Finance’s utopian promises contain the seed of their own subversion

Evidence

This book’s distinct innovation is to tie these developments to a set of deeper transformations undergirded by modern-day finance, which I consider to be both socially and politically generative. The notion of speculative communities I develop is not just an economic metaphor but a concept that will help me stitch together different repertoires of responses to radical uncertainty and frame the distinct forms of dwelling in the present’s queasy volatility. Rather than simply a critique of finance, then, the contribution I endeavor to offer in what follows is a broader conceptual framing of modern capitalist society as a whole. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 22 (#expands, via linked claim)

I conclude Chapter 5 with a discussion of how creativity’s particular wooliness and euphemistic quality is, in fact, its greatest strength: in an age when seemingly all aspects of life are measured, quanti- fied and speculated upon, creativity’s peculiar nebulousness actuality makes it a highly useful discursive formation for financialization. Yet it is also in creativity’s vague and imprecise character that we can find a kernel of utopian negation that might allow us to see beyond our present moment. Creativity, for all its inadequacies, “works” precisely because it bears the haunting trace of the promise of unalienated labour, and so carries encrypted within it, in fragmented form, the seeds of a very different society. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 51 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones; Capitalism sustains legitimacy through broken promises, not fulfilled ones — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 118; Finance is socially and politically generative, not merely economically exploitative — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 22 (+7 more)

Related

• Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital (similarity 0.90)
• Speculation, not conspiracy, is capitalism’s most powerful producer of unreality. (similarity 0.87)
• Finance is socially and politically generative, not merely economically exploitative (similarity 0.87)
• Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination (similarity 0.87)
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (similarity 0.87)
• Finance’s dominance rests on speculative imagination, not just market rationality. (similarity 0.86)
• Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality (similarity 0.86)
• Financial concepts contain their own utopian negation. (similarity 0.86)
• Creativity’s vagueness makes it effective for financialization while hiding utopian potential (similarity 0.85)
• Financial fictions uniquely harness human imagination and creativity compared to other social fictions (similarity 0.85)
• Fictitious capital means finance depends on society’s shared fictions (similarity 0.85)
• Finance’s speculative imagination shapes intimate desires deeper than economic principles do. (similarity 0.85)
• Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination. (similarity 0.85)
• Speculative imagination is a generative social force integrated into everyday capitalist life (similarity 0.84)
• Finance may revitalize democratic community rather than only undermine it (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #qualifies (0.85)
• Finance is socially and politically generative, not merely economically exploitative #expands (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 22
• Capitalism sustains legitimacy through broken promises, not fulfilled ones #complicates (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 118
• Creativity’s vagueness makes it effective for financialization while hiding utopian potential #qualifies (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 51
• Counter-speculation turns financial uncertainty against oppressive structures #exemplifies (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 69
• Progressive speculation must embrace contingency without replicating finance’s violence #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 44
• Market defenders secretly fear the very Utopian totality they claim to celebrate #complicates (0.75)