Ulysses and the sirens by Draper Herbert James (c.1909).Wikicommons/Bridegman Art Library. Some rights reserved.Ulysses’ encounter with the Sirens speaks of the fatal attraction humanity has towards enticing enchantments. I am going to try and convince you that we too are being seduced towards our own destruction by an enticing yet predatory enchantment. I call this enchantment “financial realism.”
This song, intoning the iron mechanics of global financial reality, now seems hypnotically embedded in the assumptions and practices of high power. High power – global finance, trade and military force – increasingly defines the limits of political deliberation at the level of communities and polities across the world.
The Sirens who sing to high power masquerade as manifestations of naked and necessary truth. High power loves their song, but we also – rowers of the global boat – are being seduced. In fact, the Sirens are not what they seem, they do not proclaim disinterested truth. They are handmaids of a very distinctive conception of amoral and practical knowledge and their song promotes a very particular power agenda which subtly, but most effectively, obfuscates the very logic of democratic politics.
