In addition to these well-established and institutionalised forms of the Esperanto movement, the language has come to bear relevance in other activist constituencies, where freedom of speech appears connected to freedom to code. Along these lines, Chapter 7 showed how Esperanto has gained ground through new communication technologies and emerging ways of engaging with politics. Without opposing governments, the mass media or proprietary software, Esperantists have used the language to open up possibilities that value people's freedom to use language in whichever way they want, through whichever media one pleases. Hence, language users become free not only to communicate, but also to contribute to the development of the codes and means of communi- cation that they choose to mobilise.
In this vein, also language forms reveal to be flexible as a way of becoming more inclusive and egalitarian. Unpacking how vocabulary choice becomes a key component of Esperanto's language ideology, Chapter 5 argued that language users resist authority by welcoming neol- ogisms and leaving the language open for continuous development. In line with the arguments in Chapters 7 and 8, flexible language standards enable Esperanto users to be also language developers, thus empowering anyone to potentially play a leading role in this language and community.
In Chapter 8, focusing on individual experiences with the language enabled us to understand the multiple shapes taken by power in Esper- antujo. In a scenario in which de facto global languages such as Latin, French and English have acquired their status through political, economic and linguistic imperialism, Esperanto represents an alternative, although not proposing itself as a candidate to replace such languages. Its alternative character stems from the fact that Esperanto is not expected to compete on equal terms with national languages turned global, for Esperanto is not meant to be imposed onto people. Remaining a language whose speakers can voluntarily decide to learn and use—thus, a matter of choice—means Esperanto may never become powerful to the point that potentially everyone would learn it. This, in turn, is a non-issue for those who engage with it through prefigurative lenses. If Esperanto already has an impact on these people's lives and has made them do things they would possibly not do otherwise, why should they be concerned with the future of this language and community?
Lastly, this ethnographic approach examined the universalist and prefigurative discourses and practices surrounding Esperanto to better grasp how distinct regimes of temporal reasoning affect community- building, political activism and language use. In this vein, this study showed how different—and, at times, conflicting—perceptions of past, present and future have shaped people's understanding of Esperanto as a cause to be advanced or, alternatively, as a mediator that opens up cosmopolitan possibilities for its speakers. Such an outlook towards temporal reasonings brings us back to power, choice and endurance. Since this language's continuity cannot rely on intergener- ational language transmission and since most people do not choose to study Esperanto, the language's power to continuously produce a stable critical mass of speakers is constantly at stake. If, as I argue, the commu- nity paradoxically thrives at the expense of the movement, how can the language subsist without persistent recruitment of new speakers? Ulti- mately, relying on people's voluntary engagements does not seem to bring much certainty and permanence to this community.
9.4 Towards an Empowerment of Ephemerality
The instability and uncertain endurance that Esperantujo constantly faces are expressed and experienced in regard to regimes of temporal reasoning. Thinking about international Esperanto congresses as pop- up enactments of real Esperantujo indicates that these meetings' locality is continuously shifting, their participants are not always necessarily the same and, even though the community is materialised once a year, its concrete existence does not last long—which accounts for its char- acter as a one-night-stand community. Meanwhile, whereas digital media has facilitated the emergence of further spaces for Esperantujos inter- nationality to take place, the connections and personal contacts that bring Esperantists together online are often deemed short-lived, thus mimicking this aspect of the Universal Congresses.
The limited life span of the connections forming Esperantujo is not exclusive to it. Yet such fleeting personal connections become particu- larly relevant when it comes to a speech community, given that language use and communication rely on more than one person to be effectively carried out. Even though the prevalence of ephemeral connections may compromise the permanence of Esperantujo, this is not necessarily a flaw, but rather one of the core elements constituting this community. As put by the poet Vinicius de Moraes, on love: 'Be not immortal as it [love] is like a flame / But be infinite while it lasts' (Moraes 1996 [1939]: 68, my translation). Likewise, the Esperanto community dwells on ephemer- ality, and what is more: without it, this language would not be equally meaningful to its speakers and supporters.
Someone who spends their life in a highly international, multilingual and multicultural setting is prone to take diversity for granted, such that diversity will likely not play a significant role in one's life. Likewise, a person who continuously speaks Esperanto—as their home language or working language, for instance—would not see it as something extra- ordinary since the language is part of their ordinary life. In this case, Esperanto would become, in many aspects, a language like any other: of customary use, necessary, spoken on a regular basis. By contrast, one of the striking traits of Esperanto is precisely that its use sets a frame and produces spaces and times in which people leave their ordinary, everyday lives aside for a moment to set their tune to an Esperantist frequency. In this particular wavelength, other people, things and places take centre stage and other language ideology and sets of principles gain prominence. Hence, the practice of the language constructs international Esperanto congresses as laboratories, short-lived experiments in which Esperantists are temporarily disconnected from their everyday lives and invited to try out new sociabilities.
Thinking from this standpoint, at times the fact that Esperanto is a language seems to be irrelevant for what it does. Gamers, freemasons, pacifists, speakers of Elvish—or, for what it is worth, anthropologists— could equally gather in associations, congresses, bars and online settings to talk about the projects and interests they have in common, jointly practise their activities and support their ideas. Yet, on the other hand, being a language backed by cosmopolitan principles makes all the differ- ence: the ways of experiencing Esperanto necessarily involve communi- cation—and, particularly, international communication. Put differently, gamers, speakers of Elvish and anthropologists may resort to analogous settings and communication technologies that play mediating roles, both online and offline. Yet, it is the role to be played by Esperanto as a mediator that distinguishes Esperantujo from the previously mentioned relational assemblages, since connecting people from different national, linguistic and cultural backgrounds through more egalitarian communi- cation is the key driving force behind the learning and regular use of this language. While, potentially, any language could do so, the cosmopolitan principles behind Esperanto turn this community into a singular meeting point for nationalities, languages and cultures in which communicating diversity is made central.