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Paper short abstract:

In a context defined by constant performances of future imaginaries, research in an inner-city occupation in Cape Town suggests that people enact their individual future imaginaries precise-ly in distancing themselves from these imposed alter-politics by creating spaces of ordinary eve-ryday lives.

Paper long abstract:

Ismail, whom I quote in the title, is one out of around 800 persons currently living in the old hospital of Woodstock, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in the center of Cape Town. Sharp increases of rents and the lack of governmental assistance and regulations pushes many long-term residents into precarious living conditions, often ending in homelessness. Formed in 2016, the social movement "Reclaim The City", occupied the hospital as a form of protest against these processes. However, over time, the occupied hospital evolved to a space in which new ideologies and alternative modes of cohabitation are performed, forming what Hage (2015) called a space of 'alter-politics'. This space, thus, epitomizes both crisis as well as the struggle to overcome this crisis.

How do people, who are being pushed to live in a context of constant 'alter-politics' incorporate these narratives of hope, struggle and resistance into their very own constructions and performances of future imaginaries?Based on my long-term fieldwork I argue that it is precisely the withdrawal from movement participation and the construction of an ordinary everyday life that constitutes the performance of future imaginaries: Walking one's kids to their familiar school, keeping one's job at the supermarket, having a secure place to cook for family and friends are all examples of everyday practices under threat and at the same time performances of future imaginaries. (Re)constructing these spaces of the Ordinary thereby binds both the maintenance and restoration of an (imagined) past as well as ideas of personal and political transformations.