Let’s Make a Killing – Derivatives in Finance and Warfare

“[I]t is more like a unique event than a contract—something with a stable structure and a juridical status.” So writes Fredric Jameson to describe the nature of the “derivative,” a so-called financial instrument which became notorious after the collapse of the global economy in 2008. Yet, Jameson’s description—along with other characteristics of the derivative and the mode of production for which it stands—also seems an apt description of drone warfare which, since the Obama Administration embraced it in earnest, has transformed parts of the U.S. military into a global assassination squad. Based on the intuition that late modern capital and late modern warfare share what we might call the same “cultural logic,” my presentation will attempt a cross-reading and comparison of the two, focusing specifically on the (im)possibility of subsuming, and thus regulating, such logic under any sort of ethical or juridical framework.