Through the Utopian Lens of Opportunity: Using fiction and theatre to reimagine the post-COVID-19 future

Abstract

First paragraph: Can we imagine a future for older age that is based on desires, not simply practical needs? In Reimagining the Future in Older Age, we aim to draw on Ruth Levitas’ utopia as method theory to critique dominant, exclusionary narratives around ageing and explore the potential to create new ones. A utopian method “facilitates genuinely holistic thinking about possible futures, combined with the principles and practices of those futures. And it requires us to think about our conceptions of human needs and human flourishing in those possible futures. The core of utopia is the desire for being otherwise, individually and collectively, subjectively and objectively. Its expressions explore and bring to debate the potential contents and contexts of human flourishing.” (Levitas, 2013, p. xi).