ABSTRACT

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 return as figures that organize and reflect the experience of life under the sign of finance. In particular, I argue that the reordering of class around the axis of asset ownership has produced two seemingly distinct structures of feeling—one based on the thrill of endless turnover and return on capital, the other on the drudgery of recurring payment schedules and debt rollovers. Though on the surface at odds with each other, both are anchored in a deeper libidinal economy associated with the asset form and ultimately nihilistic in character. The asset economy should therefore be seen as producing a very peculiar form of eternity based on the abolition of time through repetition. I conclude by foregrounding questions of culture and imagination, exploring these in connection with contemporary forms of on-demand television and the possibility of a time beyond the bad eternity of the asset economy.

摘要

关于当代金融社会，永恒回归的理念能告诉我们什么？在这篇文章中，我追随尼采，将其部署为一种存在主义的挑衅，将无限循环的前景与资产经济的日常生活联系起来。这需要摒弃简单的周期性时间概念，通常与政治经济学和经济史研究相关，转而采用更复杂的观点，将重复和回归视为组织和反映金融标志下生活经验的数字. 特别是，我认为围绕资产所有权轴的阶级重新排序产生了两种看似截然不同的感觉结构——一种基于无休止的营业额和资本回报的快感，另一种基于重复付款计划和债务展期的苦差事. 尽管表面上相互矛盾，但两者都锚定在与资产形式相关的更深层次的力比多经济中，最终在性格上是虚无主义的。因此，资产经济应该被视为一种非常特殊的永恒形式，它基于通过重复消除时间。最后，我突出了文化和想象力的问题，探讨了这些与当代形式的点播电视以及超越资产经济糟糕的永恒时代的可能性有关的问题。