Imagination is a double-edged sword. It is often heralded as an essential force of resistance in dark times – mobilising people in the fight against ecological collapse or colonial temporalities. Yet it can also be weaponised as an instrument of oppression and governance, as when migration officers are instructed to break down people’s dreams. If power operates in and through the imagination, then studying the battleground of the future requires asking: who gets to imagine the future, and for whom? While it is possible to trace these questions retrospectively by examining, for example, the subversive potential of art, it is more difficult to follow how power exerts itself incrementally upon people’s imaginations in close to real time, especially in increasingly restrictive contexts.

I explore how people imagine the future within a context where the imaginative horizon – that is, the realm of (im)possible imaginations – is encroaching and becoming progressively exclusionary. Based on a longitudinal analysis of online diaries written over more than two decades, combined with two rounds of patchwork ethnography and qualitative interviews, I trace how several diarists’ imaginations have developed from Trump’s announcement of his candidacy to the period following his second election victory. I show how their imaginations of the future have become bleaker, with some interludes of hope, and their sense of powerlessness has grown. As a result, they develop different strategies, such as turning towards the present – towards what remains within their control. From there, I discuss the challenges of generating and presenting theory under these conditions.