s imon s chleusener Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism In his book The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, Colin Crouch argues that neoliberal capitalism has by no means collapsed as a result of the global financial crisis of 2008, but, paradoxically, returned from it even more powerful than it was before. “Whereas the financial crisis concerned banks and their behaviour,” writes Crouch, “resolution of the crisis has been redefined in many countries as a need to cut back, once and for all, the welfare state and public spending” (Crouch 2011, viii) 1 � If this assessment is fairly correct - and one of the motivations of this essay is the understanding that, in fact, it is - the question of why neoliberalism has so far succeeded in persisting is in need of an intelligent explanation� To be sure, there have been critical voices and protests in the aftermath of the crisis, most notably in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement� But if it is nevertheless true that, all things considered, neoliberalism has hardly been harmed by the crisis, its persistence can indeed be rendered a “strange” phenomenon� A key question by which this essay has been inspired is therefore: How can one make sense of this “strange Non-Death of neoliberalism�” 2 One way of explaining this curious persistence would be to take a look at what could be called the cultural and affective backbone of neoliberalism� Although this aspect certainly cannot explain the ongoing dominance of neoliberal capitalism as a whole, this essay seeks to show that it is indeed an important factor. Of course, especially with regard to the United States, reflecting about the cultural dimension of capitalism has a long tradition� Max Weber, for instance, explained the functioning of American capitalism by highlighting the role of the protestant work ethic in the cultural make-up of American society (cf� Weber 2001)� This essay, however, will follow a different path� For while the value of Weber’s analysis is surely debatable concerning the link between Calvinism and capitalism in 18th and 19th century America, it is obvious that an investigation of protestant morality will hardly shed light on the culture of capitalism in the age of globalization and neoliberalism� Instead, 1 On the history and consequences of this “politics of austerity,” see Blyth 2013� 2 The title of Crouch’s book alludes to George Dangerfield’s publication The Strange Death of Liberal England (originally published in 1936) in which the author attempts to explain why liberal political ideas, having dominated England’s politics in the late 19th century, experienced such a sudden decline at the beginning of the 20th century� With regard to the neoliberalism of the 21st century, Crouch writes accordingly: “The equivalent task today is, however, not to explain why neoliberalism will die following its crisis, but the very opposite: how it comes about that neoliberalism is emerging from the financial collapse more politically powerful than ever” (Crouch 2011, viii). 308 s imon s chleusener in order to understand the culture of the “new capitalism” (cf� Sennett 2006), it is worthwhile to investigate what Jim McGuigan - following authors such as Thomas Frank (cf� Frank 1998) as well as Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello (cf� Boltanski/ Chiapello 2007) - has termed “cool capitalism,” meaning “the incorporation, and thereby neutralization of cultural criticism and anti-capitalism into the theory and practice of capitalism itself” (McGuigan 2009, 38)� Among other aspects, a critical analysis of cool capitalism hence needs to consider neoliberalism’s “affective” capacities, thereby following up on Fredric Jameson’s astonishment about how “the dreariness of business and private property […] should in our time have proved to be so sexy” (Jameson 1992, 274)� 3 Different from Jameson, however, who famously diagnosed a “waning of affect” in the postmodern age of late capitalism, this essay will argue that the mobilization of affects is a crucial component not only regarding the link between capitalism and culture, but also of the very functioning of neoliberal capitalism itself� 4 To put it simply, one might say that the legitimation of capitalism in the context of cool capitalism tends to switch from the field of “ideology” and “ethics” (that is, the central aspect in Weber’s analysis) to the realm of “affect” and “aesthetics�” In the course of this essay, I will try to explain this development by examining a number of Hollywood films, most importantly Wall Street (1987) by Oliver Stone, The Social Network (2010) by David Fincher, and Jobs (2013) by Joshua Michael Stern� Among other things, my analysis will reveal that since the crisis of 2008 the alleged “sexiness” of contemporary capitalism seems to decline with respect to Wall Street and the financial sector, while it continues to figure prominently in the cultural depiction of high-tech business and the internet industry� Before focusing on film, though, I will first turn to the work of Ayn Rand and her two most famous novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957)� I will do so because Rand’s work can be understood as an early example of a tendency which I will also concentrate on in my analysis of the selected films, namely the tendency to transform the capitalist entrepreneur 3 To be sure, one could sense a certain contradiction here because “coolness” and “affectivity” are typically set in opposition to each other, with coolness signifying affect control rather than affectivity proper� In contrast to such a categorization, however, I tend to see coolness as an affective force in its own right, signaling a particular emotional stance (see also Stearns 1994 and Fellner et al� [eds�] 2014)� 4 Although Jameson diagnoses “the waning of affect in postmodern culture” (Jameson 1992, 10) primarily with regard to art and aesthetics, his analysis seems to imply that he conceives of the phenomenon as a general tendency rather than simply an art phenomenon� It is striking, in this respect, that Jameson, despite his awareness of the postmodern propensity to render capitalism “so sexy,” is rather disinterested in examining the link between affect politics and the hegemony of late (or neoliberal) capitalism, favoring instead a more traditional conception of ideology critique� For an interesting discussion of Jameson’s position from the perspective of recent affect theory, see Shaviro 2010 (4-6)� More generally on the relationship between affects and capitalism - a relationship which involves the mobilization of a wide array of affective responses, ranging from fear and insecurity to confidence, optimism, and hope - see, for instance, Massumi (Ed�) 1993 and Massumi 2002, Hardt/ Negri 2001 (289-294), Illouz 2007, Berlant 2011, and Lordon 2014� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 309 into a figure representing not only freedom - which is still a fairly traditional strategy - but also resistance, opposition, and dissent� While Rand’s work thus embodies some of cool capitalism’s most characteristic features, it would nonetheless be misleading to see her as a proponent of cool capitalism tout court� For as will become clear in the following section as well, the type of laissez-faire capitalism Rand advocates still retains some version of an “ethical” basis (or at least pretends that it has one)� Ayn Rand: Capitalist Morality and the Spirit of Dissent A condensed definition of the type of capitalism Rand advocates can be