Investing as a practice of futuring
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Přiložené soubory | |
| Popis | The submission provides preliminary theoretical insights from my dissertation. According to Alex Preda (2004), the figure of an investor is a core yet undertheorized figure characteristic of modern capitalism. A lot has been written about ascetic protestants or industrialists. However, investors lack such attention. Preda challenges us to change it – a challenge my submission contributes to. I argue that investors are not just the core figure of modernity’s past, but of its yet-to-come horizons. If the idea of an open, undetermined future is a fundamental characteristic of modern consciousness (Koselleck 2004), then practices of investing represent a tension, since they rest on aims to rationally capture the unknown horizons (Esposito 2024). If we theorise investing through the central tension between autonomy and rational mastery characteristic of the imaginary signification of modernity (Castoriadis 1997; Wagner 1994), it falls firmly towards mastery. Hence, I discuss future imaginaries (Beckert 2016), the major meaning-making forces behind investing, as reflecting the tension between open future and control-driven forecasting. To better account for this tension between control and uncontrollability (Rosa 2020), I approach the figure of an investor as not being unidimensional. Instead, following Želinský (2024), I observe an inner dynamic within the figure. Some investors are on the side of opening the horizons, others are on the side of following well-trodden paths, closing the uncertainty (despite both striving to capture the yet-to-come). With Sloterdijk (2013) we may link these types to the figure of a pirate, swimming into unknown waters in hopes of discovering a bounty, and to an insurance agent, meticulously describing, mapping and record-keeping to ensure that the possible will be the probable. The discussion about investing and the future is illustrated with preliminary results of my ongoing dissertation research on the boom in micro-investing in the Czech and Slovak post-socialist context. |