collaging carceral entrapments and reorientating to the imagination

In this article I interrogate the attachment to ‘the imagination’ as a site free from the weed-like tentacles of carceral systems and structures, and thus a solution to ‘stuckness’. Building on Lauren Berlant’s theorisation of ‘cruel optimism’, I draw on my own sticky, cruelly optimistic methodological engagements with the imagination in qualitative research, whereby collage was used to explore what participants wanted in response to the injustice wrought by sexual violence. Drawing on scholarship that seeks to examine the edges of the carceral imaginary, I instead suggest a gentle, yet significant, reorientation to imaginings and what I see as their weed-like capabilities. Thus, rather than holding on to the imagination as a solution for coining futures free from the violence of carcerality, I instead call for a deeper attention to, and staying with, the ‘stuckness’ that exists when utilising the tool of the imagination.