Expanding our sense of the possible: Ten theses for possibility studies

Abstract

By exploring our sense of the possible as a narratively mediated phenomenon, this essay brings possibility studies in dialogue with interdisciplinary narrative studies. It suggests that (1) the possible is entangled with actual life worlds that are heterogeneous spaces of possibility, (2) the possible is crucial to our temporal existence as being in the world with others, (3) narratives shape our sense of the possible, (4) possibility studies can contribute to strengthening our narrative agency, (5) narrative imagination has transformative power, (6) fiction can explore worlds as spaces of possibility, foster perspective awareness, and expand our sense of the possible, (7) the possible exists through processes of interpretation, and hence (narrative) hermeneutics is relevant to possibility studies, (8) our relationship to cultural models of sense-making is a possibility relationship, (9) possibility studies can bring to dialogue memory studies, futures studies and narrative studies, and (10) possibility studies should articulate and evaluate the ethico-political affordances and dangers of different discourses of the possible.