NEW BOOK:
THE BONDS OF DEBT: BONDS AGAINST THE COMMON GOOD
By Richard Dienst
PUBLISHED APRIL 2011
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“Man is born free and is everywhere in debt,” declared the Economist in the summer of 2010, a cheeky admission that indebtedness and liberation are once again on the agenda across the globe. The credit crisis has pushed the whole world so far into the red that the gigantic sums involved defy understanding. On a human level, what does such an enormous degree of debt and insolvency actually mean?
In this timely book, cultural critic Richard Dienst considers the financial crisis, global poverty, the media and radical theory to explore indebtedness as the universal condition of modern life. With humour and verve, Dienst examines a sometimes surprising array of subjects – analysing Obama’s National Security Strategy, the architecture of Prada stores and a fairy tale told by Karl Marx – to capture a modern condition founded on fiscal imprudence.
The Bonds of Debt also includes a substantive takedown of Bono’s“anti-poverty” campaigning. Dienst exposes the hollowness of campaigns like the ‘Product RED’ branding exercise and shows how Bono’s style of celebrity activism does more to maintain systems of global poverty than to challenge them. He also unpicks the construction of the grandiose and ubiquitous image of “Bono” as the public face of global poverty. Ultimately, Dienst argues, this style of celebrity campaigning leads to a well-behaved activism which is little more than “the pop-cultural expression of official policy”.
Moving beyond the dominant pieties and widespread anxieties surrounding the topic, Dienst reconceives the world’s massive financial obligations as a social, economic and political bond, where the crushing weight of objectified wealth comes face to face with new demands for equality and solidarity. As the “EU debt crisis” builds, with one European country after another falling victim to the all-powerful credit agencies, Dienst’s incisive analysis is both timely and necessary.
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PRAISE FOR THE BONDS OF DEBT: BONDS AGAINST THE COMMON GOOD
“Dienst throws new light on what it means for humanity to be tied up in the golden skeins of debt: we’re only now realizing what a huge change to human life, psychology and the fabric of everyday experience is involved in the creation of a financialized economy.”– Paul Mason, NEWSNIGHT ECONOMICS EDITOR and author of MELTDOWN
“[An] astute portrait of the recession ... on one rich canvas.” THE NATIONAL
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/the-bonds-of-debt-by-richard-dienst
“[A] smart and easily understood book ... Dienst has a new and thrilling idea ... debt is exactly what bonds us and makes our kind of sociality possible.” Charles Mudede, STRANGER http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/debt-is-good/Content?oid=7769218
“The most original thing about Dienst's reading of debt, a reading that is very close to the truth, is that it locates it at the very center of human sociality.” SLOG
“Richard Dienst’s most radical proposition in this wonderfully clear and provocative little book is that we are burdened not by too much debt but by too little. Yes, we must discover ways to refuse and escape the regime of debt to the figures of power and institutions that rule over us, but we must also, and perhaps more importantly, recognize indebtedness as a basic human condition and create social ties that at once bind us to each other and free us. The combination of these two tasks is an exciting, even revolutionary, project. ” Michael Hardt, co-author of EMPIRE, MULTITUDE, AND COMMONWEALTH
“I spend my life studying the financial markets and I often wonder what it all ‘means.’ Dienst takes up that question in a thoroughly admirable way in this book. And as a bonus, it also includes a wonderful takedown of the odious Bono.” Doug Henwood, LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER
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RICHARD DIENST is the author of STILL LIFE IN REAL TIME: THEORY AFTER TELEVISION and THE BONDS OF DEBT, and a co-editor of READING THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD. He teaches in the Department of English at Rutgers University.
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 691 0 / $24.95 / £12.99 / $31.00CAN/ Hardcover / 200 pages
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For more information or to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/959-the-bonds-of-debt
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