Uncertainty is a resource enabling political subjectivity, not merely an outcome of finance

Evidence

The speculative imagination, then, is precisely that essential social force responsible for the open-endedness of capitalism’s dialectic: ensuring that even when the future seems fixed, we hold fast to its fundamental unknowability and thus to its openness to change. The concept I have put forward in these pages integrates economy’s radical uncertainty as an inherent feature of a self-altering dynamic, rather than a mere outcome of finance-induced alienation. Hence it considers uncertainty an essential resource for the possibility of a more transgressive political subjectivity. Speculative imagination thwarts faith in predetermination, without however replacing it with the certainties of either economic or political rationality. By contrast, it is the inherently imaginative act of taking “collective ownership” over the future’s indeterminacy, by giving a—however provisional—image to its chaos, with which we can live. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 160

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of ‘speculative imagination’ as the collective act of giving provisional image to indeterminate future — central to the reader’s homo speculans thesis.
• XREF: ‘Collective ownership over the future’s indeterminacy’ resonates with the Frankfurt School account, and with Castoriadis’s social imaginary significations. — connects to: Political actors weaponize volatility by mobilizing uncertainty-affirming communities — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 371; A political vote can express dwelling with uncertainty rather than a positive program — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 523