This paper considers how ‘the possibility of possibility’ as freedom of choice and audacious obligation towards newness found in philosophical works of such scholars as Søren Kierkegaard and Michel Serres is tempered by socio-historical circumstance. Ethnographic material from Scotland and Greece demonstrates contrasting ways that possibilities are impacted by the various timespaces that open or foreclose pathways to the future. Possibility shapes notions of the Self and Society since people are propelled to (in)action by way of recurring and reinterpreted pasts, are pulled through futural horizons in present-day practice or become stuck on the threshold of becoming. In the context of the independence movement in Scotland, possibility plays an active role in political life of independence campaigners with a feedback loop between past-present-future providing momentum to actualise the possible. In Greece, a decade of crisis has foreclosed previously possible futures with people feeling stuck in a repeating spin-cycle where horizons of the possible cannot be crossed. The ethnographic examples showcase how the multiplicities of human life affect the possibility of possibility and how visions of the elsewhere, elsewhen, and otherwise emerge in more or less ‘positive’ scenarios.

In the midst of chaotic Brexit negotiations and the failing political processes of Westminster, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is preparing to call a new independence referendum, arguing that Scotland should not be taken out of Europe against its will. As the SNP begins campaigning for a new referendum, two different visions of Scotland’s independent future emerge: one based on concrete economic and welfare policies championed by the party, the other, an unofficial activist‐driven orientation of the future as ‘empty’. The first makes the future tangible, populated with wishful images and achievable goals. The second promises the future as a blank slate, to be authored only after a successful independence vote. These two orientations exist in tension with one another, in continuous negotiation as they are played out on the SNP campaign trail.

Following an acrimonious referendum on European Union membership, the UK was plunged into chaos as people attempted to negotiate a deeply divided domestic political landscape. In Scotland, things were further complicated by the independence question and the Scottish National Party's (SNP) call for a second independence referendum. In light of the Brexit result, since 2016 many citizens of Scotland have re-thought their position on independence owing to emergent axiomatic violence located in the UK's split from Europe. This article examines the different temporalities involved with the emergent axiomatic violence of Brexit as experienced in Scotland. For those who once supported the Union, Brexit is understood as a moment of violent and unforeseen rupture, emerging from a one-off event in the present. In contrast, nationalists speak of Brexit as representative of the accretive slow violence brought on through historical imbalances in UK politics; Brexit was to be expected, emerging from long-term processes. For EU migrants, the violence of Brexit is built into their futures, as they contemplate work and family life in a drastically changed socio-political landscape. Although the 'emergent' aspect of the violence inherent in Brexit is dependent on perspective, all agree that the violence is axiomatic, part of everyday life in Brexit Britain.

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