The Art of Escape: Liquidity Mechanisms

Abstract

The idea of “liquidity” as a characteristic of the present phase of modernity, which features in the most recent work of Zygmunt Bauman, invites comparison with Keynes. In both Bauman and Keynes, liquidity is applied to relationships that are easily revertible (or revertible at low cost) and to systems that are unstable and precarious due to the precariousness of the bonds that unite their constituent elements. In both authors, liquidity and speculation appear as rational responses to uncertainty and, at the same time, as individual strategies that contribute to increased risk at the level of the system. The two approaches are complementary and coherent. This comparative reading suggests the existence of transversal liquidity mechanisms that cut across different institutional domains, as described in this paper.