REOPENING THE FUTURE

EMERGING WORLDS AND NOVEL HISTORICAL FUTURES

JÉRÔME BASCHET

Iterations 1: Historical Futures
Volume 61, Number 2

Unlike those studies that conclude with a future collapsing under presentism, this article takes a fresh look at the issue of futures. To that end, the first part of the article offers a review of presentism, which amounts not to the erasure of any given future but to the proliferation of possible futures in the age of the Anthropocene. The second part sets out to identify novel futures that, while they may differ from those of presentism, do not seek to revive the future proposed by the defunct modern regime of historicity. By tracking the experience of “real utopias” bent on birthing other worlds, we can begin to map their preconditions. At the intersection of several extant regimes of historicity, the autonomous Zapatista zone that has, since 1994, arisen in southern Mexico has proven uniquely inventive; it may serve as a remarkable observatory for the appearance of unprecedented futures.

Image: Photo (cropped) of Escuela Primaria Rebelde Autonoma Zapatista, a primary school in the Zapatista village of Oventic, the southern state of Chiapas Mexico (August 2004), by bastian/.bandt.