Making Financial History: The Crisis of 2008 and the Return of the Past
The past does not simply provide conditions of possibility for capitalist finance; it also serves as a vital resource for those who might seek to understand or negotiate it in a particular present. However, scholars of finance and crisis have overlooked this point at precisely the same time that they themselves have sought to find clues or lessons in financial history. This article provides a reading of how and why the past has come to acquire su…
The 1930s as Black Mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009
Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ -- a quasi-object within which conjuncture and historical representation interact to produce an image of capitalist history itself. Focusing on the journalistic output of four k…
Crisis theory and the historical imagination
This article makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and cultural political economy literatures on crisis. While these new approaches have highlighted the imaginary dimensions of crisis, they have neglected the specifically historical forms of imagination through which events are construed and constructed as crises. In particular, they have yet to adequately theorise how the recollection of prior crises might interact with efforts …
Financial Eschatology and the Libidinal Economy of Leverage
Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial specu…
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
Eternal return on capital: Nihilistic repetition in the asset economy
What can the idea of eternal return tell us about contemporary financial society? In this essay I follow Nietzsche by deploying it as an existential provocation, linking the prospect of endless recurrence to the daily routines of the asset economy. This entails a departure from simple notions of cyclical time, typically associated with political economy and the study of economic history, in favor of a more complex view that sees recurrence and re…
History in Financial Times
Critical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past co…
Introduction: Money's other worlds
Since at least the nineteenth century, economists have imagined the market as a profoundly rational way of organizing society. These visions betray a mechanical conception of economy. In many ways the contemporary financial economy does look like a machine. But if global finance is a machine, then there is something irrational, something supernatural - even magical - about the way it operates. It is not just the periodic bouts of mania, panic, an…
Making Financial History: The Crisis of 2008 and the Return of the Past
The past does not simply provide conditions of possibility for capitalist finance; it also serves as a vital resource for those who might seek to understand or negotiate it in a particular present. However, scholars of finance and crisis have overlooked this point at precisely the same time that they themselves have sought to find clues or lessons in financial history. This article provides a reading of how and why the past has come to acquire su…
For a post-disciplinary study of finance and society
The financial crisis of 2007-8 sparked a variety of responses from elites and popular movements across the world. Its legacy also continues to shape capitalist societies through ongoing processes of regulatory reform, state restructuring, and financial innovation. While these processes are open-ended, they are increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force - academics, politicians, and…
The 1930s as Black Mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009
Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ -- a quasi-object within which conjuncture and historical representation interact to produce an image of capitalist history itself. Focusing on the journalistic output of four k…
The void in finance
There is no proper place within economic thought for the void. It appears nowhere in the canonical texts of political economy, let alone the discourse of conventional economics. Yet one cannot shake the sense that it is implied in most if not all financial commentary. At the very least, the void exerts a magnetic pull on a range of related terms in the lexicon. Could it be that through these it grounds the financial imagination in fundamental way…
Edges of the financial imagination
Neither external nor internal to finance, the financial imagination marks out a space where the theoretical and practical aspects of finance come together in the inner life of the subject. That means there is something about financial subjectivity that escapes a functional view on the imagination. The purpose of this forum is to probe the contours of the financial imagination in terms of its perimeters and blind spots, its fantasies and delusions
The 1930s as Black Mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009
Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ -- a quasi-object within which conjuncture and historical representation interact to produce an image of capitalist history itself. Focusing on the journalistic output of four k…
Making Financial History: The Crisis of 2008 and the Return of the Past
The past does not simply provide conditions of possibility for capitalist finance; it also serves as a vital resource for those who might seek to understand or negotiate it in a particular present. However, scholars of finance and crisis have overlooked this point at precisely the same time that they themselves have sought to find clues or lessons in financial history. This article provides a reading of how and why the past has come to acquire su…
