Future World: Anticipatory archaeology, materially-affective capacities and the late human legacy

TY - JOUR

T1 - Future World: Anticipatory archaeology, materially-affective capacities and the late human legacy

AU - Dawney, Leila Alexandra

AU - Harris, Oliver J.T.

AU - Sørensen, Tim Flohr

PY - 2017/12/6

Y1 - 2017/12/6

N2 - Using the 2010 film Into Eternity as a springboard for thought, this article considers how archaeologies of the future might help us make sense of how to seek commonality and take care across vast temporal scales. The film, about a nuclear waste repository in Finland, addresses the impossibility of communicating across millennia. In thinking with this film, we engage with recent responses to the post-human call, arguing that they are inadequate in dealing with the new questions that are asked by post-human thought. Instead, we attempt to engage the work of Spinoza and Sloterdijk in rethinking the human as a strategic position or point of purchase amongst the shared materiality of present and future worlds. We offer the concepts of the materially affective and atmosphere in order to identify points of connection, drawing on moments in Into Eternity to work through these arguments in a tentative repositioning of the human as a site of concern.

AB - Using the 2010 film Into Eternity as a springboard for thought, this article considers how archaeologies of the future might help us make sense of how to seek commonality and take care across vast temporal scales. The film, about a nuclear waste repository in Finland, addresses the impossibility of communicating across millennia. In thinking with this film, we engage with recent responses to the post-human call, arguing that they are inadequate in dealing with the new questions that are asked by post-human thought. Instead, we attempt to engage the work of Spinoza and Sloterdijk in rethinking the human as a strategic position or point of purchase amongst the shared materiality of present and future worlds. We offer the concepts of the materially affective and atmosphere in order to identify points of connection, drawing on moments in Into Eternity to work through these arguments in a tentative repositioning of the human as a site of concern.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Future archaeology

KW - Affect

KW - Materiality

KW - Materials

KW - Anticipation

KW - Speculation

KW - Ethics

KW - Vulnerabiity

KW - Nuclear Waste

KW - Atmosphere

KW - Post-Humanism

U2 - 10.1558/jca.32497

DO - 10.1558/jca.32497

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2051-3429

VL - 4

SP - 107

EP - 129

JO - Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

JF - Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

IS - 1

ER -