The Provoked Economy is happy to claim association with “Capitalizing on Performativity: Performing on Capitalization”, a PERFORMABUSINESS symposium to be held next week, 16-17 October 2014, at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. The program is available here. The program’s opening paragraph actually seems to be a quote from the book…:

“A cogent appraisal of the spirit of contemporary capitalism and its problems calls, I believe, for renewed attention to the performative. Business schools, consultancy firms, corporations, investment banks, start-up companies, market research agencies, public administrations and other sites of business life are characterized by the presence of habits, idioms and apparatuses that constitute a significant part of the reality of business. These include techniques for the simulation of business situations, methods for the explanation of business problems, instruments for the valuation of business endeavours, and tools for the presentation of business outcomes. But simulation, explanation, valuation and presentation are not only about accounting for external states of affair. They are, at least in part, about moulding, enacting, provoking and effecting the business realities they signify.” (p. 127)