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- Convenors:
-
Jessica Enevold Duncan
(Lund University)
Lee Dallas (Lund University)
Josefine L. Sarkez-Knudsen (Lund University)
Annette N. Markham (Utrecht University)
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- Format:
- Panel
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?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork among local permaculture gardeners and farmers in the Oresund Region, this paper examines permaculture practice as a framework for (un)dreaming and (re)imagining alternative futures.
Paper Abstract:
In response to the environmental and climate crisis and the urgent need to develop new understandings of what it means to live together on a damaged planet, this paper examines how local actors within the permaculture movement develop alternative ways of inhabiting the land and ideals to dream by. Guided by these methods and ideals, the informants create detailed plans and maps envisioning future landscapes – transforming degraded monocultural fields into thriving ecosystems of orchards, meadows, forests, gardens, and wilderness.
The maps serve as entry points into the informants’ hopes and dreams of a sustainable future. Drawing on Ruth Levitas’ concept of Utopia, the maps are understood as a materialisation of the informants’ imagining of the future – embodied examples of transformation that suggest alternative ways of inhabiting the land through permaculture practice. Central to this practice are notions of rootedness and connectedness emphasised in the informants’ continuous engagement with the surrounding landscape.
As American writer Elvia Wilk suggests, “rooting oneself and learning to become part of the landscape could be seen as a ferocious claim to life” – perhaps not life as we know it, but a reimagined, alternative form of life that shifts away from affluence, growth, and freedom through consumption toward temporal freedom and coexistence with the land.
Through their engagement, the informants confront prevailing ideals of “the good life” by undreaming past practices and imaginings. In response, they develop new meanings and expertise that enable them to dream of a “good life” within planetary boundaries.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper examines how Zdeněk Miler’s Little Mole cartoons (1957–2002) explore themes of technology and consumerism. We show the shift from techno-optimism to environmental critique, focusing on Little Mole in a Dream (1984), that reconsiders petromodern dreams, and the ideal of returning to nature.
Paper Abstract:
The Little Mole is a character from dozens of cartoons by Czech filmmaker Zdeněk Miler. The short films, made between 1957 and 2002, were mostly shot in state-socialist Czechoslovakia, but were marketed worldwide even then – just like today. In many of the Little Mole’s adventures, the character’s appeal lies in his interactions with an environment that is decidedly anthropocentric. Little Mole’s – or more-than-human – presence and actions resemble those of an ignorant child. And just like that child, they make it possible to reflect upon complex issues, such as what is to become of the world in an age of increasing consumption and demand for technological inventions and devices. In some of Miler’s longer films, Little Mole explores consumerism and human civilisation’s reliance on technology to solve everyday problems from childbirth to car maintenance to the conveniences of the smart home. In the paper, I outline the changes to the dreams depicted in Miler’s movies as he and the Little Mole shift from techno-optimism to critical reflection on the environmental impact of modernisation. I then proceed to offer an overview of concrete tropes related to technology present especially in his movie Little Mole in a Dream (1984). This movie directly addresses the necessity to reconsider the dreams and promises of petromodernity, but also the ideal of an idyllic return to nature – at least if humans are to be included.
Paper Short Abstract:
Based on immersive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how youths in rural southern Mozambique (re/un)dream their futures amidst limited work and education opportunities. It examines local aspirations of wellbeing and social standing, highlighting their capacity to imagine new possibilities
Paper Abstract:
For how long can a young person defer their dream before it dries up like a raisin in the sun? In answering the panel’s call to explore what happens to dreams deferred, I would like to contribute a paper derived from my recent ethnographic fieldwork. Many young people in rural southern Mozambique upon graduating from high school find themselves with no options for employment or further education and training. Should they un-dream or re-dream the expectations tied to the affordances of attending school? Their dilemma reflects in Hughes’ contemplations on non-privileged citizens’ limited accessibility to “the good life”. My research examines the aspirations of Mozambican youths, whose dreams are embedded in local expressions of wellbeing and social standing, rather than individualism, mobility, and consumption as markers anticipated in other places. For Appadurai*, the capacity to aspire is not evenly distributed in society, and the poor simply seek to optimise the terms and conditions of their immediate local lives. This puts into question people’s plasticity to dream another dream for themselves - individually or collectively - as arguably any change not imposed is a change imagined for the self. I am currently writing my PhD thesis in Anthropology and would like to present my findings for the purpose of this conference through the lens of the deferred dream proposed by this panel.
*Appadurai, A (2004) The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition. In V. Rao and M. Walton (Ed.) Culture and Public Action, Stanford University Press.
