Politics
Out of context: Reply #3189
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GC/MG:
But then, how would you define the crash of the stock exchange, over and beyond its surprise element?
PV:
Like with any contemporary event, it is essential to take into account the integration in synchronous time of various issues at the world-level. A synchronisation has taken place of customs, habits, mores, ways to react to things, and also, of emotions. We have left the era of class-based communitarism for that of instant and simultaneous globalisation of affects and fears - but no longer of opinions. It was already the case with the attacks on the World Trade Center and with the Tsunami. The same happens now with the financial crash. After a short 'technical' phase - bank collapses, shares falling - kicks in a phase of 'hysteria-isation' of responses. There is talk of "markets going mad", of "irrational" reactions, you'd almost call it 'end of the world craze'. Terrorists have very well understood this mechanism, and they make use of it.
GC/MG
Do you, like some people do, believe that capitalism is nearing its end?
PV:
I rather believe that the end is nearing capitalism. My field is urban studies. This crisis shows that the Earth is not large enough for progress, for the speed of History (as we have it). Hence repetitive accidents. We were living in the belief that we had both a past and a future. But 'the past does not pass', it has become a monster, so much so that we do not mention it anymore. And as far as the future is concerned, it is severely questionned by the issue of the environment, and the end of natural resources like oil. So the only place left for us to inhabit is the present. But the writer Octavio Paz said it before: "you cannot live in the present moment, just as you cannot live in the future". It is excatly what all of us are now going through, and that includes the bankers.
GC/MG:
But did not the financial world bring about (invent) a virtual world?
PV:
Since speed earns money, the financial sphere has attempted to enforce the value of time above the value of space. But the virtual is also part and parcel of reality. And to be frank with you, this so-called virtual world, in which one can also include tax-heavens, is a form of exoticism which I tend to equate with colonialism. It is the (recurrent) myth of another livable planet.