found in the first chapter of her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) - a book title which already makes perfectly clear that the question of ethics plays an important role in Rand’s work indeed� Here, in a chapter with the telling title “The Objectivist Ethics,” Rand writes: When I say ‘capitalism,’ I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissezfaire capitalism - with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church� A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start� Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future - if mankind is to have a future (Rand 1964, 37)� Now, besides its prophetic rhetoric and uncompromising conviction, what is interesting about this quote is the curiously utopian dimension of Rand’s definition - an outwardly “exotic” particularity which, nonetheless, represents a necessary feature of the neoliberal and libertarian legitimation of laissez-faire capitalism� More precisely, when claiming that a “pure system of capitalism has never yet existed,” it becomes possible to then blame any kind of capitalist crisis (that is, for instance: massive unemployment, poverty and substantial inequality, inflation, economic depression or recession, but also market concentration and the formation of monopolies) not on capitalism itself, but on supposedly external factors such as “government control�” Thus, according to this kind of belief system, a crisis of capitalism, by definition, does not exist� Instead, any actual crisis is attributed to be the product of government action, never of “pure capitalism” or the market itself� 5 Of course, such a view is not only held by Rand and the followers of her objectivist 5 As an example of an approach which completely reverses this model, see, for instance, the concept of political economy developed by the French regulation school� As Michel Aglietta writes, the regulation approach rejects the idea of “a pure economy in a natural state of equilibrium,” seeing capitalist development instead as inherently asymmetric, unequal, and prone to crisis� Thus, in order “to ensure that the distortions created by the accumulation of capital are kept within limits which are compatible with social cohesion,” capitalism can only exist on the basis of a particular “mode of regulation�” Government control, then, is not seen here as something external to capitalism (as is the case in Rand’s conception), but, on the contrary, as the very condition of its possibility (see Aglietta 2000, 389-391)� 310 s imon s chleusener philosophy, but in a similar manner by many proponents of laissez-faire capitalism, including neoliberals like Milton Friedman (cf� Friedman 1962) or the adherents of the so-called Austrian School of Economics� It is therefore interesting to take into account how Rand - who saw herself not as an economic theorist, but as a philosopher as well as a novelist 6 - responded to such theories� When once asked about the Austrian School of Economics, for instance, she claimed that “they are a school that has a great deal of truth and proper arguments to offer about capitalism - especially von Mises - but I certainly don’t agree with them in every detail, and particularly not in their alleged philosophical premises� They don’t have any, actually� They attempt […] to substitute economics for philosophy� That cannot be done” (Rand 2005, 43)� Consequently, Rand’s own specific contribution to the theory and practice of laissez-faire capitalism can be seen as supplying it with two things: A) a proper philosophy (including, most prominently, an “ethics”); and B) a model of aesthetics� In a way, both - philosophy and aesthetics - are already present in her novels� 7 But after finishing Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Rand abruptly ended her career as a novelist for good and concentrated strictly on further developing her philosophy of objectivism which she then propagated in a number of non-fiction books and through her periodical The Objectivist Newsletter (later called The Objectivist)� Today, it is above all think tanks like the Ayn Rand Institute or the Atlas Society which have taken up the task of promoting objectivism and Rand’s neoliberal ideology� But what, exactly, is the place of “ethics” in Rand’s framework? As is clear from the start, what she considers to be ethical about capitalism has hardly anything to do with Weber’s “protestant work ethics” anymore� Since religion plays no part at all in Rand’s system, she claims instead that the first ethical imperative is “the pursuit of one’s rational self-interest�” And she continues: “[T]he central purpose of one’s life is to achieve one’s own happiness, not to sacrifice oneself to others or others to oneself. ‘Selfishness’ means to live by the judgment of one’s own mind and to live by one’s own productive effort, without forcing anything on others” (Rand 2005, 109)� Hence, the pursuit of one’s own profit motive - one’s “selfishness” - is understood here as a kind of moral imperative, implying both a subjective and an objective dimension� On the subjective level, “to live by the judgment of one’s own mind” and “one’s own productive effort” is better for the individual because it strengthens her self-esteem and enlarges her happiness� But, on the objective level, to live by this axiom is hypothetically better for society as well, for if every member 6 See Rand 1963, vii: “I am often asked whether I am primarily a novelist or a philosopher� The answer is: both�” 7 “In a certain sense, every novelist is a philosopher, because one cannot present a picture of human existence without a philosophical framework; the novelist’s only choice is whether that framework is present in his story explicitly or implicitly […]� This involves another choice: whether his work is his individual projection of existing philosophical ideas or whether he originates a philosophical framework of his own� I did the second. That is not the specific task of a novelist; I had to do it, because my basic view of man and of existence was in conflict with most of the existing philosophical theories” (Rand 1963, vii-viii)� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 311 of society simply follows his or her own selfishness, society at large would profit by becoming more productive and competitive. 8 This idea is of course not new, dating back at least to Adam Smith’s conception of the “invisible hand” of the market� As Smith writes in his seminal Wealth of Nations: [I]t is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry […]� As every individual […] endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can� He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it� By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention (Smith 2008, 291-292)� This assumption that the individual’s pursuit of his or her own profit motive is not just something that shall be tolerated and accepted but which entails an ethical value, for, in the end, everybody will profit from it, is certainly one of the core features of the capitalist imaginary - and as such, it also lies at the heart of Rand’s objectivist philosophy� 9 While, in itself, Rand’s conception of a capitalist ethics is therefore not particularly new, her uncompromising willingness to transform terms like “selfishness” into something positive (cf. Burns 2009, 42) renders her thinking much more radical and provocative as that of the average apologist of capitalism at the time� In a sense, then, the rigorous aestheticization of capitalist competition that finds expression