The oxi vote speculated against the crisis itself, not toward any alternative program

Evidence

But what made the oxi vote counter-speculative as opposed to merely speculative was the agenda in which the moment’s profound uncertainty was channeled. Such an agenda seemed to run counter to the programs that were formally articulated on either side of the political debate around the vote. On the one hand it showed skepticism toward a Left populism that was advocating an “immediate rupture” with the creditors (associated with the position of returning to a national currency as expressed by the platform of the Left faction within Syriza) but, on the other, it rejected the market-friendlier—albeit deeply xenophobic—nationalism represented by the main opposition party’s nai supporters. By venting such disillusionment, the skepticism of oxi was cultivated not as displacement toward external threats (such as migrants and people of color) but against what were seen as oppressing power structures threatening people’s livelihoods. My argument, then, is this: the speculative imagination of oxi voters did not so much represent the positing of a clear new meaning—a path “out of the crisis”—as it did a generative awareness of the crisis. Against demands (from both sides of the political map) for articulating a viable or “realistic” alternative, the vote expressed a communal way of dwelling with the unknown. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 340

Categorization

• DEFINE: Ilustrates the key distinction: a merely speculative vote posits a new meaning, while a counter-speculative one channels uncertainty into a generative awareness without proposing an exit.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated goal of assessing whether the counter-speculations chapter reclaims speculative imagination for the left or concedes too much.