Future Theft

Future Theft

Dr Andreas Folkers (Max-Weber-Center Erfurt and Member of the Research Council of Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt)

Chaired and co-organised by Dr Jamille Pinheiro Dias (ILCS/CLACS) and Dr Kasia Mika-Bresolin (Queen Mary University of London)  

Fossil capitalization engenders future theft because the ‘present values’ of fossil assets hinge on the misery of those dispossessed by climate emergencies. Future theft is an inverse ‘original accumulation’ (Marx) since expropriation follows rather than precedes accumulation. This has severe distributional consequences. The durability and escalating dynamics of carbon waste accumulation will compound the durability and escalating dynamics of economic inequality created by asset wealth accumulation. And it has consequences for critical theories of the future. The future can no longer be conceived as open horizon, a space of contingency. Rather, it comes to resemble a densely populated terrain already claimed by the conjoined power of capital and carbon – at the expense of those inhabiting the afterlives of past financial futures.

Dr Andreas Folkers (https://andreasfolkers.eu/)  is a sociologist with research interests spanning political, economic, and environmental sociology, critical theory and science and technology studies. Currently, he is Fellow at the Max-Weber-Center Erfurt and Member of the Research Council of Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt. He studied Social Sciences and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the New School for Social Research, New York.

He held fellowships and visiting scholarships at the at the New School (2013), the Max-Weber-Center, Erfurt (2018), the London School of Economics (2022) and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (2022-203). He has published a monograph and numerous articles in journals such as Theory, Culture & Society, EPD: Society and Space, Economy and Society, European Journal of Social Theory, Security Dialogue, and Social Studies of Science. He is currently finishing his second book “Fossil Modernity. A Natural History of the Present”. A detailed description of his current work can be found at: https://andreasfolkers.eu/index.php/elementor-35/

Part of the Critical Conversations in Environmental Humanities series from the Environmental Humanities Research Hub at The School of Advanced Study.

This event will be held online. Please register to receive a Zoom link