What does it mean to undertake an archaeology of the modern world? What does it mean to undertake such a thing, not just metaphorically, in the way so many scholars in the humanities now write about doing an “archaeology” of this or an “excavation” of that, but rather to undertake a literal archaeology of the modern world? … to rummage through the garbage of the present? … to measure and map its ruins? … to collect and curate the detritus of the unfolding present? What does a distinctively archaeological sensibility bring to the critical analysis of modernity? And can archaeology as a discipline weather its re-direction toward a past that is still in the process of becoming?
This seminar considers these questions through the writings of archaeologists (S. Dawdy, A. González-Ruibal, P. Graves-Brown, R. Harrison, W. Rathje, J. Schofield) and others (Latour, Augé, Connerton, Edensor), as well as through film (“Garbage Warrior”, “Into Eternity”, “Life After People”, “Crash”). Our goal is to develop new conversations around three core issues: (1) the distinctive temporalities of modernity,which appear to be compressing the present/past/future and are making an archaeology of the contemporary seem necessary, (2) the dystopian imaginaries that are in ascendance and that continue to re-script Western metanarratives, and (3) the strange methods we are led to adopt each time we examine the present as if it were already dead and gone.
“Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past” is a seminar convened by Severin Fowles in the anthropology department at Columbia University.
the contemporary past (anth 6651) 