Re-

Remember, regenerate, renew, reenchant, revitalize, return, recuperate, restore, renovate, revive, reduce, recharge, rehabilitate, repair, remediate, reclaim, represent, retreat, remonstrate, remedy, respair, respire, resist, redeem, retaliate, repatriate, recover, revanche, reparation, refine, rectify, retribute, research, revolt, rebel, reproduce, resolve, reveal, review, relinquish, reinforce, release, repeat, replace, resemble, reside, recycle, recon, respond, reflect, redistribute, reconcile, rebuke, refuture

Polyfora: A Journal of Speculative CoFutures invites submissions to our inaugural issue on the theme of “Re-” and all the entangled multiplicity this prefix invites: Sometimes, futures are a return to ancestral knowledges. Sometimes, they are multiplied and braided imaginations that spring from wildly disparate but nevertheless coeval sources. Sometimes, following José Estaban Muñoz’s queer futurity, they are a temporal disorganisation, where the then and there of potentiality is glimpsed in fragments in the here and now. Futurity’s play of temporalities also invites a consideration of how futures can become relational — how futures foster an attitude of nurturing and care towards specific communities and geographies, which takes the time to recharge, repair, and recover. Sometimes, the future can be glimpsed as a respite, an interruption when practitioners might find the space to rebel, revolt, or resist one future in favor of another. Finally, futures might invite one to respire or respair, an archaic term which means to hope again after a period of despair, and to consider futures as simultaneous articulations of connection and of rupture, of ancestrality and potentiality, of multiplicity, complexity, and compossiblity (the many futures that are possible together). 

Rather than imagining the future as a singular destination in the linear progress of enlightenment fantasy, or the scattered disparate un-relational futures, we invite authors to discuss, describe, relate, or imagine futures that mingle among more complex temporalities and reciprocal dependencies, especially as they emerge from marginalized discourses and join storytelling and activism.

The first call welcomes abstracts of 300-500 words due 15th December, 2025.  Abstracts may describe research papers of 6000-8000 words, comments or reviews, and especially artistic or narrative works in text, visual art or other multi-media formats. 

Notification of successful proposals will follow by the 15th February, 2026.

Email your submissions to: journal@cofutures.org

Please refer to the Submission Guidelines here: https://journal.cofutures.org/submission-guidelines/

From the Editors: The call for abstracts for the First Issue of Polyfora is now CLOSED. Thank you for your generous contributions. The call for the second issue will be announced around Late 2026.