Short Abstract:

Our panel confronts concepts and practices of dreaming conventionally underpinning the idea of the good life: individualism, mobility, consumption, digitalization. What ideals, forms, desires must be refused in times of crisis? Per the poet Langston Hughes, which dreams must be “deferred”, and how?

Long Abstract:

"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

Langston Hughes’ poetic words from 1951 illuminate a dilemma we now face. The world is literally burning, bush-fires and conflicts rage, global temperatures are rising. The image does not entice. The writing is on the wall, yet we suspend disbelief in a dystopian future to pursue our lives and dreams, conducting business as usual. Hughes reflected on the American dream, hard to attain, then and now, for any non-privileged or disenfranchised citizen. Yet this dream is marketed widely and globally, to everyone everywhere, as the desirable “good life”: a pervasive ideal that you can have (buy) and be whatever you want. What if this has to be undone? Can we hose the writing off the wall? Refuse the form, find new evocations?

We invite papers that confront concepts and practices of dreaming which conventionally underpin the ideal of “the good life”: affluence, growth, individualism, mobility, freedom through consumption, digitalization, AI. What dreams are contested in times of uncertainty and crisis? What dreams must be created, elevated, and protected? What does unwriting dreaming mean for whom, where, in which circumstances? If dreams are ephemeral by nature, what is their relation to “truths”, policy and practice? What do our dreams become when blurred with digital media; when they leave our bodies and join larger tangles of socio-technical materialities? What if dreaming is all you have? Per Langston Hughes, which dreams must be “deferred”, and how?

This Panel has so far received 3 paper proposal(s).
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