Keynote Speaker: Sherryl Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Chair of the Department of English at UC Riverside

Workshop rationale

While social thinkers have begun to explore the role of speculative fiction in understanding financial abstractions and employing it as a tool for social diagnosis, its potential applications within social and cultural theory—particularly in examining the role of speculative finance in contemporary society—remain curiously under-explored. Highlighting this gap is essential, given the widespread presence of speculative finance in the realms of economics (Durand, 2017), urbanism (Goldman, 2023), culture (Bahng, 2018), climate (Bracking, 2019), and society (Haiven & Berland, 2014; Shonkwiler, 2017; Vint, 2019; Komporozos, 2022). However, the inherently abstract nature of speculative finance poses a significant challenge for effective representation. In response, speculative fiction emerges as a distinct and powerful critical lens through which to examine our contemporary financialized existence (Shaviro, 2019).

This two-day workshop seeks to investigate the dialectical relationship between speculative fiction and speculative finance, positioning speculative fiction as a critical framework for analyzing the latter. While most discussions of capitalist temporality emphasize the commodity as the paradigmatic social form, this workshop explores why such frameworks are increasingly inadequate for understanding the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. These dynamics are now dominated by the logic of speculation—a social form that is principally unthinkable without reference to the current temporality. The workshop will explore how the logic of financialization relies on fictions that materialize the worlds it envisions, and how speculative fiction subverts what I call ‘the perceived rationalization of finance,’ revealing the predatory abstraction and structural violence embedded within financial systems. It will thus foster a deeper understanding of how speculative finance seeks to narrow and constrain future possibilities, and how speculative fiction challenges its ongoing attempts to shape all aspects of political and social life in economic terms.

I invite cross-disciplinary contributions—papers, discussions, dialogues, and artistic performances—that examine intersections between speculative finance and speculative fiction. Submissions from sociology, political economy, cultural studies, politics, critical finance studies, and speculative/science fiction studies are welcome, particularly those using speculative fiction to critique and reveal the complexities of financial systems, enriching our understanding of contemporary financialization. Papers might address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• In what ways does speculative finance shape social and political life through economic fictions?
• What kind of worldbuilding is performed by speculative finance, and how do its practices suppress alternative futures?
• What forms of structural violence are embedded within financialized systems, and how can speculative fiction reveal these dynamics?
• How does speculative fiction subvert the perceived rationalization of finance?
• What examples from speculative fiction critically engage with finance and economic systems?
• How does speculative finance redefine value and risk in contemporary capitalism, and what are its implications for social, political, and economic structures?
• What is the profound impact of Silicon Valley’s structural operations and speculative imagination on the contemporary economy, particularly through the lens of financialization?
• In what ways can speculative fiction defamiliarize the abstractions of finance and make them perceptible?
• How does speculative fiction enable new forms of social theory and critical engagement with speculative finance?
• How do speculative fiction artworks challenge, critique, or visualize speculative financial systems, and what possibilities do they offer for alternative futures?
• How do science fiction or speculative fiction artworks illuminate the operations and imaginative speculations of Silicon Valley, particularly those proposing alternative models to the current Silicon Valley-driven economic framework?

Key dates:

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 7 January 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: 26 January 2025
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: 30 April 2025

Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words, along with a brief bio, to [email protected] The workshop welcomes both early-career and established scholars whose work critically engages with the financialized status quo and envisions alternative futures through the lens of speculative fiction. Selected participants will receive one night’s accommodation in Copenhagen. If you require financial assistance for travel, please indicate this in your submission.

Special issue: It is hoped that the workshop will result in a special issue that explores the logical and structural relationship between speculative fiction and speculative finance. The target journals will be determined during the discussions at the workshop.

Organizer: Ali Rıza Taşkale is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research has been published in journals and magazines such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Utopian Studies, Distinktion, Thesis Eleven, Rethinking Marxism, Northern Lights, New Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, Third Text, Theory, Culture & Society, and Journal for Cultural Research. His book, Post-Politics in Context, was published by Routledge in 2016. Currently, he serves on the editorial board of Distinktion, overseeing special issues and the forum exchange section. His ongoing project examines the logical and structural relationship between speculative fiction and speculative finance.