Financial Contagion in an Age of COVID-19: On Biological, Human, and Algorithmic Mimesis. Issue 1 (April 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Borch, Christian
• Is Part Of: CounterText. Volume 8:Issue 1(2022:Apr.)
• Page Start: 206
• Page End: 226
• Publication Date: 2022-04
• Subjects: contagion -- COVID-19 -- financial markets -- imitation -- mimesis -- social avalanche; English literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Culture -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.3366/count.2022.0263
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2056-4406

Abstract

Abstract : This article discusses the financial turmoil unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. It argues that the market mayhem in which prices plummeted cannot be fully explained by real-economic factors such as uncertainty about the future global economy. Instead, I suggest analysing the events as a manifestation of financial contagion in which the mimesis of market participants becomes an independent explanatory force. In making this argument, the article returns to late nineteenth-century ideas about mimesis and social contagion as well as discussions about the collective mimesis – constitutive of a mimetic turn – that may result from social avalanches.