Trip 49: Debt

Photo: Alamy

Debt-funded consumption has become central to our way of life since the ‘70s, but do many of us really know how it works? Is debt a calculation, or more like a belief? And can we even imagine a society without it?

The concept of debt is as slippery as it is powerful, as Keir, Nadia and Jem explore in this Trip episode. The gang discuss payday loans, bondage and slavery, debt jubilees and dowries, with help from David Graeber, Deleuze, Crass and Gwen Guthrie.

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Music: Crass – ‘Do They Owe Us A Living?’ / Eric Clapton – Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out / Freeze – IOU / Nillan & Mistaek – Credit Card / Gwen Guthrie – Ain’t Nothing Going On But the Rent / Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons / Sounds of Blackness – Time For Reparations / Chain & the Gang – Reparations

Books: Jeremy Gilbert & Alex Williams – Hegemony Now / David Graeber – Debt: The First 5000 Years / Maurizio Lazzarato – The Making of the Indebted Man / The Bonds of Debt – Richard Dienst / Gilles Deleuze – Postscript on the Societies of Control / Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor – From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation / Lucí Cavallero and Verónica Gago – A Feminist Reading of Debt / Andrew Ross – Creditocracy: And the Case for Debt Refusal

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