in stylized phrases such as “the virtue of selfishness” seems like a foreshadowing of Gordon Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech in Wall Street, about which I will say more later in this essay� Before that, however, I will first take a brief look at The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, seeking to point out more specifically how Rand’s capitalist ethics is presented aesthetically� In doing so, I will focus on those of Rand’s characters who embody “the pursuit of their rational self-interest” in the most uncompromising (and thus most perfect) manner� In The Fountainhead, this character type is, above all, embodied by the architect Howard Roark, who “breaks with tradition, recognizes no authority but his own independent judgment, struggles for the integrity of his own creative work against every form of social opposition - and wins” (Rand 1963, 73)� In the course of the book, Roark designs a government housing project for another architect 8 This type of reasoning is already expressed in Rand’s as yet unpublished “Individualist Manifesto” from 1941 in which she holds that “one of the greatest achievements of the Capitalist system is the manner in which a man’s natural, healthy egoism is made to profit both him and society” (qtd. in Britting 2005, 74). 9 This does not mean, however, that Rand’s neoliberalism is simply a continuation of classical liberalism in the tradition of Adam Smith� For one of the best accounts of the differences between liberalism proper and neoliberalism (with regard to the relationship between market and state), see Foucault’s lectures on the topic in The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault 2008)� 312 s imon s chleusener - the “second-hander” Peter Keating - “on the agreement that it would be built exactly as he designed it” (83). When the building is finally constructed, Roark discovers that the agreement has been broken by the government, thus deciding to blow up the building with dynamite� In his testimony before court, Roark defends his action with a drawn-out speech in which he celebrates the value of selfish individualism, succeeding in affecting the jury in such a way that, eventually, he is found not guilty� Not surprisingly, Roark’s speech can be best understood as an articulation of the key elements of Rand’s own philosophy at the time� 10 The testimony’s dramatic leitmotif - colorfully illustrated by a wide array of examples - is the pseudo-Nietzschean distinction between “independent creators” on the one hand, and “parasites” or “second-handers” on the other: 11 “The creator originates� The parasite borrows� […] The creator lives for his work� He needs no other men� […] The parasite lives second-hand� He needs others” (Rand 1952, 679)� Placing himself in the long tradition of “great creators” who “stood alone against the men of their time” (678), Roark justifies his dynamiting of the housing project by claiming to protect the integrity of his work - even if his destruction of the building caused harm to the underprivileged future lodgers desperately in need of affordable housing: “It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work� That their need constituted a claim on my life�” But “the integrity of a man’s creative work,” Roark concludes, “is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor” (684)� Thus taking a stand against the morality of self-sacrifice, Roark’s testimony is in fact a statement promoting the virtue of selfishness. 12 In other words, the ideas Roark draws on in order to justify the destruction of the building are essentially the same ones that inform Rand’s writings on capitalism� The Fountainhead, however, is not primarily a book about capitalism; it is a book, rather, about an architect who struggles against social conformity and the forces eager to restrict his creative impulse, artistic freedom, and personal independence. The same arguments with which Rand justifies capitalism are therefore used in The Fountainhead to dramatize the struggle between creative integrity and social conformity, individual freedom and collective 10 King Vidor’s film version of the book from 1949 (starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roark) contains a condensed version of the speech� Although the movie initially received rather negative reviews from critics, it helped popularize Rand’s ideas, leading, among other things, to a significant increase in the sales of the novel. 11 As is well-known, Rand’s early work is to a large extent influenced by her reading of Nietzsche� In fact, Rand originally set out to begin each section of The Fountainhead with an aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil but ultimately decided to eliminate all direct references to Nietzsche from the text (cf� Burns 2009, 87), perhaps realizing that, after all, their philosophies have hardly anything in common� Nietzsche, of course, was not in the least an “objectivist” believing in “the primacy of reason and the existence of a knowable, objective reality” (5)� Nor, for that matter, did he endorse the type of self-contained individualism advocated by Rand (see, for example, Deleuze 1983)� 12 In one of the last sentences of his testimony, Roark dramatically states: “The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing” (see Rand 1952, 684). Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 313 oppression� Roark, then, is a typical “Randian hero” embodying the spirit of capitalism, without, however, being a capitalist� While not a capitalist in the technical (economic) sense, he nonetheless possesses all the qualities and features characteristic of Rand’s heroic entrepreneurs, most classically depicted in Atlas Shrugged� Consequently, The Fountainhead can be said to aestheticize capitalism by presenting the fundamentals of Rand’s capitalist ethics in a predominantly “artistic” context, seemingly devoid of what Jameson describes as “the dreariness of business and private property, the dustiness of entrepreneurship” (Jameson 1992, 274)� Yet in Atlas Shrugged, Rand’s last and most influential novel from 1957, capitalism is celebrated in an even more obvious and blatant manner� Different from The Fountainhead and its comparatively realist setting, Atlas Shrugged is not set in the historic present but in an unspecified dystopian time in which the United States has become increasingly socialist� In opposition to skyrocketing taxes and ever-new types of regulation imposed by the government, more and more of the nation’s most industrious and wealthiest people “go on strike,” thereby significantly harming the economy. It is now the mysterious character John Galt who takes on the role of Roark in The Fountainhead and best embodies Rand’s objectivist ethics� 13 Galt is the organizer of the strike, representing the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race� Well, their turn has come� Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function� This is the strike of the men of the mind” (Rand 1996, 677)� Somewhat paradoxically, the “strike of the men of the mind” is in fact the strike of the capitalists who, in Atlas Shrugged, are transformed into resistance fighters against the tyrannical power of the state - a move which surely corresponds with Rand’s political staging of laissez-faire capitalism as an alternative counter project to the American establishment of the 1950s and 60s� In The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, then, the capitalist hero is identified with “dynamite” on the one hand, and a “strike” on the