Everyday Leverage, or Leveraging the Everyday

Abstract

Credit, debt and indebtedness are key terms for understanding contemporary social and economic life. In many recent accounts of debt, however, debt is largely an ahistorical category that remains constant throughout time, or seen simply in terms of a quantum of interest accrued over time that can then serve as a proxy for both the accumulation of profit and measurable oppression and exploitation. This forecloses analytical investigation of contemporary shifts in the everyday articulations of credit and debt and the specificity of creditor–debtor relations, including important changes in the nature of debt itself. In contrast, this paper focuses on the redefinition of debt as ‘leverage’, a dynamic, productive force that can have unpredictable effects. Alongside other developments that have transformed debt into a tradeable asset, such as financial securitization, debt as ‘leverage’ involves the anticipation of speculative excess and possibility. Addressing the contemporary transformations of credit/debt also requires acknowledging the multiple ways in which ordinary households are now expected to embrace the potentialities afforded by ‘leverage’. This is a symbiotic relationship that is evolving and persistent, and it demonstrates a much larger expansion of financial power, in which the biopolitical terrain of individual subjectivity, aspiration and forms of conduct at a micro-level is directly linked to macro-financial global structures. As the paper suggests, the contemporary consumer-citizen increasingly relies on debt-fuelled and frequently asset-based consumption that necessarily depends on some kind of leverage.