Mission impossible? The fugacity of the new and the persistence of the old as mechanisms of un-making futures

Abstract

Future-making allures with creating new spaces of possibilities, even amid apocalyptic times. However, in response to the call for more emphasis on what new possibilities emerge from geographies of the impossible, we question an overtly affirmative and hopeful focus on the making of new spaces and futures. We argue that the fugacity of emergent possibilities, coupled with the socio-material persistence and discursive hegemony of the old, constitute powerful mechanisms of future-unmaking that need to be critically examined.