Finance is where real and fictitious, rational and irrational worlds collapse into one another

Evidence

My intention in this chapter has been to pull the thread of the speculative imagination out of the tangled mess of some persisting conceptual binaries. In doing so, I proposed a theoretical approach that is better suited to the unique dynamism of homo speculans, offering us new vistas into the vexing contradictions of finance capitalism. Let me close with a synopsis of these key propositions. Through accepting the radical thesis according to which imagination precedes both reason and affect, we can better understand the historical enmities and alliances among speculating camps in and around financial markets. Finance is not merely a conduit for traversing between the worlds of the real and the fictitious nor between the rational and the irrational. It is a space where these worlds no longer remain insulated from each other. Doomed to permanently inhabit the precipice of the unknown, farmers, workers, populists, and derivatives traders have no choice but to turn to their speculative imaginations—to speculate in order to survive. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 159

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the core thesis underlying homo speculans — imagination precedes both reason and affect — and explains why finance dissolves the real/fictitious binary.
• XREF: Connects to Zamyatin’s We and the general epistemic collapse of rationality themes in the Frankfurt School corpus. — connects to: Fictitious capital means finance depends on society’s shared fictions — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42