Theories of Cultural Memory and the Concept of ‘Afterlife’

Abstract

Over the last decades we have witnessed a ‘continental shift’ in the structure of Western temporality. Experience teaches not only that specific visions of the future have crumbled but that even the concept of the future as such has changed beyond recognition. In many areas, such as politics, society and environment, the future has lost its lure. It can no longer be used indiscriminately as the vanishing point of wishes, goals and projections. Why did this happen? Why have the shares of the future fallen in the stock market of our value system? There are obvious answers that immediately come to mind: the resources of the future have been eroded through a number of new dramatic challenges, such as the ongoing ecological pollution that accompanies the development of our technical civilization, the demographic problems such as overpopulation and ageing societies, the scarcity of natural resources such as fuel and drinking water, and climate change. Under these premises, the future can no longer serve as the Eldorado of our hopes and wishes, rendering also the promise of irreversible progress more and more obsolete. Change is no longer automatically assumed to be a change for the better. The future, in short, has become an object of concern, prompting ever new measures of precaution.1