Kinky Capitalism

Abstract This article draws on the contemporary rubric of “findom” (financial domination) to explore the confluence of sex, sex work, and consumer capitalism in Zola’s Nana. A BDSM subculture, findom involves financial dominatrices (findommes) who demand payment from their “cash pig” submissives as the BDSM interactions themselves. Employing psychoanalytic and other social-scientific lenses, this article therefore suggests that Nana Coupeau be considered a findomme avant la lettre. It explores how Nana’s suitors’ self-ruinous competitiveness anticipates the shame-laden, performative, and fantasmatic dynamics fueling modern-day findom clients’ behavior. Throughout, concepts from social science like “erotic capital” and “potlatch” help clarify where “power” may only appear not to lie within findom’s praxis, since the men who engage in findom in fact assert rather than forsake their social dominance by spending large sums. Indeed, these men’s potential for ruination is a testament to their capitalistic ascendency and a prerequisite of findom participation. Additionally, given how essential poverty and inequality are to capitalism and findom alike, this article suggests that Nana be generically recategorized as a “novel of capitalism” rather than simply a “novel of poverty.” Above all, this article enlists Zola’s work and a variety of social theories to diagnose the perverted forms of desire capitalism yields.