Performing Capital: An Introduction

“Capital” has often been central to the preoccupations and politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—to the preoccupations and urgencies of a diverse web of activists, academics, experts, agitators, reformers, writers, and commentators. Despite this centrality, however, capital remains both a given, and yet also an elusive category in much critical and cultural theory. On the one hand, capital is a seemingly ubiquitous force, capable of determining the contours of economic landscapes. On the other hand, like many of the characters and spaces associated with the economy, capital has evaded the kinds of cultural critique that confront many other categories central to social and political life. In many ways capital remains most commonly understood as a material reality outside of or prior to its representations (Mitchell 1998; 2005, 126–141; de Goede 2006, 1–20; de Goede 2005a).