The Work of Debt: Ontological Precariousness and the Performance of Subjection

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, few concepts have been as discussed as that of debt. But what is debt, exactly? One of its main characteristics is that, in a very basic sense, debt is not. This is only partly due to, and it has only been accrued by, the abstract nature of finance capitalism. Even when considered in its simplest form, debt certainly was (part of the creditor’s assets) and perhaps it will be (the debtor’s payback). Yet, as long as it remains “debt,” it functions according to a spectral logic that, however, materially affects the lives of the indebted, acting directly on the fabric of social relations. This paper investigates the relation between debt’s ontological precariousness and indebtedness as the key mode of governance of the contemporary state of precarity.
If, as Nietzsche has famously argued in On the Genealogy of Morals, forgetfulness is debt’s sworn enemy, then, in order to be enforced, debt has to be continuously remembered and thus represented (i.e., made present in time). In this sense, debt itself borrows: To take p lace in time, it needs a form, some kind of material (albeit transient) embodiment. And it might be by virtue of its performative character and temporarily borrowed materiality – because in itself it resists objectification – that debt can so efficiently work as a mechanism of subjection, in the production and government of subjected (i.e., indebted and precarious) individual and collective subjectivities.