Speculation as a Mode of Production

Marina Vishmidt is a writer and editor. She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the co-author of Reproducing Autonomy (with Kerstin Stakemeier) (Mute, 2016).

“[Speculation as a Mode of Production] is a real contribution to a deepened understanding of how financialised capitalism has fundamental and worrying consequences for the ways in which art and subjectivity are reproduced today.”—Josefine Wikström, Radical Philosophy“An astonishingly lucid account of the way in which neoliberalism operates, inscribing the logic of a barely mediated labour-capital relationship into the intimate recesses of subject formation.”—Jaleh Mansoor, University of British Columbia“Breaking with the boosterism and banality that so often accompany discussions of art and capital, Marina Vishmidt brings an impressive command over contemporary debates and a truly dialectical sensitivity to bear on the transformations that artistic practice has undergone in our speculative times.”—Alberto Toscano, co-author of Cartographies of the Absolute“Speculation as a Mode of Production is an exceptional work whose full import, both political and philosophical, will be reckoned [with] for years to come.”—Ray Brassier, Radical Philosophy

• Table of Contents Preface AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital 1 Introduction 2 Speculation as Method 3 How Does Art Speculate? 4 Is There a Speculative Mode of Production? 5 Chapter Outline 1 Speculation: The Subjectivity of Re-structuring and Re-structuring Subjectivity 1 Speculation in the Negative 2 Speculative Subjects 3 Fetishism and the Production of Subjectivity 4 Speculation or Real Subsumption 5 To Human is Capital 6 Human Capital and Art 7 Speculation and Abstract Labour: An Abstract 8 Self-Appreciation? 9 From Self to Species-Being 10 Value Equals Zero 2 Topologies of Speculation: The Tenses of Art, Labour and Finance 1 &'Counterproductive' and Abstract Labour 2 Autonomy in Generalised Speculation 3 Speculation and Contingency 4 What is an &'Absolute Contingency'? 5 Futures and the Future 6 Art as Counterproductive Labour 7 Invisible Labour 8 Visible Finance 9 Conclusion 3 Aesthetic Speculations and Antagonisms 1 Is Art Working? 2 Real Subsumption 3 Negative Composition 4 The Specialist of Non-Specialism 5 Negate Here 6 The Critique of the Power of Judgement and the Critique of the Powers of Art: Kantian Interlude 4 Whatever Indicator: Indeterminacy, Judgement, and Putting the Speculative to Work 1 Introduction 2 The Name of Art 3 To Be Done with the Judgement of Art 4 Counter-Artistic Production 5 Whatever Indicator 6 Reproductive Potentiality 7 Subhuman Capital 8 Artist Placement Group - Incidental Person, or Negation of the Artist? 9 Excursus on Use-Value 10 Artistic Communism - A Speculative Gesture 11 Art - Departure or Destination? Conclusion: Whither Speculation? 1 One More Time If You Would Be Useless 2 Trajectories of the Generic 3 Prognostic Coda