The Financial Imaginary

The Financial Imaginary
Author: Alison Shonkwiler
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1452953937

As the world has been reshaped since the 1970s by neoliberalism and globalization, increasing financial abstraction has presented a new political urgency for contemporary writers. Globalized finance, the return to Gilded Age levels of inequality, and the emergence of new technologies pose a similar challenge to the one faced by American social realists a century ago: making the virtualization of capitalism legible within the conventions of the realist novel. In The Financial Imaginary, Alison Shonkwiler reads texts by Richard Powers, Don DeLillo, Jane Smiley, Teddy Wayne, and Mohsin Hamid to examine how fiction confronts the formal and representational mystifications of the economic. As Shonkwiler shows, these contemporary writers navigate the social, moral, and class preoccupations of American “economic fiction” (as shaped by such writers as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser), even as they probe the novel’s inadequacies to tell the story of an increasingly abstract world system. Drawing a connection from historical and theoretical accounts of financialization to the formal contours of contemporary fiction, The Financial Imaginary examines the persistent yet vexed relationship between financial representation and the demands of literary realism. It argues that the novel is essential to understanding our relation to the mystifications of abstraction past and present.

Imaginary Friend

Imaginary Friend
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 768
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1538731347

From a New York Times bestselling author, a young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this "epic horror" novel, perfect for fans of Stephen King (Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will). Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her seven year-old son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night. At first, the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. Days later, he emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on. One of The Year's Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more)

Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books

Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books
Author: Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2019-11-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004413650

For this bilingual (English-French) anthology of early modern fictitious catalogues, selections were made from a multitude of texts, from the genre’s beginnings (Rabelais’s satirical catalogue of the Library of St.-Victor (1532)) to its French and Dutch specimens from around 1700. In thirteen chapters, written by specialists in the field, diverse texts containing fictitious booklists are presented and contextualized. Several of these texts are well known (by authors such as Fischart, Doni, and Le Noble), others – undeservedly – are less known, or even unrecorded. The anthology is preceded by a literary historical and theoretical introduction addressing the parodic and satirical aspects of the genre, and its relationship to other genres: theatre, novel, and pamphlet. Contributors: Helwi Blom, Tobias Bulang, Raphaël Cappellen, Ronnie Ferguson, Dirk Geirnaert, Jelle Koopmans, Marijke Meijer Drees, Claudine Nédelec, Patrizia Pellizzari, Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, Paul J. Smith, and Dirk Werle.

The Imaginary App

The Imaginary App
Author: Paul D. Miller
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262027488

The mobile app as technique and imaginary tool, offering a shortcut to instantaneous connection and entertainment. Mobile apps promise to deliver (h)appiness to our devices at the touch of a finger or two. Apps offer gratifyingly immediate access to connection and entertainment. The array of apps downloadable from the app store may come from the cloud, but they attach themselves firmly to our individual movement from location to location on earth. In The Imaginary App, writers, theorists, and artists—including Stephen Wolfram (in conversation with Paul Miller) and Lev Manovich—explore the cultural and technological shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the mobile app. These contributors and interviewees see apps variously as “a machine of transcendence,” “a hulking wound in our nervous system,” or “a promise of new possibilities.” They ask whether the app is an object or a relation, and if it could be a “metamedium” that supersedes all other artistic media. They consider the control and power exercised by software architecture; the app's prosthetic ability to enhance certain human capacities, in reality or in imagination; the app economy, and the divergent possibilities it offers of making a living or making a fortune; and the app as medium and remediator of reality. Also included (and documented in color) are selected projects by artists asked to design truly imaginary apps, “icons of the impossible.” These include a female sexual arousal graph using Doppler images; “The Ultimate App,” which accepts a payment and then closes, without providing information or functionality; and “iLuck,” which uses GPS technology and four-leaf-clover icons to mark places where luck might be found. Contributors Christian Ulrik Andersen, Thierry Bardini, Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Benjamin H. Bratton, Drew S. Burk, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Robbie Cormier, Dock Currie, Dal Yong Jin, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Ryan and Hays Holladay, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen, Eric Kluitenberg, Lev Manovich, Vincent Manzerolle, Svitlana Matviyenko, Dan Mellamphy, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Steven Millward, Anna Munster, Søren Bro Pold, Chris Richards, Scott Snibbe, Nick Srnicek, Stephen Wolfram

The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction

The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction
Author: Paul Crosthwaite
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108499562

Contemporary British and American fiction is defined by financial markets' power over the global publishing industry and the global economy.

Cultures of Financialization

Cultures of Financialization
Author: M. Haiven
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137355972

Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Cultures of Financialization argues that, in our age of crisis, the global economy is more invested than ever in culture and the imagination. We must take the idea of 'fictitious capital' seriously as a way to understand the power of finance, and what might be done to stop it.

The Imaginary

The Imaginary
Author: A.F. Harrold
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1408850176

Rudger is Amanda's best friend. He doesn't exist, but nobody's perfect. Only Amanda can see her imaginary friend – until the sinister Mr Bunting arrives at Amanda's door. Mr Bunting hunts imaginaries. Rumour says that he eats them. And he's sniffed out Rudger. Soon Rudger is alone, and running for his imaginary life. But can a boy who isn't there survive without a friend to dream him up? A brilliantly funny, scary and moving read from the unique imagination of A.F. Harrold, this beautiful book is astoundingly illustrated with integrated art and colour spreads by the award-winning Emily Gravett.

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
Author: Rebecca Henderson
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-04-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1541730135

A renowned Harvard professor debunks prevailing orthodoxy with a new intellectual foundation and a practical pathway forward for a system that has lost its moral and ethical foundation. Free market capitalism is one of humanity's greatest inventions and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But this success has been costly. Capitalism is on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilizing society as wealth rushes to the top. The time for action is running short. Rebecca Henderson's rigorous research in economics, psychology, and organizational behavior, as well as her many years of work with companies around the world, give us a path forward. She debunks the worldview that the only purpose of business is to make money and maximize shareholder value. She shows that we have failed to reimagine capitalism so that it is not only an engine of prosperity but also a system that is in harmony with environmental realities, the striving for social justice, and the demands of truly democratic institutions. Henderson's deep understanding of how change takes place, combined with fascinating in-depth stories of companies that have made the first steps towards reimagining capitalism, provide inspiring insight into what capitalism can be. Together with rich discussions of important role of government and how the worlds of finance, governance, and leadership must also evolve, Henderson provides the pragmatic foundation for navigating a world faced with unprecedented challenge, but also with extraordinary opportunity for those who can get it right.

Money

Money
Author: Jacob Goldstein
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0316417181

The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs. Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century. At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin. One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad. Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today.

Imaginary Penalities

Imaginary Penalities
Author: Pat Carlen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1134016034

This book is concerned to explore the idea of imaginary penalities and to understand why the management of criminal justice and criminal justice systems has so often reached crisis point. It will be essential reading for anybody seeking to understand some of the root causes of increasing prison populations, social harms such as recidivism and domestic violence and the increasingly important role of criminal justice within systems of governance.