Speculative experimentations with other worlds: How cli-fi sustains radical hope among environmental activists in Denmark

Abstract

Purpose

Amid ongoing and escalating ecological collapse, sustaining hope presents a major challenge for environmental activists. The purpose of this article is to investigate how speculative fiction – specifically climate fiction (cli-fi) – cultivates and sustains radical hope among Danish climate activists by enabling imaginative engagements with alternative future worlds.

Methods

Drawing on in-depth interviews with environmental activists in Denmark, the study explores how activists engage with cli-fi as a narrative and affective resource for utopian world-building.

Major findings

Activists utilize both dystopian and eutopian elements of the cli-fi genre to speculatively experiment with possible better climate futures. These stories fuel their capacity to ‘become utopian’, that is, to wager on the possibility of imagining and enacting radically different futures despite present despair.

Conclusion

By framing radical hope as speculative experimentation with desired possible worlds inspired by cli-fi, the article contributes to our understanding of how the imaginative practice of worlding fosters new affective orientations and enables hopeful ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the face of ecological crisis.