Decadence, Magic Mountain — Obsolescence, Future Shock — Speculation, Cosmopolis

In parallel with Haraway’s pairing of a concept and a film in the original chart, this entry centers on “Speculation, Cosmopolis” to consider epistemologies of the market. The protagonist of Cosmopolis, Eric Packer, personifies the hackneyed conception of how future markets function. Packer’s mathematical-naturalist style is nowhere near how progenitors of neoliberal thought, most notably Friedrich Hayek, perceived the market’s modus operandi to be. For Hayek, no single mind can have access to the sum of economic data in advance. It is through the very machinery of the market, with its ethos of competition and price-setting devices, and with a forward-looking conception of time countered to the system-stasis of neoclassicism, that knowledge is disseminated across individuals. The market is the sole metaphysical information processor that knows more than any individual can or could ever know. But even more, the market is in and of itself a speculative space. But is this the full picture?