Speculative imagination is social yearning, not just individual credit-maximizing.

Evidence

But the spread of the speculative imagination has been much broader than the quests for creditworthiness that such politics foreground. Current representational forms require us to turn more imaginatively to the study of the spectacles that beguile financialized societies, which represent this infusion of our social relations by the speculative imagination. There is an important distinction afoot here. While the logic of Feher’s “investee politics” implies an individual, and mostly rational, quest for maximizing credit, worth, and image reputation, the speculative imagination embodies a more social use of finance-driven vernaculars. Put another way, we are not just competitive collectors of likes and swipes but invested members of anxious communities, yearning for connection at a time of unsettledness and doubt. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 196

Categorization

• DEFINE: This distinguishes ‘investee politics’ from ‘speculative imagination’ as private utility-seeking versus social, community-directed yearning.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the reader’s task of tracing how trading-floor speculation logic has migrated into social domains.
• XREF: connects to: Finance’s speculative imagination shapes intimate desires deeper than economic principles do. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 339; Speculative imagination can unite communities rather than atomize them. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 435; Collective imagination, not individual gamblers, shapes our shared wagers on the future — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 552