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

Leila Alexandra Dawney, Oliver J.T. Harris, Tim Flohr Sørensen

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Contemporary Archaeology
Volume4
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)107-129
ISSN2051-3429
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Dec 2017

Keywords

  • Faculty of Humanities
  • Future archaeology
  • Affect
  • Materiality
  • Materials
  • Anticipation
  • Speculation
  • Ethics
  • Vulnerabiity
  • Nuclear Waste
  • Atmosphere
  • Post-Humanism

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Future World: Anticipatory archaeology, materially-affective capacities and the late human legacy'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this