Dictatorship of Speculation - Kolozova

Katerina Kolozova is perhaps the most exciting thinker coming out of Francois Laruelle and non-philosophy.  As Jodi Dean says: "Her creative extension of the 'non-philosophy' of Laruelle radicalizes feminist philosophy as it expands possibilities for theorizing the real as experienced."

Kolozova's Towards a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism - Marx & Laruelle defines the problem as how to overcome alienation, which is described as the generic mode of exploitation. "The alienation at issue is (at least) threefold: one is alienated from one's labor, one is alienated from the fruits of one's labor; and finally, one is alienated from the physicality of one's life by subjecting them to the rule of an idea."

Provocatively, this third flavor of alienation is described as the "dictatorship of speculation" - not just in financial capitalism, but also in theory, politics and daily life.  For example, think of how financial speculation is "translated into concrete policies affecting the lives of concrete individuals."

In Laruellian terms, we are shaped by the syntax of the real. Our lives are determined in the last instance by the real. This emphasizes immanence which in many ways is synonymous with the real.  Non-philosophy, like Marx, is against positivism and opposed to philosophical materialisms (which "equate truth with reality" - instituting the 'truth' ...as a higher form of reality).

Kolozova posits "a response that consists of the attempt to invent societal and economic models that would abolish or radically diminish the alienation in question... [the solution] stems from the problem of surplus value... (that) grounds capitalist logic..."

"...theoretical investigation of the modes of lingual construction of our realities should be conducted in a way so those realities are affirmed as exteriority (ie as instances of the real in their own right). It is indispensable to do so in order to arrive to the possibility of overcoming the dictatorship of speculation in contemporary financial capitalism, post-modern theory, and politics..."

There is a 'sufficiency' inherent to the standard disciplines, eg philosophy, where the resulting thought "usurps the status of the real conditions of the world."  Can we invent new non-standard disciplines without the concept of sufficiency, where thought is "transcendentally impoverished", where "thought is always surprised by the real, and that gaps and inconsistencies in a system of thought are allowed, and moreover, are invited and unavoidable since thought succumbs to the “real” rather than to the “real’s meaning.”