Review of 'Politics of Divination' by Joshua Ramey

Here's my review of Joshua Ramey's Politics of Divination. It's here on Amazon - as always a 'helpful' vote would be very much appreciated if its not too much trouble. I mean, you're going to be ordering the book, aren't you? Coz you should! Xx



A brilliant and exciting work proposing that neoliberalism is a mutated form of Divination.


"This is a brilliant and exciting book. It proposes that neoliberalism is a vast, unavowed and perverted form of divination.

It's not an easy read. Ramey's writing style reminds me of David Graeber in that he juxtaposes conflicting ideas and then tracks a nuanced path through them to give exposition and support to his thesis - all in one sentence. However, Ramey doesn't yet have as good a feel for his reader as Graeber. It's difficult to get a sense of who Ramey is from this work. Those long sentences can become a little wearing. Anecdotes are sparse - if fact I'm not sure there are any, at all - and the hyper-rationality, obvious concern with complete logical consistency in every statement, and constant referencing have a deleterious effect on the rhythm of the book. It's just feels a little unfriendly and cold. Of course, my criticism of his style will be viewed by many as affirmation of a positive trait; academic writing seeking objectivity tends to read like this - as explicitly rational. This brings me to a wider point.

Ramey's dissection of Hayek is excellent. He exposes the paradoxes at the heart of neoliberal ideas. But all the while he relies on essentially the same methodology as Hayek does in say, The Constitution of Liberty. Ramey defines his terms in detail. He pulls arguments apart. He assesses their consistency and exposes their assumptions and then recasts them within the terms of his central insight - which is that were are living in a social world of 'repressed' (my term) divination. There is no mysticism. There is no explicit revision or clear statement of metaphysics. There is just Ramey's consistent, rational, and logical progression. Rational argument is his methodology - and his methodology then becomes (in a sense and by default) his metaphysical commitment. And yet, the book itself gives the lie to this. As Hayek said 'rationality is wrong'. I think, ultimately, Ramey agrees with Hayek on this key point.

If the lesson from Politics of Divination is that it should not have been written so exclusively within the bounds of the rational, then Ramey is in good company. Bataille famously claimed that his masterwork on economy The Accursed Share should not have written at all, if he'd adhered to its conclusion. Bataille was at the back of my mind reading Ramey. I don't feel Ramey really got under the skin of sovereignty and its connection to ritual and sacrifice. And this was a significant omission given his focus on Divination as being a ritual rite deeply ingrained in what it is to be a human being. Ramey's focus on 'dividuals' in his concluding section - which conceives of individuals as an inherently social formation ('contingently organized bundles of affordances') - would have been more strongly challenged by Bataille's conception of sovereignty, than it was by contrasting 'dividuals' to a  conception of  'homo economicus'. I also think that Ramey could have considered a little more the dangers of writing about rituals in functionalist terms. Bringing Bataille in would have created a bulwark against this 'functional' mode of thinking. It was odd then, in the end, that Ramey chose to close his book by referencing Bataille (through the writing of Randy Martin).

My most precise criticism of, and frustration with, Politics of Divination has to do with money. I find it hard to forgive Ramey for not writing about money more extensively. Firstly, his omission of money places him in the company of mainstream economics and Hayek. Money is seen by both as effectively a product of the market - a just a pure medium for price. Is that what Ramey believes? I don't know. I suspect he thinks differently because he quotes (and then fails to expand upon) Samuel Weber's claim that in capitalism the money form is 'spiritualized' - like an immortal, invisible, omnipresent soul. Ramey also fails to point out - when he conflates Friedman and Hayek's thoughts under the 'neoliberal' banner - that Hayek and Friedman had very different ideas about money. Their conception of money was, perhaps, the thing that most distinguished them from one another. Friedman was a moneterist, Hayek was not. This fissure in neoliberal thinking demanded a exploration within the terms of Ramey's thesis, which it was not given.

It would also have been interesting to develop arguments about money's relation to price-making in the excellent chapter on probability. Probability is a very hard subject to write about with clarity, and Ramey does well. It's a pity that he didn't extend the ideas from Ayache about a derivative price being only 'accidentally numeric' and fundamentally, a narrative statement about belief. Because this has interesting implications about the relationship between narrative - and therefore thought - and money.

But of course, my criticisms (of what Ramey omits) arise only because of the deep insight, that Ramey gives expression to, in his work. I have no hesitation in recommending this book as an important contribution to our understanding of economy. It opens up new areas of thought about money, economy and their relationship to ritual, time and chance. It's a superb original work by a brilliant thinker."