“…the idea that a well defined now exists throughout the universe is an illusion, an illegitimate extrapolation of our own experience.”
(Rovelli 2017, p. 40)
The (S)place/time bubble of hope as a phrase or description was formed through perceiving of space as moving through and place as dwelling with (Payne and Wattchow, 2009) and because hope is perceived as a presently situated intersubjective phenomenon. The object(s) of hope imagined/visioned and the process by which one moves towards the 'object(s) are born from unique and singular space, place and time relational moments - the (s)place/time bubble. Consequently, how time is perceived becomes exceptionally important to how hope is materialised and especially as a relationally constructed futural visioning process because the knowledge from the past, the critique of the present and the imagination of those participating in the (s)place/time bubble directly affect and influence what potential futures we co-create. Each intersubjective and collaborative (s)place/time of hope and hoping is unrepeatable, which includes the discreet and distinct knowledges and knowers participating alongside the imagined and visioned futural potentials that are not transferrable nor iterative. Objects of hope and the practice of hoping is always sustaining openings, encountering differences and pluralities of political ecologies that leads to the practice of hope a cycle of reflection, re/emergence and re/negotiation focused around the futural object(s) of hope.
Hope challenges assumptions about the order of time and the construct of how futural objects come into being as they will affectively shift, change, transform and be emergent, never static or fixed; the ‘present’ is never complete always partial (Rovelli, 2017). Therefore, how one ‘remembers’ the past or ‘reads’ history will also directly influence the knowledge, perception and imagination that is brought into the (s)place/time bubble. Solnit (2016) argues that ‘habits of despair’ and fatalist perceptions of an unchanging future stem from a ‘lack of memory of a dynamically changing world’ (Solnit 2016, p.xix), which means how we learn about history will affect how we materialise our future. Bryant and Knight (2019) additionally argue that the past to present ‘narratives’ weave into one’s perception of political ecologies, society, community and even self, affecting futural potentials and how hope is relationally constructed and experienced. Some narratives oppress and cause despair, apathy, inertness or powerlessness, while others resist oppression and enthuse optimism, trust, joy, action and potentiality into the dynamics of futural (s)place/times.
References:
Bryant, R. and Knight, D. (2019) the Anthropology of the Future.
Payne, P. and Wattchow, B. (2009) Phenomenology Deconstruction, Slow Pedagogy, and the Coporeal Turn in Wild Environmental/Outdoor Education, in ‘Journal of Environmental Education’.
Rovelli, C. (2017) The Order of Time.
Solnit, R. (2016) Hope in the Dark: Untold Stories, Wild Possibilities.