Representing Time in Capitalist Realism in Contemporary German and English Literature

Capitalist realism presumes that there is no alternative to the now-permanent neoliberal global order. This project aimed to demonstrate that this thinking not only belongs to a specific ideological formation, but that it also is evinced in works of literary realism. These forms of representation attempt to capture the global impact of a financial system whose performative “language” produces and destroys values using predominantly abstract and ephemeral methods. At the same time, these abstract techniques of financialization frequently bear very concrete results. The methods are often extremely “creative” and “innovative” (two “magic words” of capitalist realism) but still end up creating, for example, a dystopian state in which time always comes at a premium and mass social impoverishment runs rampant.

This project had two objectives. 1) It analyzed the narrative representability of temporal processes that, in their concreteness, appear as either highly abstract or as practically immediate, depending on one’s point of view. Proceeding from these findings, 2) the project questioned if and how contemporary prose is able to conceive of and represent alternatives to the omnipresent reality of the neoliberal way of life.

Fig. above: The UBS trading floor in Stamford, Conn. Credit UBS, via Bloomberg News, Source: The New York Times