Histories of the Future

Daniel Rosenburg and Susan Harding (Editors)

Description

We live in a world saturated by futures. Our lives are constructed around ideas and images about the future that are as full and as flawed as our understandings of the past. This book is a conceptual toolkit for thinking about the forms and functions that the future takes. Exploring links between panic and nostalgia, waiting and utopia, technology and messianism, prophecy and trauma, it brings together critical meditations on the social, cultural, and intellectual forces that create narratives and practices of the future. The prognosticators, speculators, prophets, and visionaries have their say here, but the emphasis is on small narratives and forgotten conjunctures, on the connections between expectation and experience in everyday life.In tightly linked studies, the contributors excavate forgotten and emergent futures of art, religion, technology, economics, and politics. They trace hidden histories of science fiction, futurism, and millennialism and break down barriers between far-flung cultural spheres. From the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the forests of Java and from the literary salons of Tokyo to the roadside cafes of the Nevada desert, the authors stitch together the disparate images and stories of futures past and present. Histories of the Future is further punctuated by three interludes: a thought-provoking game that invites players to fashion future narratives of their own, a metafiction by renowned novelist Jonathan Lethem, and a remarkable graphic research tool: a timeline of timelines.Contributors. Sasha Archibald, Susan Harding, Jamer Hunt, Pamela Jackson, Susan Lepselter, Jonathan Lethem, Joseph Masco, Christopher Newfield, Elizabeth Pollman, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Rosenberg, Miryam Sas, Kathleen Stewart, Anna Tsing

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Economics

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 21 juillet 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386810
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

HISTORIES OF THE FUTURE

HISTORIES                                   

OFTHE FUTURE         Daniel Rosenberg and Susan Harding

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Mary Mendell Typeset in Quadraat by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Copyright acknowledgments and Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed pages of this book.

FOR BEA , ED, AND MARCO— our futures past and present

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Histories of the Future Daniel Rosenberg and Susan Harding

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A Notebook on Desert Modernism: From the Nevada Test Site to Liberace’s Two-Hundred-Pound Suit Joseph Masco 

How to Make Resources in Order to Destroy Them (and Then Save Them?) on the Salvage Frontier Anna Tsing 

The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines Vicente L. Rafael 

 Global Futures: The Game Anna Tsing and Elizabeth Pollman 

Electronic Memory Daniel Rosenberg 

All That Is Solid Melts into Sauce: Futurists, Surrealists, and Molded Food Jamer Hunt 

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Sing Out Ubik Pamela Jackson

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 Access Fantasy: A Story Jonathan Lethem 

Subject, City, Machine Miryam Sas 

 Manifesto of the Japanese Futurist Movement Hirato Renkichi Translated by Miryam Sas

The Future of the Old Economy: New Deal Motives in New Economy Investors Christopher Newfield 

Why Rachel Isn’t Buried at Her Grave: Ghosts,s, and a Place in the West Susan Lepselter 

 The Trouble with Timelines and A Timeline of Timelines Daniel Rosenberg and Sasha Archibald 

Living Prophecy at Heaven’s Gate Susan Harding 

Trauma Time: A Still Life Kathleen Stewart 

Bibliography  Notes on Contributors Index 

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people contributed much to the design and content of this book over the course of several years. TheHistories of the Futureproject was conceived and organized by Susan Harding as a research workshop at the Univer- sity of California Humanities Research Institute in Irvine in . Over the course of the next several years, the workshop grew and changed as we were joined by new participants and generated new areas of research. In  we held a follow-up conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with the support ofand the Center for Cultural Studies at. We also received generous support from the Oregon Humanities Center to prepare the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to, the Institute for Humanities Research, the Social Sciences Division, and the Department of Anthropology at, and the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, for granting subventions to make this book possible. In addition to all the authors in the volume, we would also like to ac- knowledge and thank Mai-Lin Cheng, Valerie Hartouni, Stephen Best, Liisa Malkki, Hayden White, Michael Taussig, Karen Ho, Paulla Ebron, Emily Martin, Patricia O’Brien, James Clifford, Donna Haraway, Ken Wissoker, Mary Murrell, Richard Randolph, Sina Najafi, Brian Conley, David Serlin, Jeffrey Kastner, Frances Richard, and two anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press. We received wonderful technical support from Debra Massey, Deanna Nunez, Chris Aschan, Katy Eliot, Theresa Champ, and Jon Kersey. Special thanks to Jeremy Campbell for the index, and to Brian McMullen and Tal Schori ofCabinetmagazine for the graphic design for the original Timeline of Timelines. All original art for ‘‘Global Futures: The Game’’ is by Elizabeth Pollman. All uncredited images are by Daniel Rosenberg.