Virtuosity in this sense is not merely reducible to skill or proficiency. It speaks more broadly to a socially situated form of imagination, creativity and capacity for action, a potential. Yet, importantly, this virtuosity is rooted in (and contributes to) a broader field of performative and communicative acts. It is not insignificant that the root of "virtuosity" is "virtue," a term closely related to (and, in Italian, directly linked to) value: virtuosity, for Virno, is our capacity to create value, and, in an age of cognitive capitalism, it is that capacity that is ever more at stake. Financialization, I suggest, is a key means of capturing, shaping and enclosing virtuosity. What is Wall Street except a massive "machine" (in the Deleuzian sense of the term) for harnessing and putting to work the incredible creative and cognitive energies of a massive pool of financial workers? And what is debt (finance's key product) except a complicated means of disciplining virtuosity, of creating a situation in which one must apply one's creativity, ingenuity and social and cultural capacities towards capitalist ends (Lazzarato 2012)?

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 390