Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times

by Aimee Bahng

In Migrant Futures Aimee Bahng traces the cultural production of futurity by juxtaposing the practices of speculative finance against those of speculative fiction. While financial speculation creates a future based on predicting and mitigating risk for wealthy elites, the wide range of speculative novels, comics, films, and narratives Bahng examines imagines alternative futures that envision the multiple possibilities that exist beyond capital’s reach. Whether presenting new spatial futures of the US-Mexico borderlands or inventing forms of kinship in Singapore in order to survive in an economy designed for the few, the varied texts Bahng analyzes illuminate how the futurity of speculative finance is experienced by those who find themselves mired in it. At the same time these displaced, undocumented, unbanked, and disavowed characters imagine alternative visions of the future that offer ways to bring forth new political economies, social structures, and subjectivities that exceed the framework of capitalism.

Genres: Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

Published April 27, 2018

Reviews

[Paige]

read for final project- Bahng brings up great points about capitalism/financial speculation’s inherent contradictions to like,, liberation as a whole… envisioning alternative futurities as a means for change is fascinating, still sorting out what that means materially though

[Adz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved a lot of things about this book. I found the introduction to actually be one of my favorite parts. Though the details of the book, the specific analyses are excellent I really just loved the big picture critical take on speculation and the colonization of the Futures. I think this framing sort of putting speculative fiction against financial speculation is incredible for thinking through collective temporal fictions and the utility the serve both for an against or outside of capitalism.

I'm still digesting Bahng' general critique of Western Progress. The nature of linearity and progress in Western history if pretty deeply entangled with a lot of other ideas from Social Justice to Science so trying to step outside of that with this book was an exercise I found really useful. Before this I had always framed the critique as "progress for whom" but now I think I'm even more skeptical about the nature of metrics and see attempts to make objective proofs of progress as more a technology or tool to serve anti-democratic ends. That is to say, rather than giving people the power, we will prove "empirically" that their lives are better and thus legitimize our rule. Bahng gives great examples of the ways this narrative excludes huge groups of people, indigenous people in Latin America, Asians who were the first subjects in the bloody history of genetics work and other colonized subject. I also think about the way that even for people within the heart of empire such as myself, the supposed beneficiaries of progress, life has actually gotten materially far worse for my generation to the point that now we're even seeing life expectancy go down.

I loved the final chapter on Salt Fish Girl because it was the only media I had experienced before reading this book. I thought the meditations on mutation as yet another sight for normative dominance was really amazing. The whole book has made me think a lot more critically about what science is and what is does versus what it claims to do. I think there is a sort of uniformity that is a principle expression of empire, familiar in history (i.e w land as plantations and suburbs and franchises, with culture in the US, with forms of gender and sexual expression, etc.) that Bahng really draws attention to in it's present and less ossified manifestations (temporal colonization in speculative futures, genetic colonization, etc.)

I will say, the book hinted at, I think it was called, critical financial studies. I was hoping to get a bit more of that and maybe some more nuts and bolts history of the way speculation has and currently operates in the financial market. That's just me though, and I also think in some ways that desire is to satisfy the deconstructive impulse while I think this book is generally more focused on the positive/reparative project of creating networks of speculation that exist outside of the market. I'm just happy to understand as much of it as I did tbh. Namechecks some favs, Fisher, Sedgewick, Haraway, but there's also a lot of names I didn't recognize.

Ultimately definitely an amazing book that I think creates the opening for a broader reparative project in thinking about fiction, particular anti-colonial fiction, and how it can operate to create realizable futures.

[Louis Pilard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid read - dope premise, dope execution, good fun.

[Leah Montange · Rating 4 out of 5]

i just read the intro and epilogue cuz my friend recommended this book but its not my genre that i need to be focussing on right now. got some citations for critical financialization studies from it. i find it a bit depressing to counterpose decolonial speculative fiction against speculative finance, just because the latter dwarfs the former in its scope and material impacts. and yet, i appreciate the need to lift up, expand upon, and invest in alternative, decolonial forms of speculation.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review for this title will be available in the SFRA Review. I will post to it when it is published.