Not – Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

Not

Everyone is sure that imagination will save our world. It has not.
If anything has not saved our world, it is imagination. It has not.
The dreaming and the hoping have not saved the world. They have not.
The optimism which we are adjured repeatedly to uphold has not saved the world. It has not.
We must imagine and re-imagine and this, we are told, is for sure. But it is not.
What is this (re-)imagining of which everyone is so certain and in which they have so much faith? I do not.
Stop imagining: somebody, everybody, do something. But we will not.
We must, instead, we will be told, I will be told, (re-)imagine. Not.

Karín Lesnik-Oberstein is Professor of Critical Theory and Director of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL) and its M(Res.) in Children’s Literature in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading.