Chronotopic imaginaries: A narrative approach to the letters from the post-pandemic future

Abstract

This paper explores how humans’ future engagements with their environments have been imagined in our present time of crisis and how these imaginings serve as evidence of current concerns and possible alternatives to existing practices. The paper is based on the data collected in the international study “Will the World Never Be the Same? Letters from a Post-Corona Future.” We discuss how everyday practices and experiences are influenced by the pandemic crisis and demonstrate that a re-elaboration of the Bakhtinian concept of “chronotope” can be used to describe the basic spatiotemporal configurations of human experience constituting the narrative dynamics of the representations of the future. Drawing on the concept of “narrative foresight,” we illustrate how changes and disruptions in everyday experiences can be turned into transformative “lessons for the future.”