Future in a Contested Time Regime

In this chapter, I explore future imaginaries and visions as historical variables that enfold impact despite their genuine fictional character. I argue for an examination of collective imaginaries of the future as a burning glass for a social analysis of the present. The future can be viewed from different perspectives in terms of its function in accessing what is to come and what is. I then extend my scope of the future to the concept of time and in particular to the examination of the changeability of time regimes. I build on Reinhart Koselleck and Lucian Hölscher as well as Aleida Assmann when I illuminate the pre-modern and modern time regime in its components and thus present the Western ideological background to which the social conundrum of this work refers. I pursue a short genealogy of the role of the future in the modern time regime, which can be prototypically summarized in the concept of progress. The discussion of historical approaches to utopia, dystopia, and risk finally leads me to the third sub-chapter, in which I deal with the ruptures of the time regime in the 21st century. Here, I put forward initial theses on the struggle of the inherited concept of the future. With Assmann I consider new societal attention to the controversial past and with Eva Horn I trace the prevailing relationship to the future as catastrophe. Based on Ulrich Bröckling and Jörn Ahrens, I sound out some societal reactions to this tension by linking the paradigmatic idea of resilience with the emergence of a New Normality.

This chapter approaches climate change both as an atmospheric-chemical and geophysical phenomenon and as a discursive interface for heated debates in politics, society, and science. My remarks here serve to highlight the complexity of climate change as the defining dispositif of our time. I focus my considerations on the task and challenge of documentary films to represent climate change and make it imaginable. I then refer in particular to the temporal dimensions of climate change. On the one hand, the scarcity of time contains the normative level of the call for rapid counteraction and, on the other hand, the long-term dimension of the concept of climate eludes direct and immediate perceptibility. Based on the time-critical dimension, I first provide an overview of the current climate research consensus and the political and activist setting. Regarding the long-term dimension of climate change, I then take up ontological and socio-philosophical debates on the positionality of humans, science, and society within transdisciplinary climate change knowledge production. I round this off with an excursion on the controversy of the Anthropocene.

The second part of this book dives into epistemological principles and analytical mechanisms. I begin with an explanation of Foucault's discourse theory to clarify my viewpoint both on socialization, which is also reflected in the perspective on time regimes, and the access to my material. In operationalizing Foucault's theory, I have opted for Siegfried Jäger's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), whose ultimate goal of social criticism I share. I then weave the medium of documentary film as a distinct thread of discourse into the framework of the CDA. I thereby argue that the consideration of documentary films can provide particular insight for discourse analysis. I take up this thread in the next subchapter, in which I deal with the narrative and pictorial dimensions of social communication based on my material. Here, I discuss narratological approaches in general and more specifically concerning discourse. I also make this connection in relation to imagery and link visuals in documentary films with social-symbolic imaginations. To this end, I consult Jürgen Link’s discourse analytical take on collective symbols and Cornelius Castoriadis’ concept of social imaginary and synthesize these approaches into the notion of the motif, which serves me as an analytical tool. Finally, in the last sub-chapter of this section, I delve deeper into narrative composition. With Albrecht Koschorke, I argue for the special consideration of the final scenes of documentary films as the points of narration in which the relation to the future is crystallized in the transgressive effect that bridges the story to the extra-diegetic world.

My procedure is based on Jäger’s analytical approach consisting of the two main stages of structural and detailed analysis: In my adaption the two build on each other but can also stand side by side as separate studies. In the structural analysis, I pursue the goal of exploring climate documentaries in their entirety as a thread of discourse. I explain my methods in creating my corpus of documentary films from 2006 onwards and the subsequent categorization of these 129 films into four types of distinct approaches in climate documentary films. While the structural analysis provides an overview of the discourse thread of climate documentary films and operates on the level of schematic sociology offering a typology, the detailed analysis attends to a smaller sample of twenty films and is explicitly dedicated to a close reading of meaning-making. I thereby reason my working methods and explain my selection for the sample of documentary films from 2016 onwards. 

This chapter is an outline of my typology, which offers an overview of the field of climate documentary film in the 21st century. The typology provides an insight into the different approaches and objectives in addressing climate change, especially as a time-critical and long-term phenomenon: Some films aim at Providing Background. They offer insights into the factors of climate change and regard the issue primarily as a question of knowledge and education. Addressing Affectedness captures films that focus on the impact of climate change and those affected. With Pondering the Future I pool the films that are dedicated to the reflection of coming social and personal changes. Finally, there is a significantly growing group of films that focus on the fight against climate change as a socio-political issue. I captured these as Taking Action. I conclude the chapter on the structural analysis with a summary of the dynamics within the respective types and across all types. I answer which approaches to addressing climate change are in vogue when, and what can be concluded from this. Furthermore, I relate the typology to their temporal focuses on the timeline of past, present, and future.

In the synopsis, I summarize the results of this work and abstract my findings from the discourse thread of climate documentary films to contemporary societal issues and questions. I conclude that the future-as-future in the sense of (modern) progress optimism has little or no place in the current future relation. Instead, I identify two other figurations of future which I relate to the present and the past in their orientation. In the first thesis, I describe a neo-modern approach to the future, which adheres to an optimistic expectation. However, this utopia ex negativo contains no substance of its own apart from the negation of the catastrophe, which will not have occurred. In this sense, this approach to the future turns out to be a figuration of the future-as-present. I argue, that fed by the resilience dispositif (Bröckling) the predominant power strategy lies ultimately in stabilizing the society of non-sustainability (Blühdorn). In the second thesis, I explore the figuration of the future-as-past, which is expressed in the revaluation of pasts to be included in future prospects. Two discursive strategies operate in this figuration: On the one hand, the longing for a fictitious good past is projected into the future as a Retrotopia (Bauman) and, on the other hand, colonially destroyed Indigenous pasts are rehabilitated and thus bring forth reclaimed past futures.

In this final chapter, I identify connecting points for in-depth and follow-up research. Following on from the two theses on figurations of future (future-as-past and future-as-present), I conclude by offering some final thoughts on a possible third figuration: future-as-future, which I tie to a programmatic proposal to think the future disruptively beyond imaginaries of the end.