Austerity Futures: Debt, Temporality and (Hopeful) Pessimism as an Austerity Mood

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between austerity, debt and mood through a focus on temporality and the future. Its starting point is a poll, conducted in Britain in 2011, which showed an increase of pessimism about the future and led to suggestions that 'a new pessimism' had become the 'national mood'. Exploring this survey and other related examples, I ask whether and how pessimism about the future might be considered a mood characteristic of austerity in the UK, consider some of the implications of the future being imagined not as better but as diminished and, drawing on Berlant's concept of cruel optimism, propose a notion of hopeful pessimism. I explore the politics of pessimism about the future, focusing especially on the affects and emotions that some women and young people might feel. In these senses, I aim to turn around the focus of this special issue to inquire not so much about the future of austerity as about the kinds of futures that are imagined in the new age of austerity, and the affective experiences of such imaginations. 2Austerity Futures: Debt, Temporality and (Hopeful) Pessimism as an Austerity MoodIn November 2011, the UK research company Ipsos MORI published the results of a telephone survey, commissioned by the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, on British adults' attitudes towards the economic and social climate. The survey asked a representative sample of 1006 respondents six questions, ranging from their satisfaction with life at the moment to their opinion on whether or not it is necessary to cut spending on public services to pay off the national debt. Two of the questions asked respondents to imagine what the future would be like for the next generation. The results of the survey led The Observer's political editor Toby Helm to argue that 'concern about the economic crisis [has] harden [ed] into long-term pessimism' 1 (Helm 2011a). He describes the results of the poll as indicating a new 'national mood', which he terms 'the new pessimism'.In this article, I draw on this survey and other related examples taken primarily from the UK during the relatively early period of austerity from [2009][2010][2011][2012][2013], to explore the relationships between austerity, debt and mood through a focus on temporality and the future. There are three reasons for this focus. First, it is intended to pull through the questions in the survey, where attitudes towards the economic and social climate are assessed in part through imaginations of the future. Second, it is to consider the relationship between debt and futurity;as Lisa Adkins 2 among others argues, debt is 'defined by time' and in particular by 'a time which has not yet arrived, namely in the future'. Third, I suggest that attending to mood, affect and feeling is one way in which it is possible to unpack the cultural politics of austerity and indebtedness. The article picks up on arguments in contemporary social and cultural theory that see the affectivity of time, and especially the future, as a 'defining quality ...

The affective life of austerity: uncanny atmospheres and paranoid temporalities

“…Whilst collective feelings are not limited to this form, ii affective atmospheres become a significant lens through which to explore the affective (and collective) presence of austerity. Yet, existing interest in austerity as a collective feeling has often been at a societalscale, specifically as a public mood (Coleman, 2016;Forkert, 2017). Yet, the significance of austerity's presence at the institutional level has often been overlooked, a level in which the individual and the collective intimately intertwine.…”

“…Austerity stretches across multiple everyday sites, such as the food bank (Garthwaite, 2016), the job centre (Patrick, 2017), the Citizens Advice Bureau (Kirwan, 2016), the children's centre (Jupp, 2013). It is also made present through, and shapes, a multiplicity of relations, such as the familial (Hall, 2016;Jupp, 2017), indebted relations (Deville, 2015;Kirwan, 2016;Stanley, Deville, & Montgomerie, 2016), and relations with the present and future (Coleman, 2016;Horton, 2016). Importantly, this allows us to understand the ways in which austerity is unevenly experienced as particular groups are disproportionately affected.…”

The right to be weary? Endurance and exhaustion in austere times

“…An integral part of the mood of austerity is a collective feeling of hardship and “diminished expectations” (Bhattacharyya, , p. 32). Yet this mood is also one of “hopeful pessimism,” founded on the idea that we all must suffer together in order for the economy to prosper once again (Coleman, ).…”

Young people, future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union: classed and gendered expectations in policy documents

“…In this article I focus not so much on changes in youth policies, but more on changes (and continuities) in the ideas about youth employment behind the policies. I examine governing talk about the future in the light of feminist analyses of the new economy, neoliberalism and the new austerity (Adkins 2008(Adkins , 2015Coleman 2016;McDowell 2012;Berlant 2011). These ideas relate to economic fluctuations, class and gender, and also to changes in the affectual environment (especially Berlant 2011; Coleman 2016) or structures of feeling (Clarke & Newman 2012).…”