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- Convenors:
-
Geert Somsen
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Frans van Lunteren (Athena Institute, VU Amsterdam)
Anne Loeber (Athena Institute, VU University)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
This Open Panel endeavors to reinterpret historical sociotechnical imaginaries in order to unlock and unsettle present ones. We use Hans Robert Jauss’s concept of “horizons of expectations” to explore the interplay of circumstances and imagination, now and in the past.
Long Abstract:
Visions of the future are rooted in past experiences and present perceptions. Hence while they can veer into the spectacular, overblown, and hubristic, their terms are always limited by the “horizons” of the circumstances out of which they were born (Gadamer, 2004). This becomes visible when we consider imaginaries of former times, which, while trying to show ways out of the worlds that they originated from, look old and dated and much more like those worlds than like the realities that would actually follow. But if such past visions seem bound to their circumstances’ imaginative limitations, our own imaginaries are probably just as much locked up in the prison of the present.
One way to escape this prison – or at least force cracks into its walls – is to reconsider imaginaries of the past. Were they really what we make them out to be? Have we missed imaginative dimensions by our own limited historical perception? How do we imagine the past to have imagined its future? Asking such questions draws attention to the agencies of both the makers and the recipients of the images, and their respective “horizons of expectation” (Jauss, 1982; Jauss & Benzinger, 1970). Such a relational perspective may shed light on their interplay and help explain, and perhaps reshape, how imaginaries ‘work’ in the present.
This panel invites papers that problematize the relationship between the past, the present and the future by looking into the interactions between imaginaries and their circumstances, while taking into account our own. Such a historical detour may help to unlock or at least unsettle the prison of the present.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Lieke van der Veer (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Suzan Abozyid (Leiden University)
Short abstract:
This paper historicizes the intersections of race and class in imaginaries of ‘lower class’ residents. It seeks to reinterpret contemporary far-right fantasies of white working class by exploring how sociologists--in the wake of colonialism--imagined ‘anti socials’ in the Netherlands in 1950-1960.
Long abstract:
How is ‘class’ constituted on ‘race’ and how does this legitimate the devaluation of populations at this intersection? This article explores this question by contrasting imaginaries of ‘class’ in 1950-1960 with present-day imaginaries. Whereas nowadays ‘class’ evokes racialized white identities in which ‘lower class’ people are imagined as part and parcel of ‘the social’, in the 1950s ‘class’ included white ‘lower class’ populations (and non-white post-colonial migrants) that were imagined in adversity to ‘the social.’ We discuss these imaginaries through a shared lens of racialization.
In 1950-1960 in the Netherlands, imaginaries of ‘lower class’ were indirectly tied to colonial legacies. Policies for white anti-social families in the 1950s developed hand-in-hand with policies for non-white post-colonial migrants from Indonesia, and the ‘civilizing mission’ in general drew parallels between white Dutch people considered ‘lower class’ and ‘savages’ from overseas. White anti-socials and non-white post-colonial migrants were explicitly portrayed as not belonging to (middle-class) white society and distanced from (and positioned in adversity to) sociality.
We juxtapose this historical imaginary of ‘lower class’ with contemporary imaginaries of ‘class’ that are evoked in academic and public debates that seek to explain the rise of the far-right. Critical social theorists have observed that, in these debates, ‘class’ is being ‘whitewashed’: through ahistorical fantasies of ‘working class,’ ‘lower class’ is imagined as white—thereby pushing non-white workers out of view. Based on ongoing archival research, this paper brings this present-day ‘whitewashing’ of class in interaction with how sociologists constructed to category of anti-social families in 1950-1960.
Levi Kingfisher (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Short abstract:
This paper draws on workshops that co-created visions of sustainable future food systems and explored the role of blockchain technology therein. It explores the relation between these visions, broader sociotechical imaginaries, and ostensibly disruptive role of technology such as blockchain.
Long abstract:
Blockchain is a proposed solution to various unsustainable aspects of the global food system. It has been asserted that the technology – due to the complex discursive landscape in which it is situated, and/or due to its inherent material characteristics - can help to break open the “crisis of imagination” that plagues efforts to resolve current social and environmental crises. This paper interrogates this contention, drawing on a series of visioning workshops conducted in fall of 2023 as part of the European TRUSTyFOOD project, with participation from a wide range of food system actors. Based on these workshops, we explore 1) the range of visions co-produced therein; 2) the broad sociotechnical imaginaries upon which they drew; 3) the points of contradiction and novelty that emerged; and, finally, 4) how engaging with novel technologies, such as blockchain, influenced these visions. We conclude with reflections on the effect that novel technologies may play in resolving – or reproducing – this creative impasse in the context of sustainable food system transformation
Nadezhda Povroznik (Technical University of Darmstadt)
Short abstract:
The presentation will be focused on a series of aspects of the invention of the future museum from the past perspective historicising convergence of museums, technologies, and imagination beyond the museum practices through 19-20th centuries.
