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Paper short abstract

The paper is a critical analysis on why anthropology should assume its inevitable status as an active agent in society, while addressing choices made in my PhD’s methodology within the field of future studies, and why anthropology can be a political (as in Szymborska's"Children of the Age") gesture.

Paper long abstract

Before the current global humanitarian, political, and environmental crises, can the social sciences be an active agent in the face of retrotopia, i.e., the West's inability to relate to the future as it projects catastrophes onto it?

The potential of the social sciences in stimulating imagination, beyond ethnocentrism and temporocentrism, is immense. However, the focus on the past makes them intrinsically incapable of thinking about the future.

In the context of retrotopia in the West and its possible ontological origins, I propose a methodology for future studies, with reciprocal, collaborative, multidisciplinary practices, guided by an ethics of possibilities. Working alongside the collective Mulherio das Letras Indígenas, we will create a diverse set of utopias, based on indigenous ontologies, firstly through fieldwork, by exchanging letters throughout 1 year, which contain stories of the origin of humanity from their peoples, and questions about the future and its utopic (yet plausible) possibilities. The methodology is based on prior anthropology’s future studies' proposals; and it follows intellectual movements in South America with constructive perspectives of the future, where myth, dreams, and poetic language are predominant. All choices were made as reactions to the oppression of indigenous women, the lack of hope in the youth, and the need for feminine, constructive, fertile views on humanity and global reality, giving voice to marginalised groups, their views on progress and their future-making process. The article is a critical exposure on the non-neutrality of anthropology’s/ists and purpose beyond academia.