Facing the Future workshop
18 June 2013 Wolfson College, Oxford
Supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past programme
Convenor: Professor David Zeitlyn,
Institute for Social & Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University
Introduction
On the 18 June 2013 at Wolfson College, Professor David Zeitlyn of the Institute for Social & Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University convened the workshop titled Facing the Future. As part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past Theme, theThis workshop brought together prominent academics from a wide range of fields—including archivists, futurologists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers—to discuss new ways of thinking about the relationships between the past, present, and future. Ultimately, the goal of the workshop was to consider how critical reflections on the past could allow today’s researchers to plan more effectively and creatively for the future archives of historical material, which Zeitlyn described as “doing tomorrow’s archaeology today.”
The June workshop was the second of three Facing the Future workshops run by Professor Zeitlyn, the first of which was held in Cameroon on 10th April 2013 and explored how temporal historiography affects the preservation and presentation of contested episodes in Cameroon's past. Drawing on the first workshop, the June workshop asked participants to consider how past views and attitudes impacted present and future experiences, in order to explore how considerations of contested histories like that of Cameroon were relevant for episodes within UK and European history. The central premise of the workshop, therefore, was that critical examinations of the past can help understandings of and responses to the challenges faced in the present.
Key Themes
The central theme of the workshop was how archives and museums allow for reconfigurations of the past in the present and future. Thus, many of the discussions centeredcentred around the collection, management, and interpretation of archival materials in various formats, including video and photographic images from post-colonial Africa, life history interviews from the United Kingdom, and canonical “utopian” literature from post-Soviet Eastern Europe. To begin the workshop, Professor Zeitlyn explained how his interest in archives began through a chance meeting with the a Cameroonian anthropologist who in the 1950s had worked with the same ethnic group as he does in the 1950s, and who subsequently allowed Zeitlyn to copy, type up, and digitize his original field notes. This episode, which represented a unique view to a “past” Cameroon, sparked Zeitlyn’s concern for the fate of anthropological data, for the ways in which future generations of anthropologists could gain access to archival materials.
While Professor Zeitlyn’s opening remarks provided the historical context for the workshop, his keynote lecture outlined several major theoretical approaches to understanding of the past, present, and future. Drawing on a range of ideas—including those from Cameroon, but also some from quantum mechanicsphilosophical complications from physics and biologist Steve J Gould’s battle with cancer—Zeitlyn emphasized the importance of engaging with positionality and perspectivism in historical accounts of the past. Seeing the past as a multiplicity of viewpoints and times, he emphasized, allows the voices and experiences of various ethnic or minority groups to be heard, and the dominant hold over history that powerful groups have tended to hold to be challenged. Zeitlyn also emphasized the importance of attending to the contingency of the present and future, noting that accounts of the present and future are always attuned to what is deemed as knowable or predictable, such that present actions and views can constrain the future. With his concluding remarks, Zeitlyn emphasized that archives were “a bet against the future,” and noted that historians must adjust the planning of archive and museums to the inherent multiplicity of pasts, presents, and futures.
One of the central considerations emerging from the various talks and discussions within the workshop was attitudes to the past and future affect how we live in and experience the present. Several participants commented on the ways in which individuals and groups deal with (at times traumatic) histories to make sense of their own futures. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Professor Susannah Radstone of the University of East London spoke about memory as a type of archive, which enables individuals to look back on the past with an eye towards the future. Similarly, Dr Alex Buchanan of the University of Liverpool discussed how research of food histories provides an understanding of the future of local food in Liverpool. In addition, Dr Perla Innocenti of the University of Glasgow discussed how as people engage with digitally-preserved objects, they perform the meanings and histories of such objects in particular ways. Overall, such perspectives emphasized how the creation of narratives and stories helps people to understand their places in the world, and consequently to make plans for the future.
Taking a critical eye towards the entanglements between the past, present, and future, Dr Leon Wainwright of the Open University discussed his work on the Disturbing Pasts project, which examines controversial and traumatic pasts in art practice, curating and museums. Wainwright spoke about how art can be used to disturb or redefine past episode of violence, and consequently to rethink the present status and future of art. He emphasized particular concerns with the ways in which artists outside of the Western context of art are implicated in alterative art histories, which contrast with dominant Western cannons. Wainwright spoke to the ways in which particular locations and regions that exist “over there” become typical of historical lives, such that artists living in such locations are denied contemporaneity for their works.
Turning to engagements with the future, Professor Alexander Kiossev of the University of Sofia in Bulgaria spoke about the ways in which “alternative utopias” can enable creative imaginaries for the types of futures we are able to realize or create. Drawing on his background in cultural studies, Kiossev discussed how we exist in a world that is structured by “hegemonic microframes,” in which our experiences of time and our temporal patterns of collective human agency are constrained in certain ways. This has constrained the human capacity to imagine free and alternative futures (for example, to those presented by the capitalist economy). He emphasized that by using archives of the past, and by turning to the alternative visions of the future presented throughout historical literature, we can open the contemporary world to a greater number of unimagined alternative futures.
Future Considerations
One of the surprising themes to emerge from the workshop was a concern for how archives are increasingly being affected by the Digital digital Eraera, in which information is increasingly available, and in which physical objects are being transformed into digital objects. Participants voiced concerns about the powers of technology to both constrain and transform pasts, presents, and futures. For example, discussions centeredcentred on the fact that modern contemporary and future archives are often faced with may contain less material than historical archives, as the future preservation and storage of digital objects remains unknown (and what we do know makes them, at best, uncertain). Participants voiced concerns that because archives are empowered to collect objects and accounts that they deem to be important, archiving in the Digital Era could lead to idealizations of particular pasts, in efforts to select and preserve only those things which are valued. Participants also voiced concerns about the capacities of quantitative analyses of digital archives to portray the subtleties and subjective experiences of history. Discussing the rise of infographics, visual representations of data, Dr Iginio Gagliardone of (University of Oxford) questioned whether historical narratives could be told with numbers alone. Similarly, Shauna Monkman of (also from Oxford) University’s discussing discussed of “scenario planning” for environmental disasters. This raised important questions about the ways in which modelingmodelling technologies can constrain visions of the future.
While discussions of archives in the Digital Era raised questions about the nature and content of archives, they also raised fundamental ethical and moral questions about how modern archives should be used and treated. Dr Bren Neale of the( University of Leeads) discussed her work on the Timescapes project, a qualitative longitudinal study which followed people over the life course to explore how people understand their personal relationships and identities in the past and future. Neale emphasized how the longitudinal research methodology posed unique problems to the archiving of data: it presented no clear cut off to the collection of research materials, and also required innovative policies to control access to sensitive content. Similarly, Catherine Moore of the( University of Kent) discussed her research on the presentation of digitized historical archives of “untouched native cultures”—notions inflected with the racial and social of the collectors—to their modern descendants. She emphasized that responses to such historical archives, which were later digitized, were highly varied. She highlighted the ethical challenges inherent in making sensitive content publically available, and stressed the need for empirical research about the various ways that people access and respond to ethically-charged historical materials.
Conclusions
In summary, the Facing the Future workshop presented a striking diversity of perspectives on the theme of historiography, time, and archives. It provided a critical take on the role that narratives, experiences, visualizations, performances, and stories (in their various forms) play in accounts of the past, and consequently in responses to the present and plans for the future.