Paper Short Abstract:
Talk uses contemporary poetry by Ada Limón, Adrienne Rich, and Joy Harjo to rethink the “good life” amid crisis. Their work inspires a vision of resilience, interconnection, and responsibility, guiding us toward sustainable dreams that honor both human and ecological needs over outdated ideals.
Paper Abstract:
This talk, Deferred Dreams and Ecological Imagination: Rewriting the Good Life in Times of Crisis, examines how contemporary poetry can guide us in rethinking the “good life” amidst climate change and social instability. Through the works of poets Ada Limón, Adrienne Rich, and Joy Harjo, I explore how poetry helps us confront, defer, and transform dreams that may no longer be sustainable or desirable.
Ada Limón’s poetry, particularly in Dead Stars, grapples with survival and resilience. She asks, “What would happen if we decided to survive more?”—a call to rethink dreams centered on growth and consumption, urging us toward a future of communal resilience. Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck pushes us to face the damage of past ideals, revealing both devastation and the treasures that remain. Her work compels us to refocus our dreams on community and ecological awareness.
Joy Harjo’s poetry, such as A Map to the Next World, underscores humanity’s deep relationship with nature. Harjo’s vision of the natural world as a partner in our journey challenges us to imagine the good life as one rooted in respect for the earth. Together, these poets suggest a socio-climatic imaginary where resilience, interconnectedness, and responsibility replace outdated ideals of individual success.
Paper Short Abstract:
Using fieldwork on everyday walking rituals as a base, this paper explores how experiences of nothingness relate to the (un)writing of dreams and narratives. Walking, sleeping, “doing nothing”: do these processes help enact new futures, or does their potentiality fade away once they are transcribed?
Paper Abstract:
Inspired by Orvar Löfgren and Billy Ehn’s work on “doing nothing”, as well as Haytham El Wardany’s The Book of Sleep, this paper explores the relationship between experiences of nothingness or absence and the (re)production of dreams, narratives and futures. Specifically, I present selections of ethnographic fieldwork on everyday walking rituals in contemporary Sweden, and explore the links between this material and processes of sleeping, dreaming and doing nothing. “Going for a walk” – a routine, seemingly ordinary activity – is often described by its enactors as a form of “doing nothing”, a contour to the everyday. But how does this “nothing” work, not least in a society that prioritizes endless thing-ification? When an engine of contingencies goes quiet, what else becomes audible?
The ambition here is not to arrive at *knowing* walking or doing nothing, but rather to, in the words of Kathleen Stewart, “fashion some form of address that is adequate to their form”. I see dreams as a tool to work toward such an address. Dreams are visions that come when nothing happens, but once apprehended, they are assigned authors and become stories, fetish objects. Therein lies both possibility and risk. Dreaming, walking, doing nothing: do these processes help us envision new futures, or does their potentiality fade away once they are touched, transcribed? By placing these processes in dialogue with one another, this paper explores not only how they overlap, but also how they might inform, write or unwrite larger narratives of past/future and self/world.
Paper Short Abstract:
On social media people are dreaming of moss, and dreaming with moss. Based on digital auto/ethnographic analysis, and emphasising relations of embodied pleasure, intimacy, and joy amidst widespread climate distress, I consider moss as a way to suspend the more violent dreams of a colonial-capitalist world, and speculate on a different sort of good life
Paper Abstract:
On social media, people are dreaming of moss: of touching it, of being consumed by it, of becoming it. In this paper I draw on autoethnographic research with Facebook’s ‘Moss Appreciation Society’, and an analysis of the #girlmoss hashtag; considering the circulation of photography, poetry, and memes, as a process of collective asynchronous dreaming. I highlight how online discourse around moss seems to centre the bodily, the sensuous, and the intimate, exploring this through the lens of the ‘eco-erotic’. I connect this with circulation of other literary texts online - including the work of Mary Oliver, Sophie Strand, and Jarod K Anderson - pointing to themes of defamiliarisation and ‘becoming otherwise’, noting their use of a speculative, imaginative mode that also deals with existential themes through the bodily, and can be read through the lens of queer ecology.
Locating this process of dreaming with moss historically, I discuss the ethico-political significance of yearning towards an ‘other' defined by softness and slowness, in a colonial-imperalist-capitalist world. I also consider the significance of online practices devoted to pleasure and joy (in visual-tactile relationships with the more-than-human) amidst climate change reporting and ecological distress. I follow Audre Lorde’s stance on the political and creative potential of the erotic, to argue that moss is offering many internet users a route for subverting, or at very least suspending, the more violent dreams (or perhaps nightmares) of late stage capitalism, through presenting a vision of the good life defined by pleasurable and embodied multispecies relations.
