Speculative uncertainty is now reshaping democratic politics itself.

Evidence

We have seen how the radical uncertainty of the future is endorsed and spread in the everyday life of speculative communities. But what are the current political implications of the revitalized ascendancy of homo speculans? How do we account for the political risks of a society taking a wholehearted plunge into uncertainty? And how are such risks distributed and hedged in today’s wavering capitalist democracies? The final part of the book turns to these questions and argues that the speculative mode of everyday life is also reshaping the face of politics in today’s financialized capitalism. A specter of speculative politics is haunting liberal democracy as we know it. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the book’s frame: homo speculans migrates from economy into politics, setting up the core thesis the reader wants to assess.
• XREF: connects to: Dissolving certainty may usher a fully political era rather than politics’ end — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 441; Observers fear current politics is re-enacting 1984’s truth-as-casualty dynamics — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 39; Post-2016 democratic deconsolidation is a named, measurable historical process — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 365