There is no shortage of crisis talk. Amounting to what can be called ‘crisism’, crisis-thinking dominates our contemporary experience, at least in Western discourse. Crises shape our understanding of transformation and historical change. It remains important to understand how crises function within the communicative settings of today. The often-used descriptive summary of ‘polycrisis’ is not helpful analytically, however. ‘Owning’ the crisis, therefore, is a crucial part of political discourse. Since ownership allows for the construction and shaping of alternative futures, it begs the question: Who owns the crisis? Has the political left and center lost the future to the far right? Which imaginaries are emerging? Is a new transformational narrative forming around social and economic visions rooted in climate change?
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There is no shortage of crisis talk. Amounting to what can be called ‘crisism’, crisis-thinking dominates our contemporary experience. Experience and expectation are two essential categories of modernity understood as continuous reiterations of temporalizations. The modern condition is marked by the constant construction of futures – expectations – and bases itself on the interpretation of present experience.
Increasingly in modernity, however, experience and expectation drift apart and radically different visions of the future fill the gap between the two. Importantly, the notion of experience entails a temporal element. We map our immediate experience against the backdrop of existing historical interpretations. When this mapping loses its capacity to yield convincing interpretations for our navigation through time, experience begins to be perceived as ‘crisis’.
Historically, ‘crisis’ is a Greek term denoting a variety of meanings, which all include a radical decision, however. To judge, to separate, to choose, to decide, these are the meanings attached to crisis. The notion that crises are temporalities – periods of time with a certain quality – is a more modern phenomenon, even though it had already seen a metaphorical expansion into more temporal settings when it was introduced into Latin. In all cases of its usage, crisis refers to life-deciding moments, when questions of life or death need to be addressed, when questions about what is just and what is unjust are asked, when one is either saved or damned. Crisis infers a tipping point, a radical transition just around the corner and ready to wash away past securities; it includes the possibility of complete destruction of an existing order, even of life.
In contemporary social and political discourse, the temporal qualities of ‘crisis’ are obvious. The past that led to a critical situation is re-evaluated. The invocation of a crisis also opens the possibility of applying completely new means to a given situation. A crisis, possibly, gives legitimacy to radical measures. It also accelerates and generates the production of new futures, depicting life after the crisis. In modern politics, it is thus crucial to “own the crisis”. Owning here refers to anyone who can name the crisis, frame it, construct a new (or confirming) narrative with it. Actors able to shape new narratives around the construction of crises, new interpretations of our present, past and future gain increasing political capital. If successful, ‘owning the crisis’ means gaining the hegemonic interpretation of the crisis moment and thereby gaining the legitimacy to write the future and rewrite the past.
How can we get a grip on the “poly-crisis”? Which new futures emerge? We try to gain an overview and present new perspectives on questions vital for our time’s genesis of near and mid-term futures, and, with it, pasts. How do we gain knowledge for an unforeseeable future? How do we create political legitimacies? How can we conceptualize democracy, society, identity in new geopolitical settings?
