Future or Past Future Tense? What Political Timeframe?

Abstract

Our hypothesis is that the past-future tense, a grammatical tense which is devalued, is defining a new and crucial political temporality. After developing the philological analysis of this verbal form, with its two main temporal and modal meanings, we come to its irruption into the political space, symbolically marked by the activism of the young Greta Thunberg. The socio-political importance of a past of the future implies the modal consolidation of the latter according to 'certainty': the scenarios of the future linked to ongoing and announced catastrophes (global warming, pandemics) set up the screen of the past-future tense. The discussion is then extended to Bruno Latour's distinction between future and “avenir”, against the theoretical background of Semiotics of enunciating instances (Coquet) and the ancient theological debate on Predestination, free will, the thought of disaster and salvation (effective grace / sufficient grace).