other, both of which are symbols and methods of political action usually identified not, to be sure, with the capitalists but, rather, with proletarian resistance� Hence, what Rand accomplishes in her novels is a complete role change, an aesthetic transformation of the capitalist subject into a figure of rebellion, resistance, opposition, and dissent� Therefore, although the context of her version of laissez-faire capitalism is not yet that of cool capitalism (as it pretends, at least, to be based 13 Interestingly, Rand’s fictional character John Galt has recently become a popular reference of contemporary politics, when Tea Party activists protested against the bailout policies of the Obama administration with slogans like “Who is John Galt? ” (the constantly recurring opening sentence of Atlas Shrugged) or “I am John Galt�” What this attests to is Rand’s continuous status as an icon of the American right� On this point, see, for instance, Burns 2009, 4: “Atlas Shrugged is still devoured by eager young conservatives, cited by political candidates, and promoted by corporate tycoons […]� For over half a century Rand has been the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right�” 314 s imon s chleusener on an ethics), her works nonetheless attempt to achieve what Jim McGuigan sees as one of cool capitalism’s most distinctive aspects: “the incorporation, and thereby neutralization of cultural criticism and anti-capitalism into the theory and practice of capitalism itself” (McGuigan 2009, 38)� Cool Capitalism and Affect Politics: Wall Street (1987) Now turning to the medium of film (and the historical period of cool capitalism proper 14 ), I aim to illustrate how the operation I have thus far described by reference to the work of Ayn Rand is carried out in a number of Hollywood films, within a context, however, in which ethical and ideological questions are more and more replaced by questions of aesthetics and the affects� A case in point in this regard is Oliver Stone’s Wall Street from 1987, a classic cinematographic depiction of the rise of cool capitalism in the 1980s� Yet, despite being steeped in the aestheticized coolness of postmodern finance and entrepreneurship, the film’s main antagonist, the Wall Street broker Gordon Gekko, exhibits features that closely resemble the virtues of selfishness already embodied by the heroic protagonists of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged� To refer only to the most obvious example: Gekko’s famous “greed-is-good” speech, for instance, seems to have come right out of Rand’s literature� In that particular scene of the movie, Gekko is addressing the stockholders of Teldar Paper (a company he intends to take over), attacking the management’s “bureaucrats with their steak lunches, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes.” In doing so, Gekko presents himself as a defiant man of action fighting against the power and privileges of an incompetent bureaucratic elite� And he continues: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good� Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit� Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind� And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U�S�A� By thus stating that greed is not only good for the greedy, but for the well-being of the nation at large, Gekko articulates precisely the same ideology which also informs Rand’s conception of a virtue of selfishness, dating all the way back to Smith’s notion of the invisible hand of the market. Later in the film, however, the viewer finds out that Gekko uses the ethical context of his argument merely as a pretext, being completely aware of the utter senselessness 14 In terms of periodization, McGuigan generally follows Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool, identifying “the marriage of counter-culture and corporate business” in the 1960s as the starting point of cool capitalism’s advancement� Both McGuigan and Frank, however, see the actual breakthrough of cool capitalism in the 1990s, when “business became ‘funky’, having shed its reputation for bureaucratic conformity” (McGuigan 2009, 7). While the 1990s are of course highly significant in this respect, I will argue - using the example of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street - that coolness had already become a major ingredient of capitalist culture and aesthetics in the course of the 1980s� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 315 of his own profession which, as he coldly admits, contributes nothing to society� “What I do,” Gekko explains, “stock real estate speculation, it’s bullshit […]� I create nothing - I own�” What becomes rather obvious in lines like these is that Oliver Stone originally intended Wall Street to be a critique of the “greed is good” mentality and the excesses of finance capitalism. Interestingly, however, despite being exposed as a dishonest opportunist and crook who acquired his wealth by making use of illegal insider trading, Gekko has oftentimes been received by the audience in a manner that seems to entirely contradict the film’s message. Along these lines, the co-writer of Wall Street, Stanley Weiser, remarked in 2008 that he finds it “strange and oddly disturbing […] that Gordon Gekko has been mythologized and elevated from the role of villain to that of hero,” adding that numerous people have told him: “The movie changed my life� Once I saw it I knew that I wanted to get into such and such business� I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko�” Weiser thus concludes: “You have succeeded with this movie, but you’ve also failed� You gave these people hope to become greater asses than they may already be” (Weiser 2008)� It is crucial to point out, though, that the seemingly confusing reception of Wall Street is not simply due to a misunderstanding� In fact, the kinds of viewers who adore and identify with Gekko are typically well aware of the film’s intended message. Jeffrey Tucker, for instance, in a blog article on the website of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute, argues that the “film ends with a paean to labor unions and governments that save companies from rapacious capitalists, but it seems artificial, like a Victorian novel that had to have a happy ending lest the readers revolt�” Similarly, a commentator on the same website holds that “Gekko is still inspiring despite the way he’s demonised and the unions are glorified. I wonder what Michael Douglas actually thought of that character and that way of looking at life - he’s extremely convincing” (Tucker 2009)� It can therefore be argued that what leads at least some viewers to identify with Gekko - although his character clearly contradicts the film’s ideological message - is the affective appeal that Stone’s cinematography attaches to his persona: his stylized coolness and looks (most notably the suspenders and his slicked-back hair, both of which have become iconic trademarks of the glossy Wall Street style in the 1980s and 90s), but also the heroic determination with which he engages in the battle of the stock market against all opposition, including government authority� As the libertarian Tucker remarks, it is above all “the larger-than-life quality of its main character - the rich, savvy, and unstoppable Gordon Gekko” who turns Wall Street into “a legendary story that remains strangely inspiring in ways that its maker, Oliver Stone, surely did not entirely intend” (Tucker 2009)� Wall Street, then, is not only a critical portrait of the culture and