Table Of ContentDEBT AND GUILT
BLOOMSBURY POLITICAL THEOLOGIES
Edited by Ward Blanton (University of Kent), Arthur Bradley
(Lancaster University), Michael Dillon (Lancaster University), and
Yvonne Sherwood (University of Kent)
This series explores the past, present, and future of political theology.
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Derrida, Agamben, Badiou, and Žižek, it seeks to provide a forum for
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privileging creative, interdisciplinary and experimental work that resists
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International Advisory Board
Agata Bielik-Robson (University of Nottingham)
Howard Caygill (Kingston University)
Simon Critchley (New School of Social Research)
Roberto Esposito (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Elettra Stimilli (Sapienza University of Rome)
Miguel Vatter (University of New South Wales)
Titles in the series:
Massimo Cacciari, The Withholding Power: An Essay
on Political Theology
Michel de Certeau, The Weakness of Belief
Charlie Gere, Unnatural Theology
Andrew Gibson, Modernity and the Political Fix
Elettra Stimilli, Debt and Guilt
Thomas Lynch, Apocalyptic Political Theology
DEBT AND GUILT
A political philosophy
ELETTRA STIMILLI
Translated by
STEFANIA PORCELLI
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published as Debito e colpa, Ediesse 2015
This version published 2019
Copyright © Elettra Stimilli, 2015, 2019
Elettra Stimilli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa
Cover image © Claire Fontaine: P.I.G.S., 2011 (detail of Greece) Matchsticks.
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Photo © Nacho López / Courtesy: Claire Fontaine and Museo de Arte
Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
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the “Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca”.
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Debt: Between appropriation, exchange, and gift 7
The problematic context 7
Appropriation 10
Exchange 19
Gift 28
Debt 32
2 An open question 39
The neoliberal turn 39
The society of generalized debt 46
The paradigm of man in debt 54
3 Between political theology and economic theology 61
Beyond the boundaries of economic science 61
Religion, politics, and economics 65
“Faith” in the era of the predominance of finance 72
Debt and sacrifice 76
Guilt and violence: At the origin of juridical power 80
4 The religion of debt 89
Bare life and the law 89
Capitalism: A cult with no theology 94
Economy and regulatory experimentation 101
The invention of oikonomia 108
Debt as investment 116
vi CONTENTS
5 The psychic life of debt 125
The guilt of being in debt 125
Establishing the rule: Psychic dimension and social sphere 132
Feminism and neoliberalism 138
The mystery of guilt and the psychic life of power 145
Envisioning new ways of assuming power 153
Conclusions 159
Bibliography 163
Index 171
Introduction
This study began in the first phase of the recent financial crisis, during
which the problem of debt emerged primarily in the United States
where, following the expansion of extremely complex and risky
financial products, new forms of private debt spread in unprecedented
ways that led to the collapse of the entire American economic system.
However, the crisis soon reached beyond US borders. Between 2011
and 2012, as Greece—along with other countries in the European
Union, including Italy—risked default, debt became a topical issue
in Europe alongside austerity policies promoted by the so-called
troika (European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and
European Commission). “Austerity” became the key word that
prevailed in European economic policies led by the “German model”
that advanced the perception that indebted countries were “guilty.”
Hence the link between “debt” and “guilt”—inherent in the German
word Schuld/Schulden, which contains both meanings—and from
which this study takes its cues.
The main purpose of this book is to unveil the theoretical
implications of this semantic relationship by engaging with the
most relevant studies on debt published in the past few years, and by
2 DEBT AND GUILT: A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
considering the debate that followed the publication of a previous
work of mine on the same topic—The Debt of the Living: Ascesis
and Capitalism (see Stimilli 2017)—which I began to write when
the crisis was only beginning and which was published in Italian
in the midst of the economic emergency of 2011. The present
book builds on the previous one, although each can be easily read
independently.
In the light of the recent economic recovery measures, which aim
at opposing systems of austerity ruling in Europe thus far, I would
like to reflect on the dispositif underlying the economy of debt that
has prevailed in recent years. The question I will attempt to answer
concerns the extent to which the “condition of debt” tackled by
the recent austerity regime can be identified as a condition to be
emended, as indicated by the burden of sacrifices imposed by policies
of austerity. I also wonder whether the economy of debt and the
policies aimed at relaunching the economy really correspond to two
opposite perspectives, as it would appear at first glance; or whether,
instead, there is a more complex mechanism that they share despite
their somewhat divergent intentions, and which engages individual
lives in such a radical way that it even becomes plausible to speak of a
real “anthropological mutation.”
Following the trajectory of well-known research—such as Max
Weber’s classic study or, more recently, that of Michel Foucault—and
returning to the prophetic words of a fragment by Walter Benjamin
on capitalism as a cult that creates debt, this work intends to place
the problem of debt in a more articulated context than the strictly
technical milieu of economists, using resources from various
disciplines in an attempt to conduct a survey in which economy is
INTRODUCTION 3
no longer placed in overly narrow boundaries, but within the broader
space that it deserves.
It is not easy to return to topics one has already tackled. When
I was asked to write this book, I hesitated; I was convinced that
I could not deal with issues I had already had the opportunity to
explore in a different way. The direct confrontation with questions
that are currently pressing—through an investigation that takes its
cues specifically from the contemporary situation but that will carry
out a broader theoretical reflection—has instead allowed me to open
new fields of inquiry, which I hope can contribute something to the
present debate.
I have treasured the opportunities I have had to discuss these issues.
In the end, this book is nothing more than an attempt at a single long
answer to all the questions raised on those occasions. I sometimes
changed my position, but at times I relied on the same arguments
placed in a new context.
In particular, I remember attending the Conference on the
Autonomy of the Political at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht
in 2011, and the Annual Conference of the British Society for
Phenomenology in Oxford, as well as the seminar at the Center for a
Critical Philosophy at the University of Pisa in 2013. The discussions
at the seminar on “Feminism and Neoliberalism” organized at
the University of Salerno in 2013; the discussion with Maurizio
Lazzarato at the roundtable organized at the 2013 Belgrade Book
Fair; the seminar at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences
at the University of St. Gallen that same year; and participation in
the International Conference on “Political Abilities: The Sense of
Subjectification” at the University of Innsbruck in 2014 were also very
