Abstract
Futures thinking, and doing, has been the domain of the privileged majority for centuries. The very idea of ‘the future’ (singular) was fundamental to the crea-tion and maintenance of imperial domination and technological modernity. To this day, mainstream media readily emits the narrow and repetitive science fic-tion tropes void of (realistic, fair) representation of a wider inclusive society, specifically absent of queerness. This paper builds on the work of Alexis Lothian’s ‘Old Futures: speculative fiction and queer possibility’ in which she explores the forces queer people (and other marginalised communities) invoke when they dream up alternative futures as a way of transforming the present. To do so, the author presents findings from an anonymized global study of the correlations be-tween queer identity and imagination literacy. Addressing the questions - how does identity inform our ability to imagine the future and the content of those imagined futures?
Keywords
queer theory; futures studies; imagination literacy; margins; speculative fiction
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.292
Citation
Barton, G. (2024) Queer Futures: Correlations between queer identity and imagination literacy, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.292
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Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Queer Futures: Correlations between queer identity and imagination literacy
Futures thinking, and doing, has been the domain of the privileged majority for centuries. The very idea of ‘the future’ (singular) was fundamental to the crea-tion and maintenance of imperial domination and technological modernity. To this day, mainstream media readily emits the narrow and repetitive science fic-tion tropes void of (realistic, fair) representation of a wider inclusive society, specifically absent of queerness. This paper builds on the work of Alexis Lothian’s ‘Old Futures: speculative fiction and queer possibility’ in which she explores the forces queer people (and other marginalised communities) invoke when they dream up alternative futures as a way of transforming the present. To do so, the author presents findings from an anonymized global study of the correlations be-tween queer identity and imagination literacy. Addressing the questions - how does identity inform our ability to imagine the future and the content of those imagined futures?