Introduction to a creative philosophy of anticipation

Abstract

Opening gaps There were many anticipations creating this book. We start with the Second International Conference on Anticipation, held at Senate House in London 2017, where we (Jamie Brassett and John O'Reilly) organized and delivered a curated discussion panel-though this is by no means the earliest encounter germane to this story. Anticipation took the form of an atmosphere in this 1930s Art Deco building. Senate House was initiated by William Beveridge when he was elected to the post of Vice-Chancellor of the University of London in 1926. Beveridge's work anticipated and therefore created a new timeline of the future as the thinker of the welfare state that enabled heterogenous futures. Beveridge also had a different, more homogenous version of the future-like many of the prewar left in Britain who were motivated by the idea of eugenics, the engineering out of undesired genetic qualities (Freedland, 2012; Renwick, 2019). For Beveridge, the anticipatory power of the welfare state gave way to the predictive power of eugenics. The 19-floor building of Senate House was designed by vegetarian Quaker Charles Holden, a specialist in the atmosphere of the subterranean, having designed over 40 underground stations in London. The slightly dystopic atmosphere generated by the severe beauty of the building's Portland Stone materials haunted the future in the present in perfectly anticipatory fashion. George Orwell's Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four was modelled on Senate House. The strategy of organizational threat as a mode of political control by Orwell's Ministry of Truth, anticipates the operational logic behind the strategies of the US and UK governments nearly 20 years after the fictional year of the book-especially with the War on Terror. 'Fear is the anticipatory reality in the present of a threatening future,' writes Brian Massumi in his essay 'The future birth of the affective fact'. He continues: 'It is the felt reality of the nonexistent, loomingly present as the affective fact of the matter' (Massumi, 2010, p. 54). In everyday experience such prophecies can become self-fulfilling, but this disguises the affective, material power of threat as an atmosphere. The affective fact, Massumi argues, opens the way to generate and legitimate many different kinds of actions, actors and their networks to preempt the

Governing anticipation: UNESCO making humankind futures literate

“…In the intersection between the growing literature on futures and anticipation (e.g. Molé, 2010; Appadurai, 2013; Stephan and Flaherty, 2019; Brassett and O’Reilly, 2021) and the ample stream of research concerning governmentality, this paper adds much needed ethnographically based knowledge to the field of transnational governance, in relation to UNESCO. By describing the strive against “monumentalism” that lies within the Futures Literacy program, we expand and complicate earlier ethnographic studies of UNESCO which have focused upon the organization's role in relation to cultural heritage (e.g.…”

“…In addition to the field of governmentality, we develop our analysis in relation to the growing literature on the theme of futures and anticipation (e.g. Molé, 2010; McInlay and Taylor, 2014; Stephan and Flaherty, 2019; Amsler and Facer, 2017; Flyverbom and Garsten, 2021; Brassett and O’Reilly, 2021). In contrast to the field of future studies, generally focusing on projections, scenarios et cetera, this body of literature is concerned with “the ways in which humans construct their cultural futures” (Appadurai, 2013, p. 5) potentially studying the field of futures studies and the futures industry that it is often related to.…”

“…But it is enabling”. In relation to foresight and future studies, what is new in this understanding that Miller presented is the turn toward “anticipation” and the present (Brassett and O’Reilly, 2021, p. 3). Instead of looking forward, futures literacy looks at the present by going back in time, trying to figure out what shaped present-day assumptions of the future.…”

From researching to making futures: a design mindset for transdisciplinary collaboration

“…Further, design speculation is also different from anticipation. In anticipation, a model of the future is used to inform design decisions in the present; ‘the future is causing a present state’ (Brassett and O'Reilly 2021, 4–5). Similarly, in some future practices such as scenario planning, anticipation (rather than speculation) is based on research and the aim is to recommend strategies to preserve the status quo, exploit possible opportunities, and reduce risks in the future.…”

Hope Inquiry: Vital Moves From the Gut in the Middle Cut Together

“…There is anticipation here. Anticipation creates a situation that pulls potential into being—an opening for the anticipator (hoping that this would be me) to actualize unrealized self-potential (Brassett, 2021). I should qualify “potential” here a little because it is different from the teleological Aristotelian idea of something dormant that gradually flourishes on a journey to actualization, thus placing this actual as the goal of the potential’s growth.…”