Probing the past and imagining the future

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 69-72
Author(s):  
Frances Pine
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Moral Questions

The socialist states of the Soviet Bloc fell, some gently and some far more abruptly and even violently, between 1989 and 1991. In the two decades that have followed, there have been continual attempts by politicians, social scientists, and other academics, as well as by the citizens of these “former socialist countries” themselves, to come to terms with competing memories of what socialism meant, was, and might have been. Simultaneously, efforts to weigh up and assess a range of very different pasts are matched by forecasts of imagined futures that somehow continue to be driven by and predicated on this complex and kaleidoscopic remembered history. The present, the here and now, can, however, be even more complicated; in some ways it neither escapes entirely from the past nor really sets the stage for the future, but rather is a continual state of “becoming”. Just as “memory” is never a “true” reflection of a time or an event, but rather a multiple layering of recollections that change each time they are evoked, none of these complex and rather messy temporalities actually matches the “real” past, present, or future—all carry complex moral judgments, reflect moral questions, and embody the tension between what might have been, what is, and what should be.

scholarly journals A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Rachel Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.

Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Hilary M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
To Come

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.

Storytelling Means Dissolving Relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-99
Author(s):  
Alexander Kluge
Keyword(s):  
The Real ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Real Phenomenon ◽  
Alexander Kluge

This chapter explores the dialogue between Piero Salabè and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about Kluge's book Tür an Tür mit einem anderen Leben (Next Door to Another Life, 2006). Kluge claims that there are always two aspects to sadness: it isolates, but it can also bring people in contact with one another. Sadness and crying are capable of dissolving hardened relations. When asked whether he believes in progress, Kluge answered that he does not believe in linear progress because for him “the past is always coming at us from the future.” Instead, he believes in circular movement like those in whirlpools. The concept of enlightenment must begin with the real phenomenon that time does not actually pass. Kluge says that “we must continue to tell stories about problems in the world, and with storytelling we must also push back against these problems that people fail to respect.” Storytelling means dissolving in the literal sense of “analyzing.” Kluge believes that this is the great, unfinished project of enlightenment. Salabè and Kluge also discusses the individual's capacity for differentiation.

Recovering Futurity: Theorizing the End and the End of Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Elliot R. Wolfson
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

This chapter addresses the co-dependence of people's conceptions of end and of beginning. To comprehend the beginning, one must think of it from the perspective of futurity, from the perspective, that is, of the ultimate end. Consequently, the beginning lies not in the past but, rather, in the future. The chapter then relates this mode of philosophizing with the way people understand Jewish eschatology, which lies at the center of Jewish theorization about time. In Jewish eschatology, what is yet to come is understood as what has already happened, whereas what has happened is derived from what is yet to come. Martin Heidegger has dismissed Judaism as a religion that by its very nature cannot experience temporality authentically. Yet his own understanding of temporality accords well with rabbinic conceptions of temporality and later kabbalistic eschatologies.

Definition, Typology and Patterns of Victimization

Cyber Crime ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 1016-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debarati Halder ◽  
K. Jaishankar
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cyber Crimes ◽  
Crimes Against Women ◽  
To Come

In this chapter, an attempt is made to operationally define cyber crimes against women, as we have found that the definitions of cyber crimes have changed in the past decade and we presume that even this will change in the future decades to come. In addition, the current definitions do not specifically fit in to the nitty-gritty issues of cyber crimes against women and a succinct operational definition is provided. A new set of typology is made with regard to the cyber crimes against women as not all type of crimes fit to the category of cyber crimes against women. The patterns of victimization of women in cyberspace are dealt by qualitative case studies along with the typology.

Definition, Typology and Patterns of Victimization

2011 ◽  
pp. 12-39
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cyber Crimes ◽  
Crimes Against Women ◽  
To Come

In this chapter, an attempt is made to operationally define cyber crimes against women, as we have found that the definitions of cyber crimes have changed in the past decade and we presume that even this will change in the future decades to come. In addition, the current definitions do not specifically fit in to the nitty-gritty issues of cyber crimes against women and a succinct operational definition is provided. A new set of typology is made with regard to the cyber crimes against women as not all type of crimes fit to the category of cyber crimes against women. The patterns of victimization of women in cyberspace are dealt by qualitative case studies along with the typology.

Navigating Organisation in Times of VUCA: Implications for the HR and OD Profession

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-150
Author(s):  
Vasudevan Alasingachar
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Real Time ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The Future ◽  
Specific Learning

This article addresses two vectors of VUCA interwoven in the narratives, a summary of personal theories about VUCA. Such theories are anchored and arise from experiential learning in my practice as HR/L&D and OD consultants over the past four decades. The implication for HR and OD profession is to consider their relevance when organisations navigate VUCA. Next is the culling out of the specific learning about HR and OD interphases that has worked in my experience, supported by examples and metaphors. The premise I put forward as conclusion are: In order to be at the centre stage of partnering with business, HR and OD have to complement and innovate new-age VUCA strategies. VUCA competencies with appropriate metrics are in the formative stage. The competencies are emerging from the real-time stories of consultants, companies and academia (TATA 26/11 and DuPont safety mandate). Only when HR and OD integrate and work together can the future of leadership or start-up entrepreneurs learn from their insights to ‘thrive in VUCA’.

Ecologies of Oil and Trauma of the Future in Curse of the Black Gold

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91
Author(s):  
Cajetan Iheka
Keyword(s):  
Niger Delta ◽  
Ecological Footprint ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
A Site

Mineral extraction in Africa has exacerbated ecological degradation across the continent. This article focuses on the example of the Niger Delta scene of oil exploration depicted in Michael Watts and Ed Kashi’s multimedia project, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta. Analyzing the infringement on human and nonhuman bodies due to fossil fuel extraction, I read the Delta, inscribed in Watts and Kashi’s image-text, as an ecology of suffering and as a site of trauma. Although trauma studies tend to foreground the past and the present, I argue that Curse of the Black Gold invites serious consideration of trauma of the future, of-the-yet-to-come, in apprehending the problematic of suffering in the Delta. I conclude with a discussion of the ethics of representing postcolonial wounding, which on the one hand can create awareness of ecological degradation and generate affect, but which on the other hand, exploits the vulnerability of the depicted and leaves an ecological footprint.

Twenty Years on—The Journal of African Law and African Law: A Look at the Past and the Future I

1977 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Allott
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Study ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Editorial Committee ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

To launch a new journal is an act of faith; it is also an act of recognition. An act of faith, because the editors and publishers of the journal will naturally ask themselves where the readership is to come from, which is to make the journal viable. An act of recognition, because the new journal officially marks, at least in the minds of its begetters, the recognition that a new area of theoretical study or practical action has now defined itself, which has hitherto been unrecognised or insufficiently provided for by the journals already in existence. As the first editor of this Journal, and the only member of the original Editorial Committee still serving the Journalin that capacity, I may be permitted to indulge in a personal reflection on the motives and background to the launching of the Journal of African Law in 1957.

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