Hope, temporality, and wonder at the end of the world

This article interrogates the conceptual terrains of hope, temporality, and wonder in the context of the Anthropocene, arguing that dominant framings of hope – anchored in ontological loss and critique – risk reproducing modernist binaries they seek to dismantle. While hope has been widely deployed as a tool for imagining alternatives to modernity, its reliance on affirmation or negation often tethers imaginaries to reactive postures vis-à-vis the modernist project. The article highlights how ontological readings of loss shape possibilities yet constrain engagements with epistemologies of time and worlding. It proposes temporality as a critical lens for rethinking the conditions under which alternative worlds are imagined, emphasising the need to move beyond linear progress narratives and explore plural temporalities. Finally, the paper introduces wonder as a generative mode of engagement – affective, epistemic, and communal – that resists dualisms and foregrounds uncertainty as a productive force. Wonder, in conjunction with temporality, offers pathways to reconfigure the spacetime of world-making without collapsing into romanticised alterity or reactive resistance. In doing so, the article asks what lies beyond the horizon of hope and how wonder might enable plural imaginaries in times of radical uncertainty.