Left-behind communities’ political speculation focuses on the present, not the past

Evidence

Rather than passively responding to such uncertainty, “left-behind” communities (in Wuthnow’s words) employ preemptively “makeshift solutions” (4) to desperate problems, precisely in order to maintain their imagined togetherness. They “workshop” responses to growing economic risks and “don’t let themselves get anxious about it” (166), while remaining “realistic about the shortcomings of their communities” (79). Such responses seem to focus the speculative imagination on the present. Contrary to the much-discussed yearning for returning to America’s past, left-behind communities’ political speculations seemed much more attuned to the here and now (Skocpol and Williamson 2016). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 284

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Left-behind communities’ political imagination focuses on the present, not a nostalgic past. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 437