This paper, in an attempt to approach finance from a cultural perspective,investigates the cultural logic of financialization in terms of (re)configuration of temporality and (re)presentation of information, both of which are, as it upholds, critically undertaken and maintained by the operativity of investment banking which functions, following Bourdieu, as “the sign of wealth” in our times. It is time for cultural theorists and practitioners to revisit finance as the set of epistemic culture that modulates epistemological and ontological contexts affecting the actors’ cognition and behaviors in value production and realization. Financialization here, is suggested as a disinformation campaign through which cognitive dissonance of financial mania is effectively contained, concealing its damaging effects and thus valorizing the inherent bubble mechanism as the legitimate way of value production and circulation. Sustaining and amplifying transactional orientation of investment banking among the actors in the financial markets, the financial system seams the cognitive dissonance through its operativity of information for the construction of financial reality stimulating beliefs and guiding action without which financial integrity, credit relations, and transactional orientation cannot be sustained. To reveal the actual aspects of cognitive dissonance and its overcoming operation by the cultural performativity of the financial economic, this article first proposes that from the perspective of general economy, financialization, which is critically motivated and generated through the engine of the investment banking model and technique, is detrimental to the growth of the nation’s economy. Here, from the perspective of cultural performativity, the transactional orientation of investment banking is analyzed as the system of temporal articulation of human relationships in which a series of transient combinations of human resources, experience, knowledge, and information is encoded and implemented for a transaction, which thus incorporates other forms of value production into its rhythm. Demonstrating the process of widespread establishment of investment banking in commercial banking, non‐financial corporations, and individual actors through major financial shake‐ups after the Korean financial crisis, this article shows how the code of investment banking becomes the symbolic as well as the material code functioning as the sign of authority and communication in motivating the process of financialization. In the accentuation of financialization, as the process accompanying the bubble mechanism with its transactional orientation as the legitimate process in realization of dominant value, this paper finally suggests that financial capitalism as the set of epistemic operation that overcomes the cognitive dissonance with its operativity of information. The collective information produced by financial narrators transcoding the dissonance into the consonance grounds the field of cognitive operation as the cultural logic of financialization beyond the economic diagnosis and thus functions as the source of cognition and action for actors.

본 논문은 금융자본주의 경제 논리를 문화 관점에서 분석한다. 금융 및 금융화(financialization)는 1980년대 이후 급격히 강화된 신자유주의(neoliberalism)와 세계화(globalization)를 이끌어온 핵심 동인임에도 이에 대한문화 논리와 함의는 학제간 연구를 통해 심도 깊게 논의되지 못하고 있다. 본 연구는 무엇보다 금융자본주의를 경제체계를 넘어선 인식론적 문화체계로제시하고, 금융화의 문화논리를 시간성의 재구성과 정보의 재현이라는 관점에서분석한다. 금융화는 투자 및 순환 주기의 급격한 단축을 행위자의 일상의 리듬으로 요청하는 수행성(performativity)의 체계다. 투자의 관점에서 재구성된 시간성은 행위자의 인지와 행동의 맥락을 조절하는 동시에, 지배가치 실현을 위한 장치로 안정화되어 삶의 리듬으로 자리 잡는다. 지배 언술(statements)과 서사(narrative)는 순환 주기 단축을 통해 거래 경향을 심화시켜 경제가치 파생 및순환을 지속, 전이시키는 금융자본주의 거품 구조(bubble mechanism)를 인식의 차원에서 정당화하는 지배 문화장치다. 이런 문제의식 아래 금융화가 금융자본주의의 모순을 인지적 측면에서 방어하고 합리화(disinformation campaign)하는 기술(narration) 체계라는 점을 밝히고자 한다. 이를 위해 본 논문은 1997년 한국 외환위기 이후 전개되었던 금융화 과정을투자은행의 부상을 통해 설명하고 금융화가 일으키는 인지와 행동 구조의 변동을구체적으로 드러내려 한다. 금융화가 파생시키는 문화적 실천과 함의에 대한 심도깊은 분석은 오늘날 금융자본주의 지배 문화전략과 담론을 비판하고 대안 담론을모색하기 위한 첫 출발점이 될 것이다.