Book News: Future studies' relevance to literary studies

Futures

EDITED BY SANDRA KEMP AND JENNY ANDERSSON

Oxford UP, 2021

ISBN: 9780198806820

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/futures-9780198806820?cc=us&lang=en&#

Futures examines the relevance of futures studies to literary studies. It demonstrates how the growing interest in futures thinking is opening up multidisciplinary conversations and initiatives, examining historical and contemporary forms of futures knowledge, the methodologies and technologies of futures expertise, and the role played by different institutions on legitimizing, deploying, and controling anticipatory practices.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Bringing together emerging perspectives on the future from diverse disciplinary perspectives including critical theory, design, anthropology, sociology, politics, and history, this book places the provocation of power at the heart of the book through an investigation of futures as both objects of science and objects of the human imagination, creativity, and will. A multidisciplinary team of contributors challenge and debate the varied ways in which futures are conjured and constructed, exploring issues as diverse as the utopian imagination, history and philosophy, literary and political manifestos, artefacts and design fictions, and forms of technological and financial forecasting, big data, climate modelling, and scenarios.

The book positions the future as a question of power, of representations and counter-representations, and forms of struggle over future imaginaries. Forms of futures-making depend on complex processes of envisioning and embodiment. Each chapter investigates the critical vocabularies, genres, and representational methods -- narrative, quantitative, visual, and material -- of futures-making as deeply contested fields in cultural and social life.

Sandra Kemp is director, The Ruskin—Library, Museum and Research Centre at Lancaster University. She is professor in the history department at Lancaster University and visiting professor at Imperial College London. As an academic and curator, her futures-related work spans the exhibition and monograph Future Face: Image, Innovation, Identity (2004-6) at the London Science Museum and subsequent South Asian exhibition tour; The Future Is Our Business: The Visual History of Future Expertise project at the V&A (2013); and Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future at The Ruskin, Lancaster University in 2019. She is Principal Investigator for the AHRC/Labex-funded Universal Histories and Universal Museums project on the role of the museums in Europe in building knowledge about the future.

Jenny Andersson is professor of the History of Ideas and Science at Upsala University, Sweden.