Poovey draws upon a long history in literary studies of seeing fiction as working at the intersection of the real and the imaginary. From this approach, fictions do not represent as much as they act. As with MacKenzie’s (2005) performative account of financial instruments, fictions are not an entirely accurate depiction of the world, but neither are they simply false. As literary criticism has insisted for decades, fiction is best imagined as a strategic narrative or imaginative intervention that does not merely seek to amuse or please but to change reality by transforming the reader and causing them to act differently (see Jameson 1981). In this sense, fictions, like metaphors, are inherently social and intertextual: they depend on the reader understanding a broader cultural context and, in turn, contribute to that broader context. Indeed, we live by and through our fictions.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 109