TY - JOUR

T1 - Financial Contagion in an Age of COVID-19

T2 - On Biological, Human, and Algorithmic Mimesis

AU - Borch, Christian

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

U2 - 10.3366/count.2022.0263

DO - 10.3366/count.2022.0263

M3 - Journal article

VL - 8

SP - 206

EP - 226

JO - CounterText

JF - CounterText

SN - 2056-4406

IS - 1

ER -