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- Convenors:
-
Cristiana Strava
(Leiden University)
Federico De Musso (Leiden University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to showcase submissions addressing alternative ways of thinking about knowledge production, in anthropology and related disciplines, in relation to speculative, creative and lateral visions of the future and their intersection with various global crises.
Long Abstract:
We are currently living through a moment marked by the intensification of crises (ecological, epidemiological, political and financial), in which a certain sense of running 'out of time' (and ideas) has come to dominate and influence our perception of possible collective futures.
However, multiple forms of alternative accounts of the future emerge in the interstices of normative futures and established genres used to describe them. Novel personal and shared projects mix points of view and ways of storytelling to frame and produce prefigurative and speculative scenarios.
For this panel we aim to gather submissions addressing alternative ways of thinking about knowledge production, in anthropology and related disciplines, in relation to speculative, creative and lateral visions of the future and their intersection with various global crises. We invite potential participants to explore old and new accounts of future-making while taking into account how raced and gendered positionalities expose the margins of traditional academic discourse, and discuss the potential of community-based and radical forms of collaborative research.
What are some of the alternative, dissident forms of knowledge production and dissemination that allow different communities (activist, scholarly, etc.) to envision both possible and desirable futures unaligned with neo-liberal, teleological narratives of progress? How can anthropologists contribute to open-ended, generative scenarios for the future that place the emphasis on healing and collaborative play rather than crisis and competition?
Proposals at the intersection of literary and ethnographic research, speculative fiction, social-political activism, marginalised forms of knowledge production, and the politics of research are especially welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Addressing the drawing of a comic about covid-19, the paper explores the multimodal possibilities of speculative narratives for knowledge dissemination. While comics is a heuristic tool for ethnographic analysis, they are also part of the information politics that surrounded the pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
The following paper addresses the potential of comic writing in anthropology. Based on the author's experience in writing a biographic and ethnographic comic about covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic, the paper explores the multimodal possibilities of speculative narratives for knowledge dissemination. Drawing offer both a way to think, visualise, and tell alternative ways of relating to normative representations.
The comic format facilitated the development of a keen eye to discern both states and people's responses to covid, on the one hand, and to express personal accounts that were easier to tell through science fiction. The drawings contextualised everything that went beyond the ordinary in the first months of the pandemic - trying to offer relatable images to explain what was happening. Incorporating photo references into the drawings, this approach to comics facilitated an epistemology of juxtaposition - on the one hand, mixing real and fictional storytelling, and on the other, blending the indexical affordances of photography with drawings' non-indexical speculative prospects.
The ability to transcend the individual experience by addressing the collective trajectories in the pandemic shed light on the limits of speculative narrations. In a time were attempts to stem disinformation surrounding health security moved to clearly define what belonged to reality and what was fictitious, creating ethno-graphic montages may well be equipped to understand the implicit and explicit contours of sanctioned knowledge creation around both science and fiction.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I reflect upon Mexican imaginaries of outer space, taking as a starting point a speculative assemblage of iconographic, mythological, ritual and architectural fragments known as "Martenochtitlan", produced collectively by a diverse group of Mexican space enthusiasts.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I reflect upon Mexican imaginaries of outer space, taking as a starting point a speculative assemblage of iconographic, mythological, ritual and architectural fragments known as "Martenochtitlan", produced collectively by a diverse group of Mexican space enthusiasts. How do Mexicans see the stars (so far from God, so close to NASA)? What is the role of speculative narrative in the construction of Mexican futures, in outer space and on the Earth? Does the perceived Mesoamerican past, with its long tradition of celestial observation, have something to say about these futures? How do imaginaries that emerge from the margins contribute to the construction of alternative futures, without reproducing colonialist and extractivist narratives that have, until now, characterized the perspectives of the global space industry?
Paper short abstract:
In this presentation, I explore Artificial intelligence (AI) as a form of future-making. Using ethnofiction as a genre of ethnography, my presentation offers a glimpse into the politics of AI research and asks what future is being reproduced through datasets used to train artificial intelligence?
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation, Artificial intelligence (AI) is framed as a form of future-making. Exploring ethnofiction as a genre of ethnography within anthropology, my presentation offers a glimpse into the politics of AI research and how it accounts for a limited envisioning of different and desirable futures. AI is a computational technique that makes determinations without human direction (Crawford 2021). Those determinations are based on the analysis of large quantities of data (big data). AI is trained by different processes, one of which is Machine Learning, which ultimately learns from data on how to act or decide on different topics and in very specific contexts. AI is also a way of sorting through large quantities of data and making decisions based on this assembled information (Birhane 2021). AI can only predict based on what has already occurred or what has already become data. With this in mind, this presentation focuses on predictive data models and asks, "what future is being reproduced through datasets used to train artificial intelligence?" The argument highlights how AI can represent a limited potential for imagining new situations and scenarios, especially as database updates always work with the past and imagine the future using information exclusively from the past.
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces ‘future memory work’ as a conceptional framework and speculative practice to unsettle temporal hierarchies that lead to Othering through time as part of the anthropological project, proactively making use of how the future shapes the way we (re)construct the past in the now.
Paper long abstract:
This paper introduces ‘future memory work’ as a conceptional framework and speculative practice to unsettle temporal hierarchies that lead to Othering through time as part of the anthropological project. By adding a future dimension to memory work, a concept and methodological tool to better understand how we make sense of the world around us, it becomes possible not only to acknowledge but proactively make use of how the future shapes the way we (re)construct the past in the now. The paper foregrounds a study wherein young Indigenous people from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) were invited to create ‘future memories’ for subsequent generations by producing 'memory texts' that best represent what they consider worth preserving. In my research, I utilize the future to elevate the present in conjunction with the past and illustrate how this future-orientation offers an alternative temporal frame to investigate young Kalaallit’s (Greenlandic Inuit) multitemporal relations to the world.