Long abstract:
Thinking about a virtual museum today, we can easily imagine a museum’s website with guided tours over the digitised spaces (e.g. Uffizi Gallery), an endless gallery of beautiful paintings in ultra-high resolution (e.g. Night Watch in Rijksmuseum), or it can be an immersive experience simulated in the rich environment of sounds, visual surrounding, imitation of the characteristics of the physical space (e.g. Virtual Dunhuang Cave). However, the museum of the future is still not created but can be imagined and enforced with insights, ideas, inventions, technological experiments, and their advancement. The presentation will be focused on a series of aspects of invention of the future museum from the past perspective historicising convergence of museums, technologies, and imagination beyond the museum practices. They refer to innovative experiments in the museums and their utopian visions, creating alternative institutions aimed to engage with cultural heritage in 19 - early 20th centuries (e.g. the Institute of Visual Instruction by John C. Dana). Another example of inventing the future comes from arts and is exposed in designing the imaginary museums in non-fiction, shaping the concept of the imaginary museums by futurists in 1970-1980es, and imagining the future technologies in art & cinema (e.g. the animation film ‘Closed Monday’) and envisaging how the ‘doomsday machines’ (or computers) become an essential part of museums.
Omer Chomski (Bar-Ilan University)
Short abstract:
Dissecting Alcoa's World War 2 'Imagineering' campaign, uncovers the lasting grip of corporations on our collective imagination. Exposing aluminum fantasies in a historical context assists in navigating present and future sociotechnical imaginaries.
Long abstract:
In January 1942, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) merged Imagination and Engineering into a newly coined term: Imagineering. This term was the theme of a nationwide advertising campaign, introducing an imaginary of an “aluminized” America in the post-war future. To meet all the aluminum requirements of American warfare and their allies, Alcoa, the great monopoly of the era, exceeded its production capacity to an unimaginable degree, which spun into a pressing issue for the future. Vivid depictions of post-war America addressed the fate of the metal surplus, the break-up of Alcoa’s monopoly, and constant battles between businessmen and the New Deal administration. My research shows how Alcoa’s imaginary acted as normative frameworks for the different members of society to orient themselves toward that future, conveying Imagineering as a belief in technological innovation and operating as a fantasy of the end of politics, and the destruction of tradition. My findings confirm that the campaign had an acute impact on public discourse, a phenomenon I refer to as Corpofuturism (Chomski, 2023), the power that corporations possess in imposing horizons of expectations, narratives, and values. My research reveals how material affordances, political agendas, and sincere optimism are reflected in Alcoa’s visions and the public response to them. By contemplating the lasting impact of these visions on our collective imagination of modernity, I would explain why, from a contemporary perspective, these vision seems naive, even obsolete while still highly futuristic and relevant to present sociotechnical imaginaries.
Anne Loeber (Athena Institute, VU University) Geert Somsen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Short abstract:
Looking at a historical case of future projections, this paper seeks to explore the agency in the encounter between the image and its reader, who is actively involved in the creation of meaning. How can a reassessment of past interpretations help us escape the prison of path-dependency?
Long abstract:
In the face of the climate crisis, the future urgently needs rethinking. But there are limits to imagination: Visions of the future are limited by the circumstances out of which they were born. Or is the limitation not in the image but rather located in the recipient of the vision, the reader / observer? This paper builds on Gadamer’s (2004) understanding of the dialogical encounter between an image or text and its interpreting reader, to explore the agency of the latter, the 'recipient', in expanding the power of imaginaries. In this exploration, the paper takes the works of H.G. Wells (1866-1946) as a point of departure. Wells has the reputation of being a “visionary”, a “prescient” author, and a prophetic writer ahead of his time, predicting the future quite accurately and launching ideals that would only later be realized – such as a League of Nations or a declaration of Universal Human Rights. Yet, his ideas of humanity were as Darwinist as they were imperial. Analyzing the distance between the reception of Well's texts in his time and now may shed a light on the “horizons of expectations” (Jauss, 1982) against which, historically seen, they were made sense of. Such an analysis, the paper posits, contributes to current meaning making in a way that may enhance the power and potentiality of (these and similar visionary yet time-bound) texts and associated images to challenge and expand current expectations of what is feasible and desirable, breaking away from the lock-in of path-dependency.