mentality of cool capitalism, but, analogous to McGuigan’s take on Jeremy Rifkin’s book The Age of Access (Rifkin 2000), can also be understood as a “profound statement of cool capitalism insofar as it 316 s imon s chleusener simultaneously both incorporates and quite possibly neutralises critique�” 15 In Wall Street’s case, however, this “certain schizophrenia” (McGuigan 2009, 44) seems to be less due to mere ideological ambiguity than to the fact that the film, at one and the same time, aesthetically celebrates what it criticizes in terms of ideology� Thus, when seeking to effectively analyze the political consequences of a movie like Wall Street, it is not enough to engage in a mere critique of the film’s ideology, without, simultaneously, considering the affective side of its politics - its “affect politics” - as well� 16 With this in mind, Wall Street can indeed be considered as both a portrait and a statement of neoliberal capitalism: while (moderately) criticizing the excesses of finance capital, the film has likewise become a major reference for those who refuse to conceive of Gordon Gekko as the personification of the market economy’s nasty downside but, instead, see him as an affective source of encouragement and inspiration� From Wall Street to Silicon Valley: The Social Network (2010) and Jobs (2013) More than twenty years after the initial release of Wall Street, Oliver Stone directed a sequel to the movie (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, 2010), starring, once again, Michael Douglas in the role of Gordon Gekko� In the beginning of the film, Gekko is released from prison after having served eight years due to insider trading and investment fraud. Although most of the film’s plot takes place during the financial crisis of 2008, it treats the subject rather superficially, focusing instead on Gekko’s conflicting desires regarding his still existing financial ambitions and the wish to reconcile with his daughter, who is deeply critical of her father’s activities� Thus, by turning the choice 15 For McGuigan’s discussion of Rifkin’s cultural-capitalism thesis, see McGuigan 2009, 37-44� Among other things, what McGuigan rightly criticizes is Rifkin’s “claim that physical production is no longer very important in the world economy […]� It looks like that only from the vantage point of an American business school where future cadres of high-tech capitalism are being trained” (38)� 16 That is to say that the political dimension of Wall Street’s affective logic cannot simply be qualified as an extension of the film’s ideological positioning. Indeed, such a conception would be problematically reductive, downplaying the fact that what one believes must not necessarily correspond to what one desires� Hence, in due consideration of the Spinozist insight that affects and desires do not merely concern an individual’s “interiority” but are intrinsically bound up with the action-oriented question of “what the body can do” (Spinoza 1996, 71), it would be a mistake to preclude the question of affects from political analysis. More specifically, if affects and desires do not simply follow from (ideological) beliefs, it is necessary to analyze political formations with regard to both, forms of ideological persuasion and forms of affect modulation� Along these lines, Brian Massumi has made the useful distinction between, on the one hand, a typically belief-centered politics that addresses “subjects from the positional angle of their ideations,” and, on the other, an affective politics which addresses “bodies from the dispositional angle of their affectivity” (Massumi 2005, 34)� On the question of affect politics (and the relationship between “affects” and “desire” in this regard), see also Schleusener 2011� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 317 between money and a happy family life into the film’s leitmotif (with Gekko dramatizing the conflict between “affective” family investment and “economic” financial investment), Stone’s critique of the excesses of capitalism seems even more conventional in the sequel than it had been in the original� 17 As it presents an aged and slightly reformed Gekko, who has, nevertheless, retained parts of his former egotism and edginess, the film seeks, on the one hand, to cash in on its antagonist’s cool-capitalist image, while, on the other hand, avoiding the more extreme depiction of the earlier Wall Street� Hence, while the film’s subject is surely contemporary - given the fact that it was released within two years after the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression reached its climax - the final result turns out to be rather trivial. In comparison with the relatively uninspired Money Never Sleeps, Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) in a sense appears to be the more adequate follow-up of Stone’s classic from 1987� Indeed, while continuing Wall Street’s tradition of cinematographically depicting a stockbroker’s uncompromised lust for money and wealth, The Wolf of Wall Street is also much more expressive of the changed cultural attitudes toward the financial sector and investment banking since the crisis of 2008. Although the film is based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort - a former Wall Street broker who went to prison for stock market manipulation and now, ironically enough, makes a fortune as a motivational speaker - the parallels to Wall Street are fairly obvious� To be sure, the escapades depicted in Scorsese’s film are typically of a more extreme sort than anything shown in Wall Street, with Belfort (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio) functioning as a somewhat comical and over-the-top version of Gekko� But with its accentuation of Belfort’s uncompromised greed, his excessive desire for money, drugs, sex, and a luxurious lifestyle, his hedonistic disregard for conventional morality, and his resistance to law enforcement and the government, the film clearly picks up on the cool-capitalist image of the broker as a transgressor and non-conformist of sorts� Something, however, has changed: Although Christina McDowell, the daughter of one of Belfort’s former business associates, has openly criticized Scorsese and DiCaprio for “glorifying” the lifestyle of relentless crooks like her corrupt father (cf� McDowell 2013), there is in fact nothing glamorous about the film’s depiction of Wall Street greed� While Stone’s classic managed to inspire business students across the world to become stockbrokers, this seems rather unlikely in the case of Scorsese’s film, which ultimately renders banal and trivializes 17 In both Wall Street movies, Stone tends to “oedipalize” (Deleuze/ Guattari 2007, 91) desire, politics, and social relations, highlighting the protagonist’s search for a father figure. In the original Wall Street, it is the young and ambitious broker Bud Fox who is torn between the two father figures in the movie, his real father, the union leader Carl, and Gekko, whom he admires and who, for most of the film, functions as a symbolic father and role model. In the film’s sequel, it is now the equally young prop trader Jacob Moore, whose role seems like an almost exact copy of Bud Fox� While Stone’s familialism in the second movie is more oriented towards the relationship between father and daughter, the constellation nevertheless resembles the original in that Moore also switches between two different father figures (his mentor Louis Zabel and, once again, Gordon Gekko)� 318 s imon s chleusener the very lifestyle Wall Street so efficaciously aestheticized. This is to say that Gekko, for all the visible surface appeal his character is equipped with, also entails something invisible, an aura of mystery and inexplicability, which is totally absent from Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street� Here, everything is so vulgarly visible, exposed, and explicit that even the markers of the most highclass and luxurious way of life tend to lose their affective appeal, becoming what they are in the first place, namely trivial commodities. 