Belief in institutions now depends on circulating images of them

Evidence

Manuel Castells argued more than twenty years ago that meaning making in “informational capitalism” does not rely on what people do but on the basis of what they “are, or believe they are” (Castells 2009, 3). Today, such collective meaning making is conditioned by what people, and the collectivities they form, appear to be. In order to “believe” in the legitimacy of institutions, parties, and organizations (or in the promise of capitalism itself), we need images that represent them. Speculative communities are defined by overabundance and ultrafast circulation of such images, and so the role of imagination, and particularly of the speculative imagination, becomes even more important. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 136

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s finance/imagination theme: legitimacy of financial capitalism itself is now image-dependent, a causal claim about the social imagination. — connects to: What seems like personal perception is routed through collective circulating images and discourses. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 101; Institutional credibility depends on not openly repudiating citizens’ counterfactual idealizations — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 13; Ideology now operates by repetitious photographic reality rather than argued meaning (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Institutional credibility depends on not openly repudiating citizens’ counterfactual idealizations #qualifies (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 13
• Ideology now operates by repetitious photographic reality rather than argued meaning #corroborates (0.80)