Financial Contagion in an Age of COVID-19: On Biological, Human, and Algorithmic Mimesis

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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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalCounterText
Volume8
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)206-226
ISSN2056-4406
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

ID: 319888294