What is the role of literature if the future doesn’t exist?
I’m reading Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole. The following quote is from Aleksandar Hemon, Cole’s interlocutor during a public conversation:
“It is possible that we might have to rethink nearly everything in the light of the possibility that two hundred years from now there will be no one around to give a flying fuck about what we’re doing at this time. Our ethical and philosophical underpinnings — to the extent that we share any of them — will have to be reevaluated against the ultimate failure of humanity to outlive individual humans beings. If we cannot continue our individual humanity in the collective project of humanity, if we cannot imagine a better world than this — and not by means of some spiritual opiate — this world is over. In that case, literature, which is always sent to some reader in the future, will have to renegotiate its modes of participation in human experience. If we ever find ourselves only writing for the present — which would essentially mean tweeting is all we can do — I would feel absolutely defeated as human being and a writer.”
What does it feel like to live during the dying of a civilization, the collapse of ecosytems, the extinction of thousands of species, including — perhaps — ours? It looks like those of us alive today have a high chance of finding out the answers to these questions.
It’s the cruelty I am most afraid of. It would be far easier to adjust to reduced material circumstances if humans were good at cooperation and reason, but they are so often not. There could be a firestorm of rage, unchecked violence, irreversible harms caused by those with a lot of power against those with little. Glimpses of this future are already with us — family separations, black lives taken with impunity, the desecration of Indigenous lands, a general mania for security.
I don’t want what’s gentle and sensitive in humans to be snuffed out because of the long emergency that’s coming. State-promoted cruelty would be unbearable. Orwell’s “two-minutes hate” has its analogue in chants of “Lock her up!” or “Build that wall!” — thousands of people united in their utter contempt and hatred of an individual or group. Authoritarianism, which promises law and order, unleashes a chaotic spirit of violence in people, and so often delivers the very opposite.
If, from here on in, writing is only for present-day audiences, leaving nothing for posterity, then this makes the Internet the most crucial medium of all, because the Internet is the best at immediately responding to events as they unfold. It also makes building community a pressing imperative. Language must serve to bring people together, to help individuals feel connected, to forge shared understandings. Words will be tactics. Sentences will be strategies. Paragraphs will be manifestos, and manifestos will create movements.
When my daughter was born, Monika and I made a few purchases of Liverpool Football Club paraphernalia — some socks for me, and a onesie for baby. I don’t want to impose my fandom on her. But I do want to share the things I love — books, good food, film, theatre, and, yes, football. She can take what she wants, and ignore those things that don’t resonate. I used to feel slightly apprehensive about these ideas, thinking, “She should be totally free to figure out what she likes on her own!”
But when I think back to my own childhood, I can see that my happiest moments were when my parents revealed their special passions to me. My dad, for example, shared his love of walking, read to me his favourite books, took me to some of his favourite places — including the Bodleian Library in Oxford — and I loved almost every minute of it.
In this light, how critical is the idea of the future to the present practice of literature or to any other cultural undertaking? We shouldn’t feel hopeless at the prospect of literature turning into dusty relics that are dug out from underneath the rubble of collapsed buildings in a failed society. If there is no posterity in literature, then sharing our stories — our ways of living, our cultures — is how we can show we love and care about humans here and now, the year 2100 be damned.
