‘Weather is Water with a (Financial) Attitude’: Hito Steyerl and Modes of Incorporation of Value

In The Power at the End of the Economy (Duke University Press, 2015), Brian Massumi suggests that a counter-political force must engage directly with neoliberalism on its very ground, that is on the infra-individual or dividual level where pre-reflexive priming operates. This affective or meteorological politics of the dividual plunges into the derivative intimacy of neoliberal subjectivity in order to discern ways of escaping its over-individualizing grip.

Hito Steyerl’s video work Liquidity Inc. (2014) offers a unique entry point into what a meteorological politics of the dividual could be. The film features a former financial analyst who becomes an ultimate fighter inspired by Bruce Lee’s dictum: “be shapeless, formless, like water”. Bringing together the raw energy of ultimate fighting and a provocative interrogation about the influence of our subjective moods on the macro-economy, Steyerl highlights how the market-making process that underlies the derivative production of liquidity is always also a site of social effervescence. Social effervescence might just as well be another name for liquidity incorporated – this is the hypothesis that I will explore further in this communication.

Erik Bordeleau (NOVA University Lisbon)