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Algorithmic Finance, Its Regulation, and Deleuzean Jurisprudence: A Few Remarks on a Necessary Paradigm Shift

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Abstract

This article puts into perspective the practice of financial regulation in contemporary financial markets, while a new normative order has emerged. This order, heralded by algorithmic technologies, changes the conditions for the exercise of regulation: to date, it has not yet been fully acknowledged nor understood by regulatory bodies. Computer code, replacing speech and writing, induces a changeover from one normative order to another in contemporary markets: the norm, previously explicated with recourse to interpretation, is now replaced by an order characterized by calculation. Such paradigm change is identified based on a discussion of works by Gilles Deleuze. In so doing, it contributes to the developing research programme in the cultures of high-frequency trading (Lange et al. 2016) and also points at broader issues for conceptualising financial regulation.

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Notes

  1. This article was originally published in French (Revue Française de Gestion, 2017/8, n°269, pp. 145–160). We provide a slightly revised version for this special issue of Topoï.

  2. I owe the expression to Fabian Muniesa.

  3. I follow here, partly, the excellent indications provided by Lefebvre (2008).

  4. Here we need to mention the obvious resonance with Aristotelian phronesis, that is the ability to act morally while facing contingency. See Aubenque (1963).

  5. That is, using her phronesis, to pursue the Aristotelian reference.

  6. See Bundesrat (2013).

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  1. NEOMA Business School, 1 rue du Maréchal Juin – BP 215, 76825, Mont-Saint-Aignan Cedex, France

    Marc Lenglet

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Lenglet, M. Algorithmic Finance, Its Regulation, and Deleuzean Jurisprudence: A Few Remarks on a Necessary Paradigm Shift. Topoi 40, 811–819 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09653-6

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