Histories
of the Future
Daniel Rosenberg and Susan Harding, Eds.
Duke University Press, Chappell Hill,
NC, 2005
376 pp., illus., 136 b/w. Trade, $99.95
Paper, $24.95
ISBN: 0-8223-3485-2; 0-8223-3473-9.
Reviewed by Kathleen Quillian
Oakland, CA, U.S.A.
kathleen@dprojx.org
If there is one thing certain in the atomic
age, it is that the future is uncertain.
While artists, scientists, engineers and
(dare I say it) politicians are busy defining
and redefining the limits of culture and
society, Histories of the Future
takes a moment to reflect on some of the
more colorful fruits which have been left
in the collective wake of progressive
activity during the last half of the 20th
century. This could easily have been a
straight chronicle of popular utopian
fetishes (i.e. time travel, aliens, computers,
cyborgs). While it certainly addresses
these topics, it doesn't stop there. Rather,
it tidies up the fuzzy edges surrounding
some of the more obscure historical eventsfrom
nuclear testing to the Heaven's Gate cultand
gives them neat little pedestals on which
to sit in their respective places in the
halls of history.
Stemming from a research workshop that
first took place at UC Irvine in 1997,
the contributors to this volume, consisting
mainly of anthropologists and historians,
formulated a cultural conversation in
the shadows of the American western frontieran
area that harbors many of the strange
and unique things that define the U.S.
After several subsequent meetings, workshop
participants were left to formulate their
own ideas as they saw fit. Some stuck
with American history; while others stemmed
out to explore histories in other areas
of the globefuturism and the
city in Tokyo, futurism, surrealism and
food in Europe, cell phones and revolution
in the Philippines and resource frontiers
in Indonesia. The volume as a whole manages
to cover a satisfying range of subjects
in the wide net it casts. There is enough
in it to indulge the interests of individuals
ranging from New Deal historians to die-hard
sci-fi fans.
Throughout the volume, a certain frequency
of anxiety is continually channeled, as
one befitting of the unknown. The volume
opens with a vibrant picture of American
excess in a small corner of the Nevada
desert in the early years of the Cold
War era, with a pulsing palette ranging
from nuclear power to Liberace. Throughout
the volume, essays continuously scan the
range of progressive impulses, from millenniallist,
to utopian, to technological, to spiritualall
with a similar intention of gauging the
often minute measurements between expectation
and results. "How to Make Resources in
Order to Destroy Them (and then Save Them?)
on the Salvage Frontier" by Anna Tsing
illustrates the spirit of the volume by
discussing the making of a resource frontier
in Indonesia in the 1990s in the face
of globalization and the otherwise overwhelming
burden of supply and demand economics.
In it she discusses how the turbulence
implicit in the activity on a frontierin
this case, the foraging of natural resourcesboth
confuses and defines an industry's operations.
The prospect of profitwhether
economical or spiritualinvites
a wide range of participants who invariably
become involved in a tangled web of cooperation
and deceit, with little regard to sustainability.
In between the essays are "interludes"
which stray from the straight essay styleincluding
a game, a fiction piece, a manifesto and
a timeline of timelines. "Global Futures:
The Game" is not designed to produce winners
and losers, rather it is a forum for players
to test their knowledge of world events
and to stretch their imaginations at the
same time by proposing how to re-shape
those events into many viable, alternative
futures. "Access Fantasy: A Story" by
Jonathan Lethem, is set in a traffic jam
with no conceivable beginning or end,
in an undefined urban area in which a
novice-sleuth makes his way through the
world of subversive advertising in search
of clues to link a suspected murder to
the owner of a highly coveted apartment
in his fantasy realtor video tape. The
world animated in this fiction piece,
though otherwise fantastical, is not so
far removed from our current one, considering
the pace at which things are developing
in the global capitalist circus. A frightening
prospect, to say the least.
Histories of the Future gives us
a few things to think about as we forge
ahead with our short-sighted addiction
to progress. There are still many spectral
uncertainties hovering at the edges of
the road to utopia that could bear some
focused scrutiny if we want to make sure
that only the positive results of history
are repeated.