True North

In this article, I suggest that our current relation to the sociopolitical future is one where we are blocked from changing our view of what that future is or could be. In this sense, we are trapped in a time loop wherein the challenges before us are continuously met with social and political solutions designed for futures past, old futures. These past possible futures are ones that failed to solve the problems they were offered to address. As such, there is no growth, change, or redemption that could activate a new future; there is only the rehearsal of the old ones: failed futures from the past. What's more, this process of defuturing also relies on a winnowing of the past such that only those pasts that align with our present are allowed to be brought forward. I argue that, to reactivate our future, we also need to reactivate our pasts. I am thinking of those pasts that we do not seek or do not want but that nevertheless come to us. These are the multiple and competing pasts that swirl with present and future as in a vortex, denying any one past the privilege of guiding, directing, or foreclosing the future. It is only by facing this vortex and reopening the past that we can re-open the future and escape the time loop of our ever-receding horizon

Physics · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Philosophy

• Meeting utopia halfway

  Open Access•Cosimo Stahl•European Journal of Social Theory•2025

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