 July 22, 2008  Fear In The Markets   by Robert Hariman  Kafka’s
Trial and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (for images, go here and here)
were once touchstones for understanding the deep anxieties of
modern social organization.  Mention them now and you mark
yourself as a boomer (as if it weren’t obvious enough anyway).
Both came to mind recently, and particularly Kafka’s depiction
of K, the everyman caught in organizational processes that by
turns snare, thwart, baffle, awe, and destroy him.  Something
like the image above, perhaps.  You are looking at a trader on
the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last August 9th, when
shares were plummeting to the worst drop since the previous
February.  It also looks as if K had wandered into an updated
Metropolis (or perhaps Metropolis meets The Matrix).  The
concrete tower behind him (it loomed higher in the paper print
of the photo), the machines surrounding everyone in the room,
the anomic space in which each person stands alone: these are
the signs of centralized auth