/279/ Society of the Speculative ft. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou
Added 2022-08-02 17:18:50 +0000 UTCOn our financialised world.
We talk to Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou about his new book, Speculative Communities. How has speculation become the very practice around which modern societies coalesce? And how does speculation actually give voice to the waning legitimacy of neoliberalism?
Do dating apps, Tik Tok and other social media give birth to 'speculative communities'? And is populism a speculation on the future, a leap into the unknown?
Comments
It’s hard for me to discern the difference between what the guest is suggesting and the by-now tired attempt to find ‘resistance’ to neoliberalism or capitalism in every little thing people do individually or collectively. It makes sense given that his major influences seem to be Foucault and Wendy Brown, but I’m still surprised this kind of thing still has legs. There’s no ‘resistance’ in any of this stuff, just coping strategies whereby people try to adapt themselves to the reality of neoliberalism the best way they can. I just don’t see any kind of historical agency here.
dshamz_
2022-08-16 16:05:53 +0000 UTCThe “speculative community” this ep called to mind for me is the US cult of homeownership - combines the speculative hope that land inflation will continue to be assessed in the owner’s favor with the natural scarcity of land itself. Every homeowner is buying a stake to entitle themselves to (for the kind of buyer I’m envisioning) good schools, reliable services, low crime, parks, etc. This brings to mind some aspects of such a community that aren’t mentioned at least in this interview - group boundary policing (who gets to buy a stake) and consequent group identity creation (we are the Haves, at least for our Neighborhood). But such a community, though it can take certain kinds of political action (Lakewoodization of larger cities to lower their tax burden, prop 13 to do the same on an astonishing scale), is actually provincial in the extreme when it comes to anything beyond the bounds of their little realm. Visible issues like Poop scooping or homelessness can raise their ire - because it might affect the all-holy Property Values - but anything of import seems beyond them. I would guess that this generalizes fairly well to such self-willed communities of speculative interest… try to get a group of crypto enthusiasts to agree on anything *except* the promise of their coins, etc.
Alex McAuliffe
2022-08-14 00:48:52 +0000 UTC
