Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction. What Is at Stake?  1

1. Crisis Demands  15

Judgment Day  

The Moral Demand  

The Test  

2. Crisis Narratives  41

Bubbles  

Houses  

Finance  

Subjects  

3. Crisis: Refrain!  71

Noncrisis Narrations  

The Crisis that does not Obtain  

Conclusion  91

Notes  97

References  133

Index  153

"Anti-Crisis will become an instant classic. It is that good. Seeking to understand why crisis has become an 'omnipresent sign in almost all forms of narrative today,' Janet Roitman analyzes the constitution of crisis as a privileged object of knowledge, a ground to 'critical theory' and the human sciences more broadly, and an instigation to various modes of action in the world. Along the way, she makes crucial interventions in debates about what is critical about critical theory, what the critical human sciences are for, and how they ought to be sustained, or not, in the wake of the restructuring of U.S. higher education. This is a stunning, paradigm-shifting achievement."—Bill Maurer, author of Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason

"Anti-Crisis incisively illuminates a core blind spot of modern understandings of history: the coupling of critique and crisis. Janet Roitman sunders this couple, revealing the ties that have bound us, and thereby opens up welcome new horizons for thought and action. Once the complacency of the self-importance of living in a crisis epoch is gone, then prophecy, denunciation, and the speaker's benefit can be bundled with other toxic waste and pawned off on those looking for assurance at bargain rates."—Paul Rabinow, coauthor of Demands of the Day: On the Logic of Anthropological Inquiry

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