Foresight exercises are often presented as tools for opening the imagination. This article argues that in the context of the European bioeconomy, they frequently function as technologies of foreclosure. Analysing thirteen years of Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) foresight reports (2007–2020), this article traces the tension between the rhetorical imagining of radical futures and the practical closing down of political alternatives. The study develops a capture–flight lens, adapted from Deleuzo–Guattarian process philosophy, to operationalise this analysis. Results reveal how the apparatus of capture structures the field of possibility through problem framings, actor configurations, and evaluative metrics. Lines of flight—including the sufficiency narrative, agroecology, and short food chains—emerge within the reports but are systematically recaptured through semantic translation, institutional absorption, and scalar reframing. Silences, including food sovereignty and commons-based governance, and the dismissal of degrowth, mark the boundaries of the thinkable. The analysis shows that SCAR foresight produces closure while generating the appearance of openness, preserving the growth-oriented trajectory through the vocabulary of transformation. The article contributes a transferable analytical framework for critical futures research and raises implications for practitioners seeking more reflexive and plural foresight.
Julien Vastenaekels (Sat,) studied this question.