Paper Short Abstract:
'If I had...' is a way of dreaming. It contains hopes for a better future, contingent upon having. Bringing the "if-ing" of poet Langston Hughes and the theory of “cruel optimism” of Laurent Berlant into conversation with my research on real-estate practices, dreams and sustainability, I show why some house-dreaming may have to be deferred.
Paper Abstract:
My argument borrows beauty and voice from Langston Hughes, writer and social activist (1901–1967) and cultural critic Laurent Berlant, (1957–2021). I bring their contemplations to bear on my real-estate research. I analyze building-site billboards, property-ads, Instagram project-visions, object-descriptions from Hemnet (website for finding 'dream houses'), and do participant observations at house-showings. Hughes’ Harlem-renaissance poetry here illuminates an aspect of the human condition which makes happiness contingent upon such dreaming, consumption of goods, the backbone of capitalist society. The pursuit of it, in Berlant’s words, only “immiserates” (2006), and trust in its promises may actually need to be suspended?
“If I had some small change//I’d buy me a mule//get on that mule and //ride like a fool,” starts the poem “If’ing”. A man on the sidewalk "ain't got a dime," but is still cheerily engaged in an act of ‘American dreaming.’ The inherent criticism becomes incisive, when Berlant is juxtaposed as illusory conversation partner: “when we talk about an object of desire, we are really talking about a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make to us and make possible for us” (2006). The house-dreams painted by realtors, building companies, make-over shows, buyers’ imagined futures, are untenable in light of ‘strong sustainability.’ They constitute ’if’-ings,’ dreams dangerous to pursue, but decisive to defer, if planetary concerns be heeded. They may in effect threaten our ‘good lives’. Ironically, attachment to often creative, life-affirming house-dreaming may be theorized as a 'cruel optimism' (Berlant 2011), leading to undesired consequences for all.
Paper Short Abstract:
Drawing on fieldwork conducted in queer archives and inspired by Muñoz’s take on queerness as hope and utopia (2009), this paper discusses queer archives’ potential roles in creating space for hope(ing) and dreaming and shaping pathways to queer futures. What dreams are made possible by creating, handling, preserving queer heritage?
Paper Abstract:
In his influential work Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), José Esteban Muñoz states that the future “is queerness’s domain”. Queerness is an ideal, a utopia, and closely connected to dreaming insofar as it is an exercise of hope and a rejection of the here and now, projecting itself as a potentiality and possibility of future.
In this paper, I will direct my gaze towards the queer archive as a central part of queer memory-making, utopia and dreaming. Drawing on my fieldwork in different archives, where I observed and interviewed archivists and volunteers, I discuss how handling and preserving memory is deeply rooted in the past while aiming at creating changes and possibilities for the future. Inspired by Muñoz’s take on queerness as hope and utopia, this paper addresses queer archives’ role in and potential for creating space for hope(ing) and dreaming. What dreams are made possible by creating, handling, preserving queer heritage? And what does it take for a community to be entitled to dream?
I am interested in how queer archives – both as sites and as agents – contribute to opening up new paths for (un)writing (queer) history through their archival work and information practices. The materiality of the archive opens doors to feelings and to dreaming of an altered reality. By handling and preserving queer history, the archive allows for queer futures to be dreamed of and hoped for.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper examines how young male west African migrants in Europe reflect on their dream of playing professional football for a living. Rather than succumbing to the “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of professional sports and late neoliberal capitalism, or outright abandoning the dream of sport success and stardom, the young men redefine the meaning of a life worth living through migration and sport.
Paper Abstract:
Global football is saturated with narratives of dream and aspiration. International football academies take up aspirational names – “Right to Dream” in Ghana, “Aspire Academy” in Qatar – and wealthy football stars inspire cohorts of youth to pursue the sport. Transformed into a global business and market of football players, the football industry is encouraging countless west African young men – mostly, but not only, from underprivileged backgrounds – to chase elusive dreams of playing, migrating to Europe, and earning through the sport. The dreamers, however, are confronted with a competitive industry that demands young bodies and with restrictive border regimes that push them towards irregular migration routes, societal margins, and susceptibility to exploitation.
This paper examines the west African migrants’ reflections on the dream of playing football for a living, especially as the enticing possibilities of football careers start diminishing. It draws from recent interviews with west African football migrants in Europe (2024) and earlier ethnographic fieldwork on football migration aspirations in Cameroon (2014-2016) to analyze how elusive dreams are re-negotiated by the dreamers themselves. A key finding is that the young men do not simply consume and chase the dream of sport success and stardom, nor do they outright reject or abandon it. Rather, through migration and sport, they redefine the meaning of a life worth living. The paper examines the footballers’ reflections and trajectories to reveal how people transform meanings of a “good life” in the midst of “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of late neoliberal capitalism.