Paper short abstract:

My paper focuses on Esperanto speakers and supporters in France, exploring how the weakening of Esperanto associations and the growing use of this language online seem to have diverted Esperanto from its initial project to create an alternative world through international communication.

Paper long abstract:

My paper aims to debate perceptions of past, present and future among Esperanto speakers and supporters. Many Esperanto supporters based in associations in France regard Esperanto as the language of the future; as a tool aimed at gathering peoples together through neutral and equitable communication one day. These same supporters, however, tend to regret the way this language lost momentum and how it can be easily conveyed as a failed project, situated in the past and no longer spoken. Along these lines, my main ethnographic question is: between Esperanto being a thing of the past and a utopian project for the future, what is currently happening and being done among its supporters, in the present?

Through a study conducted mostly in Paris and based on participant observation, interviews and archival research, I critically approach the weakening of Esperanto associations, the ageing of many of their long-standing members and the simultaneous strengthening of the online use of the language among young people. Older supporters equal the decline of associations with the failure of Esperanto, as, in their view, younger speakers perceive Esperanto as an intellectual game, rather than as a tool to create an alternative world through international communication. Focusing on the Paris-based left-wing Esperanto association SAT-Amikaro and debating mostly with the literature on hopes for change (Jansen 2015, Ringel 2012) and generational lifetimes (Jordheim 2018), I discuss how Esperanto became a fully-fledged language, but is seen as having been disconnected from political activism for a better world.