Staying with Melancholy? An Archive of Futures Past

Over the last few years, feelings such as despair, hopelessness, paranoia, and depression have become characteristic political moods and have only been intensifying. The phenomena these moods draw on are multiple and often deeply connected: the financial crisis; the rise of right-wing populism and authoritarianism; enduring structural racism; the further construction of walls and fences around the so-called Fortress Europe and beyond; increasing anti-feminism, re-masculinization, femonationalism, and homo- and transphobia; the global growing gap between the rich and poor; incessant climate change; or the recent wars.