Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality

Evidence

Vast swaths of the global population have in fact no choice today but to occupy a speculative position. But the experiences of homo speculans are collective experiences, situated within speculative communities; its imperatives are universal, yet its struggles are profoundly uneven. Hence the path of critique I take in this book scrutinizes the imaginative motor at the heart of finance as a force with devastating consequences for capitalism’s excluded populations in both the Global North and the Global South. I contend, however, that a great deal of this violent power stems from finance’s capacity to blend myths and facts, to both obfuscate and spectacularize—a power found not in some kind of mighty rationality but in finance’s own vivid imagination, which is what ultimately makes modern capitalism work, and what affords its resilience. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 28

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that critique should target finance’s imagination rather than its rationality is worth weighing against the reader’s assessment of whether the counter-speculations chapter concedes too much.
• SEED: Potential essay angle: what it would mean for anti-capitalist criticism to target imagination rather than rationalist ideology.
• XREF: connects to: Uncertainty deepens societies’ need for narratives and makes finance their model — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 36; Finance’s dominance rests on speculative imagination, not just market rationality. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 550; Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital (+5 more)