The ambivalence of potential

Abstract

Potential is an ambivalent concept, one that is often drawn on in ways that may occlude the political possibilities of the present moment. This paper engages with the tense of potential, highlighting how narrations of possible futures can foreclose alternative possibilities. I analyze two common modalities in which potential appears; potential as abstract hope, and potential as an otherwise that needs to be attuned to. I show, through a brief reflection on the making of mineral futures in the Canadian mining industry, how potential is ambivalent, available (and necessary) to capital as much as it is available to anti-capitalist or non-capitalist movements. I then sketch a genealogy of potential, highlighting a few of the sources through which potential is thought. In doing so, I suggest the need to attend to a set of different concerns, namely, who has the power to actualize, why we might want to make this the focus of our critical attention, and why working ethically alongside the cramped spaces within which efforts to actualize otherwise potentials exist may be a more effective form of analysis and politics. I emphasize the importance of understanding potential within its emplaced contexts and argue for a more holistic engagement with potential in academic discourse, considering both liberation and foreclosure in the actualization of otherwises and alternatives.