Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)

While we know that our imaginations shape our sociocultural experience through the creation of worlds, modernity thrives by throwing tight constraints around it, degenerating our ability and capacity to imagine radically new futures into being. This ontological war against possibility is ‘defuturing’ — there are less futures available to us; or put... See more

Faced with climate change and other interconnected existential crises in the twenty-first century, it is quickly becoming a cliché to say that there is a strong need to “imagine better futures.” But such a statement hides many questions and challenges. Who gets to imagine these futures? Who feels safe and supported enough, economically, politically... See more

My argument is that to reimagine what’s possible is one of the most complex cultural and political acts one can engage in at present, whether we are in the academy, activism, or policy making. This is because one of the most pernicious effects of today’s dominant political, economic, and belief systems has been to narrow down, if not colonize, the

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