TY - JOUR
T1 - Worldless futures
T2 - On the allure of ‘worlds to come’
AU - Dekeyser, Thomas
N1 - Funding Information:
I would first of all like to thank Pat Noxolo and the anonymous reviewers for their expert guidance and helpful comments. I would also like to thank Thomas Jellis, Harriet Hawkins, and Paul Harrison for discussions on earlier versions of this paper, and Paul Simpson and David Bissell, the organisers of the RGS-IBG 2021 Conference session ‘Disarticulated Subjects’, for providing me with the opportunity to present the initial ideas that would later be developed into this paper. Thank you, as well, to the audience at that session for their encouraging questions and comments.
Publisher Copyright:
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2022 The Author. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers).
PY - 2023/5/4
Y1 - 2023/5/4
N2 - This paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting ‘new worlds’, ‘worlds to come’, and ‘possible worlds’. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, which I refer to as ‘worldly futuring’, the paper calls attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. It asks: what is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world-building over world-ending? Articulating a response to this question, the paper examines how the investment in future worlds functions, what it secures, and what it indemnifies against. Definitionally, ‘world’ lacks the ethical designation required to explain its signalling function as a positive horizon of futurity. Worldly futuring instead relies on three connected affirmations: world presents the promise of (meta)stability, of commonality, and of meaning. In prioritising these affirmations, worldly futuring immunises itself against the possibility of their radical absence or violent undoing, thereby working around, against, or sublating the threat of worldlessness. However, building on the scholarship of Derrida on worldless alterity and theorists of black negativity's political calls for the ‘end of the world’, the central argument of the paper is that working-away worldlessness is neither inherently possible nor necessarily desirable. Despite any attempt at immunisation, worldlessness haunts any project of worldly futuring, showing us that the assumed connection between world and futurity may well be an obstacle to radical futures.Short AbstractThis paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting ‘new worlds’, ‘worlds to come’, and ‘possible worlds’. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, I call attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. What is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world-building over world-ending?
AB - This paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting ‘new worlds’, ‘worlds to come’, and ‘possible worlds’. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, which I refer to as ‘worldly futuring’, the paper calls attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. It asks: what is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world-building over world-ending? Articulating a response to this question, the paper examines how the investment in future worlds functions, what it secures, and what it indemnifies against. Definitionally, ‘world’ lacks the ethical designation required to explain its signalling function as a positive horizon of futurity. Worldly futuring instead relies on three connected affirmations: world presents the promise of (meta)stability, of commonality, and of meaning. In prioritising these affirmations, worldly futuring immunises itself against the possibility of their radical absence or violent undoing, thereby working around, against, or sublating the threat of worldlessness. However, building on the scholarship of Derrida on worldless alterity and theorists of black negativity's political calls for the ‘end of the world’, the central argument of the paper is that working-away worldlessness is neither inherently possible nor necessarily desirable. Despite any attempt at immunisation, worldlessness haunts any project of worldly futuring, showing us that the assumed connection between world and futurity may well be an obstacle to radical futures.Short AbstractThis paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting ‘new worlds’, ‘worlds to come’, and ‘possible worlds’. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, I call attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. What is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world-building over world-ending?
KW - alterity
KW - end of the world
KW - futurity
KW - hope
KW - world
KW - worldlessness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139961923&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/tran.12579
DO - 10.1111/tran.12579
M3 - Article
SN - 0020-2754
VL - 48
SP - 338
EP - 350
JO - Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
JF - Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
IS - 2
ER -