Speculative fights over creditworthiness now replace traditional wage-labor conflicts
Evidence
This book is an attempt to untangle finance’s formidable imagination—to make sense of its impact on the ways we respond to our epoch’s profound challenges, not just in the sphere of the economy but across all realms of contemporary life. In doing so, it departs from popular critiques of finance as a source of individuation, social fragmentation, and, of late, a cause of right-wing populist backlash. I argue instead that finance’s transformative force is part of a larger story that we need to understand. Contemporary markets have reshaped capitalist societies through mass-scale reconfiguration of credit and debt relations, deepening existing inequalities and spurring new social struggles, which are increasingly fought on markets’ turf: speculative fights around individuals’ creditworthiness and organizations’ asset values substitute for traditional wage-labor conflicts (Feher 2018). I contend, however, that finance’s speculative forces are also key levers in the constitution of our modern imagined communities. They mold contemporary societies’ collective myths, elicit their nagging anxieties, and suffuse their confused desires and clouded aspirations. We live in the age of speculative communities. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 38
Categorization
- XREF: Directly advances the reader’s core purpose: speculation reshaping the social imagination. Echoes Feher’s thesis on ‘rated’ rather than ‘working’ beings; could connect to David Graeber’s debt frameworks. — connects to: The battlefront of speculation moved from venue legitimacy to creditor reputational warfare — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 487
- SEED: Article angle: ‘the credit score as the new battleground’ — how individuals now fight political battles through their financial ratings rather than the picket line.
Broader Connections
- The battlefront of speculation moved from venue legitimacy to creditor reputational warfare
#expands(0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 487