Studies of prefiguration – the enactment of utopian ideals in the present – tend to focus on groups that actively set themselves apart from mainstream society, thereby living in a version of the future that they seek to create. We study more modest forms of prefigurative organizing, in which individuals dip into and out of pockets of freedom, without jettisoning mainstream social norms and structures. Our matched-pair study examined two instances of prefiguration that are rooted in the hacking ethos and open-source movements but differ widely in terms of organizing principles and politics: biohacking and hackathons. At hackathons, pockets of freedom are enacted on an event-basis in a spatially situated and structured manner, enabling an escape from monotony through experimentation. In biohacking, pockets of freedom are enacted on a project-basis in a distributed and unstructured manner, often in pursuit of societal or artistic aspirations. We show that prefigurative organizing does not have to be escapist or totalizing, nor is it necessarily fettered to a teleological worldview. Participants orient themselves toward eclectic short-term accomplishments, some of which have little extrinsic value, rather than toward ‘whole system’ solutions or status-quo-threatening activism. This focus does not diminish the emancipatory potential of participation.
