Paper short abstract:

This paper describes how a Facebook group of Australians and New Zealanders with Parkinson’s Disease construct hope online. Using the concept of “therapeutic citizenship,” I examine the creative, productive, and exclusionist potential of collective imaginings of the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper describes how a group of retired Australians and New Zealanders with Parkinson’s Disease drew on hopeful technologies to imagine futures online during 2020. Through online campaigns for public provision of medications, seminars on technologies such as Deep Brain Stimulation, and the sharing of questions, advice and experiences, this group of people with Parkinson’s Disease stretched and shaped the boundaries of possible futures. Hope emerged in the form of a “therapeutic citizenship,” through the practices and expectations of belonging to the Facebook group. In this sense, hope becomes something embodied and practiced, something one does in the active sense, rather than an intangible thing one imagines. These projects of hope involved specific expectations and responsibilities, ways of knowing and acting, and ethical orientations towards the future. Through the fashioning of a “therapeutic citizenship,” the Facebook group enabled some persons to age and live well with Parkinson’s Disease, constructing not only the “kinds of lives for which one can hope,” but defining who can hope for what. I suggest that viewing hope in the context of retirement and chronic illness brings into perspective projects of hope extending beyond those for the self or individual; that are influenced by local and global, political, and economic forces; and that are imbued with creative and productive – as much as exclusionary – potential.