Introduction to Speculation Editorial

When we take a chance as individuals in everyday life—quitting a job before you’ve lined up something better, falling in love, deciding to read this journal rather than going for a walk—we establish a relationship to the future. We speculate. Speculation, therefore, is a necessary component of human agency. This is why the opponents of speculation appear to be captured by speculation insofar as they hope for a world after the reign of speculation. Utopias and dystopias are speculative designs that are rooted in the very world from which they exit. So, the empirical world is not cut off from numberless speculative futures, but is shaped by all those futures that are presently hoped for, invested in, banked on, planned for and insured against. The future is not remote, but immanent in what is done now in order to bring about change, maintain the status quo or surrender to fate.