Quinn Slobodian
WE NEED METAPHORS to make sense of reality. But we are often unaware of how those metaphors can then dictate our reality. By defining our problems and challenges, the metaphors we choose to use inadvertently imply solutions. Three recent books, for example, paint a disturbing and dark vision of our present. By their telling, the worlds of data, finance, and law are like aquifers beneath our feet, an alternative geography of accumulation and extraction to which we are each bound by catheter-like lines. Handheld devices transmit our every experience for purposes of revenue creation while the rise and fall of pension funds and asset prices map our futures and those of our children and grandchildren.
If it gives you chills, it is supposed to. All three books are written as conscious interventions into what they see as an unacceptable state of affairs. We need to think carefully about the tales these books tell, but even more carefully about the remedies their metaphors propose.