Finance capitalism now shapes collective imagination the way print capitalism built nations

Evidence

How, then, do we collectively respond to the constant stream of images that we seem to find both strikingly familiar and baffling? Adam Smith’s invisible hand no longer deals only in money. It carries images, videos, or even menu options and prospective sexual partners to our screens while we nervously tap and swipe on them. Speculative communities form in the eddies and vortices of this unceasing flow of images. … Just as print capitalism catapulted new nationally bound mythologies through the force of narrative tools (from print media and novels to maps, censuses, and museums), contemporary finance capitalism has leaned on speculative technologies to re-­narrate modern nation-­states. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 271

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’ argument about print capitalism into the finance-capitalism era — the reader’s own interest in how speculation reshapes social imagination. — connects to: Anderson’s imagined-communities framework applies to speculative finance and collective imaginings. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 55; Imagined Communities analysis can be deployed to study financialized capitalism through speculation. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 127; Print capitalism’s sacral-vernacular split enabled nationalist imagination — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 90 (+10 more)
• SEED: Article angle: drawing the parallel Anderson drew for print (novels, maps, censuses, museums) but for finance — what narrative tools does finance capitalism use to re-narrate the nation-state?

Broader Connections

• Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies #responds-to (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 19
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #expands (0.80)
• Print capitalism’s sacral-vernacular split enabled nationalist imagination #expands (0.75) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 90
• Finance creatively generates new forms of social and political life #responds-to (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 98
• Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 148
• Financialization is capitalism’s most advanced mode of harnessing consumer agency and imagination #expands (0.70) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 362
• Rise of finance capital is inseparable from the postmodern turn in culture #responds-to (0.70) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 93