Populist nationalism and speculative betting on uncertainty reinforce each other mutually

Evidence

Trump’s political movement hinged on diverse visual and discursive strategies to spread widely a speculative imagination, and by doing so to “narrate the nation”: deploying top-down, performative acts of a patriotic leveraging of uncertainty in global risk games such as the US-China trade wars and harnessing subtler speculative rituals performed on the ground by communities of “resourceless speculators” precariously managing the economic hazards of everyday life. Correspondingly, the seemingly paradoxical “evaluations” of populists’ own unknowable futures discussed earlier have not merely been the product of an imposed language (such as that of financialization) over deeper social values. They are the means of a more active engagement with collective conditions of uncertainty, driving the integration of modern self and nation—in other words, the constitution of the nation through a shared speculative imagination. To put it another way, the exclusionary myth of autochthony and identity has emboldened the speculative imagination, enabling it to effectively overcome the neoliberal logic of “risk control” by engaging with uncertainty in a more proactive and immersive manner. But the two forces work in tandem—that is, a speculative endorsement of uncertainty also rouses the reassuring nationalist myths of the modern homo politicus. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 293

Trump’s political movement hinged on diverse visual and discursive strategies to spread widely a speculative imagination, and by doing so to “narrate the nation”: deploying top-­down, performative acts of a patriotic leveraging of uncertainty in global risk games such as the US-­China trade wars and harnessing subtler speculative rituals performed on the ground by communities of “resourceless speculators” precariously managing the economic hazards of everyday life. Correspondingly, the seemingly paradoxical “evaluations” of populists’ own unknowable futures discussed earlier have not merely been the product of an imposed language (such as that of financialization) over deeper social values. They are the means of a more active engagement with collective conditions of uncertainty, driving the integration of modern self and nation—­in other words, the constitution of the nation through a shared speculative imagination. To put it another way, the exclusionary myth of autochthony and identity has emboldened the speculative imagination, enabling it to effectively overcome the neoliberal logic of “risk control” by engaging with uncertainty in a more proactive and immersive manner. But the two forces work in tandem—­that is, a speculative endorsement of uncertainty also rouses the reassuring nationalist myths of the modern homo politicus. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 453

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s framing of financialized populism as speculative betting under trained uncertainty, and pairs with chapter 292’s claim that speculative communities resemble Anderson’s imagined communities. — connects to: Political actors weaponize volatility by mobilizing uncertainty-affirming communities — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 371; Both markets and nationalism are assumed to crave stability, not volatility — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 65
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that nationalism and speculation work in tandem — that mythic closure and imaginative openness co-constitute — is dense and genuinely counterintuitive, resisting easy summary.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 293; Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 453