Speculation’s tension between rationality and irrationality now defines Western political fault lines
Evidence
Hayek’s own radical endorsement of the irrational and his stress on the generative force of the unknowable in capitalist dynamics appear all but lost in these accounts. More than a decade after the latest crisis, the tension between rationality and irrationality (and between reality and fiction) that is embodied in speculation seems to define the fault lines of dominant conflicts such as those between experts and publics or between liberal elites and neopopulist insurgents. Speculation, then, is at the heart of today’s political economy and, as we will see, the ground on which capitalism’s new struggles for power are fought. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 100
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader project on financialization reshaping social imagination — the expert/public and elite/populist conflicts as expressions of speculative reasoning. — connects to: Irrationalism correctly diagnoses rationalism’s crisis but serves power’s interests. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 548; Post-2008 economists saw speculation’s irrationality as recalibrating politics — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 97; The rationality-irrationality divide in speculation maps onto elite-versus-insurgent conflicts — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 66 (+1 more)
- SEED: Angles toward an essay on how speculative finance’s rationality/irrationality tension prefigures culture-war and populist dynamics, with Hayek as the unrecognized theorist.
Broader Connections
- The rationality-irrationality divide in speculation maps onto elite-versus-insurgent conflicts
#expands(0.92) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 66 - Current crises express immanent speculative politics rather than an interregnum awaiting new birth
#expands(0.78) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 363