Description
The explicit role of imagination in politics, particularly memory-making, remains largely underexplored. A key question that remains is whether imagination opens up the political practice(s) of memory-making to new futures and possibilities, or whether it simply re-politicises along existing margins and boundaries. Using the context of Twitter responses during the Manchester Arena bombing, I demonstrate that the ubiquitous use of digital media platforms to communicate in ‘real-time’ during rupturing media events, has allowed a symbiotic relationship to emerge between memory and imagination- a relationship which enables a paradoxical but possible inversion of remembering the future and imagining the past. In the initial moments as the Manchester bombing unfolded, ‘official’ details were slow to come through, and imagining what was not yet made sense of played a key role in narrative development. I demonstrate that memory-making is a negotiation between memory and imagination that has the potential to open up the political process to new futures, but can also re-politicise along existing lines if we are not careful. Either way, I show that imagination adds a new dimension to memory-making which needs to be taken seriously in the future of IR.