18 Thus, while Belfort’s quirkiness, determination, and consistently outrageous behavior may surely fascinate parts of the audience, it is questionable whether the average viewer is able to see in him the kind of capitalist coolness (formerly embodied by Gekko) as to actually identify with him� This is certainly not to say that The Wolf of Wall Street is an “anti-capitalist” movie, nor, for that matter, that Scorsese is an “anti-capitalist” director 19 � It can be argued, however, that the different aesthetic models of Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street signal a certain change in the cultural attitudes toward stockbrokers and investment banking since the 2008 financial crisis. Yet, these changed attitudes have certainly not led to any decline of the cultural logics of cool capitalism as a whole (nor, to be sure, to a real transformation of the capitalist economy)� Instead, one can observe that cool capitalism still figures prominently in other areas, most importantly the realm of high-tech business and the internet industry� Accordingly, Kevin Roose notes in his book Young Money: 18 In a recent article, Florian Sedlmeier examines “the cultural production of a consumer cool” which “mystifies the thing and obscures the economic and social effects of the production processes�” Against this backdrop, he discusses items like the Apple iPad, arguing that in the context of consumer capitalism and libertarian economics, “objects” are typically represented as “things” (Sedlmeier 2014, 273)� With respect to The Wolf of Wall Street, though, one could indeed claim the opposite, namely that the film tends to present “things” as “objects,” occasionally demystifying the cool status usually assigned to consumer commodities. To be sure, the film mostly accomplishes such “demystification” in a rather blunt and superficial manner, as, for instance, when Belfort fails to bribe two FBI officers on his yacht, furiously throwing bank notes and lobsters at them for their “subway ride home�” Nevertheless, somewhat comparable to Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers (2012), the effect of Scorsese’s undermining the “dynamic of detachment and proximity” (Sedlmeier 2014, 273) specific to the neoliberal representation of cool commodities is that the items of consumer capitalism now tend to lose any kind of “distance” necessary for them to obtain their special “aura” (cf� Benjamin 2007, 222)� Consequently, Belfort’s lifestyle in The Wolf of Wall Street, although based on the same level of luxurious abundance, appears to offer much less to be desired than does Gekko’s in Wall Street� 19 The latter point can easily be substantiated with reference to Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004) - a movie based on the career of filmmaker and industrialist Howard Hughes, which perfectly lends itself to an analysis of the logic of cool capitalism� Hughes, though being one of the richest Americans of his time, is portrayed here as a troubled but visionary “underdog” (Cantor 2009, 165) who, with his airline company TWA, challenges the alliance of government authority and big business as represented by the monopoly position of Pan Am� Not surprisingly, libertarian critic Paul Cantor thus praises the film as “one of the great American motion pictures because it celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great” (185)� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 319 In late 2011, the technology sector was the hottest thing going� Facebook was preparing to go public the following year, at a valuation that many people expected could reach $100 billion� Apple had become the biggest consumer-facing company in the world, and venture capitalists were throwing money wantonly at brand-new tech start-ups, in a manner reminiscent of the dot-com boom of 1999 and 2000� The tech industry was also riding a wave of popular interest that had climaxed the year before with the release of The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkinwritten film about the creation of Facebook. […] Meanwhile, Wall Street banks were the opposite of sexy� They were laying off thousands of people, cutting back on salaries and bonuses, and nixing recruiting events for college students� And they were still unpopular as a result of the crisis� A 2011 survey conducted by the consulting firm Universum ranked Google, Apple, and Facebook as the most coveted workplaces in America among young professionals; JPMorgan Chase, the highest-ranking Wall Street bank on the survey, was forty-first. Given the choice between crunching Excel spreadsheets at a bank in a shrinking and reviled industry and working at a beloved tech company where they could wear jeans to work, get perks like free catered lunch and massages at work, and live on a much less demanding schedule while still making lucrative wages, many bank analysts were finding the balance tipping in Silicon Valley’s favor. […] Tech companies appeared democratic, nonhierarchical, and unconcerned with appearances […]� They were places where a talented twenty-three-year-old could make a real impact, rather than just doing rote repetition of the same ten financial exercises (Roose 2014, 178-179)� This trend - that is, “the balance tipping in Silicon Valley’s favor” - can be observed in Hollywood’s post-crisis treatment of entrepreneurship as well, with Wall Street generally being portrayed less positive than the technology sector� While The Wolf of Wall Street, for example, can easily be interpreted as a critical engagement with Wall Street greed and, simultaneously, an attempt to somewhat “demystify” the logic of cool capitalism, a movie like the above mentioned The Social Network (directed by David Fincher) is, on the contrary, completely steeped in that logic� Along these lines, Roose cites an NYU computer science professor, stating: “I’ve heard people say The Social Network is the Wall Street of this generation” (178)� Similar to Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, the protagonist of Fincher’s film, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, is not portrayed as a particularly likeable character. In the beginning of the film, he is quite appropriately called an “asshole,” something which he proves to be true on many occasions, as, for instance, when he creates a campus website called “Facemash” (which enables the users to rate the attractiveness of female Harvard students) or when, later in the film, he dilutes the Facebook shares of his former best friend, Eduardo Saverin� But although Zuckerberg is presented as being recklessly arrogant, frequently making use of unfair practices in the course of his social and financial advancement, the general viewer is nevertheless made to sympathize with him and his project� That this is the case can be referred to the film’s depiction of its protagonist as an outsider, competing not only with the establishment of Harvard University, but also with the elitist Winklevoss twins, who personify the aristocratic values and habits of