Storia orientata al futuro

Abstract

This article is an attempt to think about history from the future. Its main argument is that our contemporary regime of historicity is producing new modalities of the future that have, retroactively, an important impact on our historical thinking. In the modern regime of historicity, all futures were exclusively human futures, while in our regime of historicity the future-modalities extend beyond the human. There is certainly a rich variety of futures available in contemporary Western world, but it is argued in the article that in a very general level we can speak about two main modalities: posthuman future and transhuman future. The first mode of the future refers to a more-than-human world, to the world that exceeds the human, whereas the second mode of the future points toward a better-than-human world, to the world that enhances the human. Seen from a posthuman and a transhuman future, our current notion of history needs a major revision. This article proposes and discusses some new theoretical concepts, such as multiscalar, multispecies, evental, and multiplanetary history, hoping to contribute to this rethinking of history as we know it.