Book Launch: Currency of Nihilism

From cryptocurrencies and meme stocks to Silicon Valley venture capital and the global boom in artificial intelligence, economic life today thrives on the ambiguous allure of nothingness, annihilation, and disappearance. All the historical moods of nihilism now circulate through the financial system, Samman argues, and each further wave of technological advance provides yet more means of speculating on these moods. The result is a lucrative new culture of financial nihilism with no end in sight.

Join CITYPERC to discuss the existential stakes of contemporary finance. Amin Samman will introduce his book and Giulia Dal Maso will provide commentary. The event is organised in association with the Finance and Society Network.

Speakers

Amin Samman is Reader in International Political Economy at City St George’s, University of London. His research explores the temporal, historical, and existential dimensions of contemporary finance. He is founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Finance and Society, author of History in Financial Times (Stanford University Press, 2019), and editor of Clickbait Capitalism (Manchester University Press, 2023). His latest book, Currency of Nihilism, was published earlier this year by Stanford University Press.

Giulia Dal Maso is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge. Her work has appeared in journals such as Finance and Society, South Atlantic Quarterly, Historical Materialism, Journal of Cultural Economy, and Antipode. She is the author of Risky Expertise in Chinese Financialisation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and is currently writing Longevity Capitalism, under contract with Verso.