Dirk Hoyer

“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Frederic Jameson (2003)

Stories affect the imagination and the collective imaginaries of the potential political horizons. The often-cited dictum “There is no alternative” (TINA) to the current economic and political arrangements can be seen as a control myth in a time which according to Jonah Sachs (2012) has lost its connection to its traditional myths and hence exists in a “myth gap”.

The increasing political polarization in the (Western) world reflects the absence of a common denominator, nations once described by Benedict Anderson (1983) as “imagined communities” are dissolving into imagined micro-communities with conflicting stories and hence conflicting values. Chantal Mouffe (2005) warned about a political sphere in which the political is played out in moral categories as opposed to being a forum of conflicting alternatives and open debates.

As Seargeant (2020) pointed out stories are pinned around two emotions: hope and fear. In the current (post) pandemic world dominated by ongoing military confrontations in Europe the dominant emotion for stories is fear.

More than 500 years ago Thomas More demonstrated with his book “Utopia” that hope for a better society can be articulated in a fictional story and impact social change. In the aftermath of the two World Wars the ideas of blueprint utopias and metanarratives of hope became scrutinized, deconstructed and ultimately rejected by the dominant discourse. If universal utopias have become impractical and discredited intellectual constructs what are the stories that can give a shape to hope? What kind of stories can promote social equality and political alternatives from a consequentialist and from a deontological point of view? This paper will argue that the future stories of hope will be articulated through very specific local contexts, delineate a clear idea of political agency and concrete future images. As Lewis Mumford (1922:184) wrote, underlining the eu-topos (the good place) aspect of Utopia: “It should not surprise us therefore if the foundations for eutopia were established in ruined countries; that is, in countries where metropolitan civilization has collapsed and where all its paper prestige is no longer accepted at paper value.”