Worlds to Come Imagining Speculative Disability Futures

How do we craft a practice for imagining and living a future that does not simply replicate and intensify the present? My thinking here is cued by Octavia Butler’s comment in the context of a panel discussion on science fiction: “It’s dangerous to assume that whatever we’ve been doing, we’re going to keep doing that. You know: the future is more of the same, only more advanced. . . . It’s dangerous to assume that we can actually see the future by only looking at the technological advancements we’ve made so far” (Octavia Butler: Science Future, Science Fiction 2008).

I think her point holds as well for the idea that it’s dangerous to assume that the future is more of the same in terms of the social relations we experience now and project as a possible “then.” Imagining and practicing futures that are not “more of the same” is difficult, necessary work. In this chapter, I frame a usable futurity in terms of queer disability prefiguration—living in the present a world we want to create, and crafting that world through our living—as a form of speculative fiction, a practice of world-making creativity.

— Against Purity by Alexis Shotwell (Page 200)