No Registration neededSenses of the Future. Conflicting Ideas of the Future in the World Today, 16 October 2024, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 noonBook presentation with Gerard Delanty (University of Sussex)

11 September 2024

Photo: De Gryuter

The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises.

Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting visions. The key contribution of this book is to bring together the different approaches with an account that is grounded in sociological and philosophical analysis as opposed to visions of the future that are inspired by extreme visions of catastrophe or approaches that see the future as only the continuation of the present. Given a revival of apocalyptical visions of the ‘end times’ and dystopian views of the future of human societies, there is urgent need for a new approach on how we should imagine the future. The author explores the future as a field of tensions that is revealed in narratives, utopian desires, hope, imaginaries, and social struggles concerning the potential possibilities of the present: the future does not just arrive; it has to be fought for.

This book is an important contribution to a critical sociology of the future. It is both a work of reconstruction and critique grounded in a historical and philosophical hermeneutics of the future.

Book presentation by Gerard Delanty (University of Sussex)
Comments: Frédéric Vandenberghe (University of Rio de Janeiro), Christine Hentschel (Futures of Sustainability), Cassiopea Staudacher (Futures of Sustainability)
Chair: Frank Adloff (Futures of Sustainability)

No registration needed, we look forward to seeing you there.

Venue:
Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Futures of Sustainability"/ DFG Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe "Zukünfte der Nachhaltigkeit"
Gorch-Fock-Wall 3 (door bell sign "Nachhaltigkeit"), 20354 Hamburg, Room 1021