Crisis theory and the historical imagination
This article makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and cultural political economy literatures on crisis. While these new approaches have highlighted the imaginary dimensions of crisis, they have neglected the specifically historical forms of imagination through which events are construed and constructed as crises. In particular, they have yet to adequately theorise how the recollection of prior crises might interact with efforts …
Introduction: Money's other worlds
Since at least the nineteenth century, economists have imagined the market as a profoundly rational way of organizing society. These visions betray a mechanical conception of economy. In many ways the contemporary financial economy does look like a machine. But if global finance is a machine, then there is something irrational, something supernatural - even magical - about the way it operates. It is not just the periodic bouts of mania, panic, an…
For a post-disciplinary study of finance and society
The financial crisis of 2007-8 sparked a variety of responses from elites and popular movements across the world. Its legacy also continues to shape capitalist societies through ongoing processes of regulatory reform, state restructuring, and financial innovation. While these processes are open-ended, they are increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force - academics, politicians, and…
Conjuring the spirit of multilateralism: Histories of crisis management during the ‘great credit crash’
In recent years, critical scholars have emphasised how the recollection of past events as traumas can both constrain and widen the political possibilities of a present. This article builds on such research by suggesting that the management of contemporary financial crises is reliant on a ritual work of repetition, wherein prior ‘crisis’ episodes are called upon to identify and authorise specific sites and modes of crisis management. In order to d…
The specter of capital
oikodicy') into the practices and technologies of financial markets.1 Polanyi (1947, p. 109) does veer close to Vogl when he observes that 'Science itself is haunted by insanity'.This, however, is not a point he develops at much length
Eternal return on capital: Nihilistic repetition in the asset economy
What can the idea of eternal return tell us about contemporary financial society? In this essay I follow Nietzsche by deploying it as an existential provocation, linking the prospect of endless recurrence to the daily routines of the asset economy. This entails a departure from simple notions of cyclical time, typically associated with political economy and the study of economic history, in favor of a more complex view that sees recurrence and re…
History in Financial Times
Critical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past co…
Strange loops: Producing history in financial times
In this rejoinder, I discuss three fundamental deadlocks raised by contributors to this forum. These relate to the status of historical discourse, financial market logics, and above all the figure of the 'strange loop', which I put forward as a means of reorienting historical thought. I also offer some preliminary remarks on why History in Financial Times departs from conventional forms of historicism in political economy, as well as a further se…
Systemic Unreason: A Psychic History of States and Corporations
The history of capitalism has long been told as a story of structural laws and behavioural axioms. In this essay, we sketch a general theory of order and change that instead foregrounds the path-shaping power of the fictive and the irrational. Our key claim is that any collective body is underwritten by psychological investment in a foundational delusion and that this cuts two ways. Visions of wholeness and narratives of closure are what bind ind…
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
The void in finance
There is no proper place within economic thought for the void. It appears nowhere in the canonical texts of political economy, let alone the discourse of conventional economics. Yet one cannot shake the sense that it is implied in most if not all financial commentary. At the very least, the void exerts a magnetic pull on a range of related terms in the lexicon. Could it be that through these it grounds the financial imagination in fundamental way…
Edges of the financial imagination
Neither external nor internal to finance, the financial imagination marks out a space where the theoretical and practical aspects of finance come together in the inner life of the subject. That means there is something about financial subjectivity that escapes a functional view on the imagination. The purpose of this forum is to probe the contours of the financial imagination in terms of its perimeters and blind spots, its fantasies and delusions
Financial Eschatology and the Libidinal Economy of Leverage
Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial specu…
Obscene finance
Political economists continue to imagine the twentieth century in terms of three interlocking transformations: the neoclassical revolution in economics, the political triumph of neoliberalism, and the financialisation of the world economy. In his new book, The Sexual Economy of Capitalism, Noam Yuran tells a completely different story, identifying an obscene financial kernel already present at the dawn of modern capitalism and tracing the effects…
Economics (12 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Capitalism (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Finance (6 works)