high society� Consequently, similar to Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko or the Randian heroes 320 s imon s chleusener Howard Roark and John Galt, Mark Zuckerberg is distinctly portrayed as a rebel and a non-conformist, thus embodying characteristic features of cool capitalism� Zuckerberg’s coolness, however, is of a totally different sort than Gekko’s� By frequently presenting him wearing sports sandals and a hoodie, being selfimmersed and inattentive when being in conversations with others, Fincher withdraws Zuckerberg from the typical image of a successful businessman and renders him an almost autistic nerd, who, to be sure, lives “by the guidance of his own mind” (Rand 1967, 9), but clearly lacks the larger-than-life heroism of Gordon Gekko, Howard Roark, or John Galt� Nonetheless, what is celebrated in The Social Network is precisely this post-heroic nerdiness, an attitude through which Zuckerberg appears not as a figure representing authority, but, rather, as someone who subverts authority, embodying the supposedly “post-hierarchical” coolness of the internet age� In this, The Social Network strongly resembles Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs, a 2013 film based on the life of the eponymous co-founder and longtime CEO of Apple Inc�, perhaps the cool-capitalist company par excellence� 20 Unambiguously celebrating “[t]he ’cool’ mystique of Apple” (McGuigan 2009, 125), which, ironically enough, is deployed against the backdrop of IBM’s image as a company representing “big business,” the film seems to assemble basically all the ingredients of what Jim McGuigan has termed cool capitalism� Along these lines, the viewer is able to witness how the charismatic Steve Jobs (portrayed by Ashton Kutcher) advances from an idealistic hippie and college drop-out to the head of the by now most valuable company on the planet, without, however, losing his former nonconformism and visionary outlook on life� Hence, as the viewer is repeatedly informed, Jobs’ role models are not dull managers in suits and ties, but artists like Bob Dylan and Pablo Picasso� 21 This symbolic fusion of capitalism and anti-capitalism is perhaps most strikingly expressed in a scene in which Jobs looks for personnel to join his “Macintosh team,” recruiting a talented engineer whose desk is located, surely not by accident, in front of a political poster calling for “A Socialist Workers Party.” The film ends with Jobs recording the text of 20 On Apple’s strategy of presenting itself as a decidedly “cool” company, see, for instance, Sedlmeier 2014. The focus of this article is specifically on the marketing of the Apple iPad, the representation of which is analyzed in conjunction with libertarian economist Leonard Read’s depiction of the capitalist commodity in his 1958 text “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E� Read�” 21 In this regard, it can be argued that Apple has been particularly successful in neutralizing what Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello have termed the “artistic critique” of capitalism� All the more, however, the company certainly lends itself to the other type of critique the authors have conceptualized, namely “social critique” (Boltanski/ Chiapello 2007, 38)� Indeed, while the former has been largely absorbed by what McGuigan refers to as the “front region” of capitalism - that is, its seductive coolness and “cultural appeal” - the latter, in order to be effective, would have to succeed in drawing attention to capitalism’s “much less appealing back region, manifestations of which are perpetual sources of disaffection” (McGuigan 2009, 1)� Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 321 Apple’s famous “think different” campaign from 1997 - a statement which, in the most obvious fashion possible, embodies the cool-capitalist strategy of simultaneously incorporating and neutralizing critique� The text reads: Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes� The ones who see things differently� They’re not fond of rules� And they have no respect for the status quo� You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them� But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them� Because they change things� They push the human race forward� And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius� Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do� Capitalism, Affects, and the 2008 Financial Crisis In their “Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate,” sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant demonstrate how the advocates of neoliberalism have succeeded in propagating a novel kind of “Newspeak,” influencing discourse in such a way that critique of capitalism is to a large extent either silenced or neutralized (Bourdieu/ Wacquant 2001)� As I have tried to show in this essay, this matter is further complicated by a neoliberal aesthetics which captures and incorporates features that are better known from the context of anticapitalism or the counterculture� Analyzing the cultural backbone of neoliberal capitalism, then, is not only a matter of semiotics or discourse analysis, but it is also a matter of investigating the affects that are being channeled and mobilized (through various aesthetic practices) in the context of today’s mediascape� Hence, the “neoliberal affects” I have highlighted in this essay are not simply reflections of a capitalist culture, but can also be understood as contributing to the very functioning of capitalism as a political-economic entity� Cool capitalism, in other words, is not just the “superstructure” masking an economic “base,” but is directly involved in the capitalist process as a whole� All that being said, though, one should not overlook that American capitalism is, in fact, facing some difficult challenges - including the problem of legitimation - since the crisis of 2008� Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement and, more recently, the fairly astonishing reception of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty 2014) are signs of a new sense of insecurity about deeply mythologized ingredients of American culture, such as the still very powerful notion of the “American Dream�” Up to now, however, this tendency has not led to any substantial changes in terms of actual policies and, at least in the mainstream discourse, is typically conceptualized as an outrage against individual “greed” rather than a call for abolishing its structural and political conditions� In other words, while the image of stockbrokers, in particular, has surely suffered in the last few years (as movies like The Wolf of Wall Street seem to confirm), more general and systemic questions regarding the relationship between society and the market have thus 322 s imon s chleusener far been discussed, if at all, rather superficially. 