Roger Behrens 

The Struggle over the Future: Misery of Theory. Crisis of Emancipation. End of Utopia.

In the early 1970s, Ossip Flechtheim published Futurology – The Battle for the Future. The Marxist had already coined the term futurology for a materialist study of the future in the shadow of the catastrophe at the beginning of the 1940s. The question of whether and how humanity could have a humane future became virulent again in May 1968 at the latest: no longer as a purely political struggle for the future, but as a discourse of cultural-industrial ideology. The late capitalist society of abundance now claimed the images of the future in the most spectacular way – as sci-fi film productions for the cinema. At the same time, however, “future” was also strangely decoupled from history and, in a postmodern way, an end was declared to the Great Narratives. An end to utopia was reflected in punk as “No Future!”...

A few decades later, we are still very much removed from a humane future, albeit at the highest level of digital technology. What is to come is only understood as potentially deliverable as a commodity. “Do we really want what we claim to want?” Mark Fisher asked with resignation, and Milo Rau recently called for a reconquest of the future. However, as Alexandra Schauer insists, this would also be a theoretical demand if it were to be put into practice: ”Let's try something that seems impossible, let's save what's possible!”

The event is part of the series "Zukunft der Geschichte", which will be held regularly until January 2026 at basis e.V. Click here for the program!