Illegible Futures

In this working paper, researcher Bry Willis explores how modern institutions demand standardised emotional displays to maintain social order and progress. The author suggests that enforced optimism serves as a governance tool rather than a genuine reflection of psychological health. By framing specific mindsets as mandatory, society marginalises unconventional emotional responses, often mislabelling them as individual failures or medical dysfunctions. The text argues that this pressure to remain legible through a binary of optimism or pessimism restricts personal autonomy and hides the structural causes of distress. Ultimately, the research positions affective conformity as a core component of contemporary administrative control and narrative stability.👉 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18501335