Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital

Evidence

However, as my foregoing history of speculation has revealed, finance capitalism’s power struggles were played out within an altogether different arena. They were not merely conflicts between passions and interests, between rationality and irrationality, or between reality and fiction; they were struggles for speculative imagination. It is therefore time to take a further step. Redressing the hierarchical divisions between reason and imagination requires that we move beyond both the structural determinism of economic rationality and the Kantian essentialism of an emancipatory political rationality (which, as we saw in the previous chapter, also begets the current idée fixe of neoliberal reason). We must tackle the role of imagination head-on. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 148 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Vast swaths of the global population have in fact no choice today but to occupy a speculative position. But the experiences of homo speculans are collective experiences, situated within speculative communities; its imperatives are universal, yet its struggles are profoundly uneven. Hence the path of critique I take in this book scrutinizes the imaginative motor at the heart of finance as a force with devastating consequences for capitalism’s excluded populations in both the Global North and the Global South. I contend, however, that a great deal of this violent power stems from finance’s capacity to blend myths and facts, to both obfuscate and spectacularize—a power found not in some kind of mighty rationality but in finance’s own vivid imagination, which is what ultimately makes modern capitalism work, and what affords its resilience. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 28 (#corroborates, 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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Speculative wagers can be deployed as counter-power against dominant financial structures — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 31; Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 148; Creativity’s vagueness makes it effective for financialization while hiding utopian potential — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 51 (+7 more)

Related

• Financialized power struggles are won by those with greater imaginative capacity (similarity 0.94)
• Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination (similarity 0.91)
• Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality (similarity 0.91)
• Finance’s dominance rests on speculative imagination, not just market rationality. (similarity 0.91)
• Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination. (similarity 0.90)
• Finance’s utopian promises contain the seed of their own subversion (similarity 0.90)
• Speculation, not conspiracy, is capitalism’s most powerful producer of unreality. (similarity 0.88)
• Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination (similarity 0.86)
• Finance’s speculative imagination shapes intimate desires deeper than economic principles do. (similarity 0.86)
• Financial fictions uniquely harness human imagination and creativity compared to other social fictions (similarity 0.86)
• Critique of financialization must center the imagination because mainstream capitalist theory neglects it. (similarity 0.85)
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (similarity 0.85)
• Imagined Communities analysis can be deployed to study financialized capitalism through speculation. (similarity 0.85)
• Speculative imagination is a generative social force integrated into everyday capitalist life (similarity 0.84)
• Finance capital dominates by capturing the imagination that emancipation would otherwise free (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination #corroborates (0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 148
• Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 28
• Creativity’s vagueness makes it effective for financialization while hiding utopian potential #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 51
• Speculative communities arise from the tension between financial imagination and neoliberal reason #expands (0.73) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 31
• Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination. #qualifies (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 142
• Fighting financialization requires wielding speculation on shifting ground #expands (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 43