ABSTRACT
With reference to Isabelle Stengers’ interpretation of Whitehead’s idea of speculative philosophy and the revisionist ontologies of Merleau-Ponty, Arendt and Jean-Luc Nancy, this chapter explores the relationship between speculative thinking and politics. The link hinges on the futural temporality of speculation, which opens experience to possibility per se. On this basis, the outcomes of speculative research are unpredictable. Against assumptions within many contemporary liberal democracies that this kind of research is a waste of taxpayer’s money, it is argued that speculation, so understood, is crucial to political agency, democratic pluralism and innovation. The chapter also explores how those same ontologies, by virtue of practising speculative philosophy, reopen paths for thinking, and it offers suggestions for how speculation is practised in humanities teaching and research.
