“We Must Be Open to New Technology”

Abstract Since the 1980s, innovation has emerged as the dominant epistemic framework for imagining and engineering futures across much of Europe and America. This article investigates the cultural and political work performed by contemporary innovation discourse, using Germany's Future Strategy for Research and Innovation as a case study. The analysis draws on methods from literary studies and conceptual history to approach innovation as a mode of governance that is both historically contingent and symbolically charged. The article traces how innovation narratives are structured by a recurrent binary of promise and threat—projecting technological progress as national redemption while mobilizing anxieties over decline and obsolescence. The analysis reveals that, in the name of seemingly depoliticized foresight, innovation discourse legitimizes specific policy agendas, privileges particular technological trajectories, and reorders socio-economic priorities. By foregrounding the normative and rhetorical dimensions of innovation discourse, the article calls for a more critically attuned understanding of its political stakes and showcases the distinctive contributions that cultural analysis can offer to debates on science and technology policy.