Financial fictions uniquely harness human imagination and creativity compared to other social fictions

Evidence

I am not simply arguing that financial wealth is a mere fiction, and for this reason we must distinguish fictitious capital as something significant and unique. All wealth, all value is a fiction, whether it exists under capitalism or any other economic system (see Graeber 2001). Certainly, material culture is valuable, and much of it appears to be intrinsically valuable (things like food and shelter). But the value we ascribe to things is a matter of cultural intercourse. A thing is just a thing until it is backed by a story … Unlike the other social fictions woven by the rich and powerful, these advance through subtle and nuanced harnessing of agency, creativity and the imagination. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 111

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies what makes financialized value’s fictionality distinctive: it recruits agency, creativity, and imagination directly.
• XREF: connects to: Finance creatively generates new forms of social and political life — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 98; Speculative imagination is a generative social force integrated into everyday capitalist life — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 74; Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 19 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Finance creatively generates new forms of social and political life #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 98
• Speculative imagination is a generative social force integrated into everyday capitalist life #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 74
• Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies #corroborates (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 19
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #expands (0.80)
• Financialization captures and encloses human creative capacity through debt #complicates (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 390