Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination

Evidence

This book has argued that as a haze of uncertainty engulfs global economies, the speculative spirit of financial markets is no longer confined to the obscure dealings of hedge funds, equity firms, and derivatives traders. Speculation has become the very practice around which modern societies coalesce, the vernacular through which we express our collective disbelief in the waning legitimacy of neoliberalism. By bringing these social practices to the fore of my analysis, I have sought to open up the black box of financialization and show how finance percolates through our everyday lives in uneven and contradictory ways. A core argument of the book has been that, contrary to popular narratives, finance’s dominance arises not only from the subordination of our collective values to market rationality. If finance reigns supreme today, it is thanks to the generative power of its unique speculative imagination: its unswerving capacity to draw profit from the unknown and in so doing to forge unexpected connections in society at large. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 356

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the speculative imagination as finance’s generative source rather than market rationality.
• XREF: connects to: Fictitious capital means finance depends on society’s shared fictions — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42; Finance is sourced from everyday life, not just reaching down from elites — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 57; Finance’s speculative imagination shapes intimate desires deeper than economic principles do. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 339