Socialist Imaginaries and Queer Futures: Memes as Sites of Collective Imagining

Abstract

This is a study in two parts. Firstly, we engage with the concept of the “sociotechnical imaginary,” bringing it to bear on the future as imagined of Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) — an online meme that gained currency around the same time as the rise of Corbynism. Secondly, we look to a second articulation of luxury communism, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, and the manner in which it, both substantively and materially, acts to “queer” the imaginative space of FALC. By doing so, this chapter offers a tentative and exploratory investigation of the following: 1. “Imaginaries” as useful conceptual frameworks for studying online memes, and; 2. The usefulness of these as a starting or staging point for collectively imagined futures.