22 Hence, despite the recent signs of uncertainty and disaffection, one of the reasons for the continuity of the “Non-Death of Neoliberalism” (Crouch 2011) seems to be that the capitalist mentality is still so deeply ingrained in American culture as to prevent any substantial change from happening� Using an example from the terrain of current American political debate, I would like to end this essay by emphasizing, yet again, the role of affects in this context� A case in point in this regard is Jim DeMint’s recent book Falling in Love with America Again (DeMint 2014), a text that is particularly useful in illustrating the strategies American conservatives and libertarians tend to utilize in response to the current crisis� 23 Having been a Republican Senator from 2005 to 2013, being aligned with the Tea Party movement, and now serving as CEO of the influential Heritage Foundation, DeMint is, without doubt, a leading figure of American conservatism. Although his book is far from being an analysis of the financial collapse of 2008, it is nevertheless steeped in a sense of “crisis,” relating, among other things, to “[e]conomic weakness and cultural decay,” the threat to the “American dream,” the forces which have “divided America,” and, most prominently, the failure of “big government” (2-4). At first sight, DeMint’s solution to these problems seems rather trivial� As he explains over and over again, the “one way to start to change America’s course” is this: “We must fall in love with America - again” (3)� Despite its simplicity, however, the wording of this phrase is interesting in a number of ways� First of all, by inviting his readers to “fall in love with America again,” DeMint acknowledges that their initial “romance with America” (Fluck 2009) has recently been challenged, that, in fact, they must have fallen out of love with America� Secondly, then, the crisis DeMint has in mind not only harms the economy, job opportunities, and a balanced budget, but is, above all, a threat to what he defines (with reference to Edmund Burke) as “public affections�” Such public affections, DeMint explains, mean “love of country, love of community, and love of our fellow man� It involves pride in our country and gratitude for our way of life� It is the source of patriotism and the fuel of responsible citizenship” (DeMint 2014, 5)� Now, what is interesting about remarks like these - and, eventually, about the language and style of the book as a whole - is their thoroughly affective tone� In other words, if we understand the book’s central message to be 22 See Shaviro 2010, 189: “[T]he neoliberal credo […] inverts the relationship of part and whole: instead of the market being understood as a part of society, all social processes are now exclusively understood in terms of the market […]� The economic crisis that started in 2008 has, alas, not led to any rethinking of this fundamental assumption�” 23 Although the book does not participate in the logic of coolness, it is nevertheless relevant for the topic of this essay in that it exemplifies the role of affects in political discourse� In particular, it illustrates how affects can be used to “overcode” one’s ideological message in case the mobilization of emotions seems strategically more promising than the attempt to persuade with ideas� (Strictly speaking, though, the matter is somewhat more complicated� For since any idea has an affective dimension, these strategies - while allowing for a conceptual distinction - frequently intersect when being carried out in actual situations�) Neoliberal Affects: The Cultural Logic of Cool Capitalism 323 the appeal to “fall in love with America again,” then DeMint’s solution to America’s crisis is an entirely affective one� This is not to say, of course, that there are no other, more properly “political” messages to be found in the book� These, however, are the kind of propositions conservatives and libertarians are likely to make in any case, regardless of the particular context� DeMint, for instance, calls for restricting the power of the “federal government,” “moving dollars and authority from Washington to the states,” creating “a simple, progrowth tax-code,” reforming “welfare programs to rescue Americans from dependency,” and reducing “federal taxes” (268-269) 24 � Paradoxically, then, DeMint’s neoliberal response to the crisis relies on precisely those measures that have caused it in the first place, namely a trickle-down politics of tax cuts and “deregulation” which has not only been responsible for the recent collapse of Wall Street, but also for the “explosion” of inequality since the implementation of Reaganomics in the 1980s (Piketty 2014, 294-298)� Yet, by transforming the crisis of capitalism into a crisis of “big government,” DeMint renders it possible to confidently articulate the one and only demand any staunch neoliberal is always ready to subscribe to: more capitalism! The fact, however, that DeMint overcodes his political message of orthodox neoliberalism with the overly affective rhetoric of “love,” “attachment,” “little platoons” (instead of “big federal agencies”), and “public affections” (DeMint 2014, 8-9) might be a sign that he has second thoughts about his program’s ideological persuasiveness in the current political context� Consequently, he ends his book, once more, on an affective note, passionately stating: “And so, my friends and fellow Americans, let’s fall in love with each other and this exceptional nation, with this land of the free and home of the brave� Let’s fall in love with America, again and again and again” (275; emphasis added)� Assuming that “America,” translated into post-exceptionalist terms, is simply another word for “capitalism” here, it seems that even a firm neoliberal like DeMint is convinced that the onset of the next crisis is only a matter of time� Amidst the language of affect, then, the threefold repetition of “again” simultaneously articulates the anticipation of all the future crises of capitalism, and the anticipation of their respective solution: a politics, that is, not of seeking to abolish the conditions that facilitate such crises, but of an everlasting affective attachment, a continuous romance with capitalism, regardless of both its vulnerability to crisis, and the “grim realities” (Harvey 2009, 119) belonging to its standard way of functioning� With that said, I would like to point out, in conclusion, that although I have consistently stressed the significance of studying affects and “affect politics” in this essay, this was not meant to neglect that politics are typically based 24 Besides such neoliberal measures directed against the carefully constructed bogeyman of “big government,” DeMint also favors “secure borders” and “a strong and technologically advanced defense” (DeMint 2014, 269-270)� Thus, not surprising for a conservative, his attack on big government characteristically stops short of criticizing military spending and the national security state� Curiously, however, although his agenda seems like the quintessential embodiment of the American right-wing mentality, DeMint maintains that his propositions “should unite rather than divide” (268)� 324 s imon s chleusener on ideas, concepts, ideologies, and belief systems� Nonetheless, the point of emphasizing the role of affects in this regard is that the analysis of pure ideas will most likely not suffice if the task is to identify the actual dynamics taking place in the messy terrain of concrete political actions� By looking at the various ways in which ideas are charged with affect and transmitted in affective contexts, and by pointing out the possible dissonance between the affective and ideological dimensions of a particular politics, the study of affect politics, at least in my understanding, ultimately aims at a non-idealist, strictly immanent concept of the political� This, I believe, is a task that should resonate with the demands of a post-exceptionalist American Studies� Works Cited Aglietta, Michel (2000)� A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience� London and New York: Verso� Benjamin, Walter (2007)� Illuminations� New York: Schocken Books� Berlant, Lauren (2011)� Cruel Optimism. 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