Chapter 2: A Textual Political Imagination

Politics are, in hundreds of ways, imaginative acts. We are asked to imagine which leader we believe can best represent us. We are asked to imagine what life will be like with their proposed laws, their measures, and their stances (or, in many cases, the terrors of life from the opponent’s stances!). When we imagine, we create “experiences that escape the immediate setting, which allow exploring the past or future, present possibilities or even impossibilities” (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016, p. 2). We are constructively building our future within the moment toward potential outcomes.

Many times, these outcomes come true. What is a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948) but imagination so heavily run amok it fundamentally changes reality toward its own truth? When we imagine a world in which we believe a certain feat will occur, it can fundamentally change how we approach situations far into the future. Individuals who have prior offenses within the criminal justice system are significantly more likely to continue in their criminal behavior—both literally, but also through a loss of access to resources such as attorneys and fines (Farrell & Swigert, 1978). The system itself is set to imagine these individuals as future criminals, and constructs narrower ranges of imagined futures they can interact with on a daily level.