Finance may revitalize democratic community rather than only undermine it

Evidence

In this tempestuous political space, the operation of speculative imag­ ination appears in full force. At the heart of speculative communities lies the growing conviction of an unknowable future, a condition typically la­ mented by the variants of insolvent neoliberalism who consider it as a symptom of populist politics. But as I have contended, alongside this political endorsement of unknowability, speculative communities mobilize new forms of insurance in their attempts to hedge the incalculable risks and vexing fears of financialized life. In these new entanglements of gambling and prudence that today become increasingly intricate, a new homo politicus has germinated. The question I will address in what follows, then, is, Has finance, contrary to conventional wisdom, revitalized rather than “undone the demos”? — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 396

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how speculation reshapes social imagination — this frames the book’s central thesis against Polanyi-inspired critiques of finance. — connects to: Finance can unwittingly generate political connections among marginalized people.; Finance is socially and politically generative, not merely economically exploitative — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 22; Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (+5 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘Hedging the unknowable future’ — how insurance and speculative practices jointly produce new political subjects, a fusion of gambling and prudence.

Broader Connections

• Finance is socially and politically generative, not merely economically exploitative #corroborates (0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 22
• Finance creatively generates new forms of social and political life #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 98
• Economization displaces democratic self-rule and its supporting institutions. #contradicts (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 15
• Democratic institutions can again produce countermeasures to abnormal accumulation #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1644
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #expands (0.75)
• Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 19