I wonder if he’ll say something about the future? I thought when I asked Tim for a review copy of Spacecraft. The future sort of goes along with science fiction, no? But Tim is also very much interested in climate change and the Anthropocene, and they entail the future too.
And in a special way. For climate change is what Morton calls a hyperobject, an object so extended in time and space that we cannot grasp it (easily if at all). If we think of climate change as one single thing a hyperobject, why then an undetermined fraction of it hasn’t even happened yet, most likely a larger fraction than we’ve so far experienced. Yet if it is all one (hyper)object, one thing, then there is a sense in which THAT future is now. Is the future but a dimension along which objects (can) withdraw?
If Tim’s going to talk about spacecraft he just has to talk about the future. And he does (p. 73):
The future is everywhere, you can reach it any time–the real future or as I like to say sometimes, the future future. Futurality is the possibility that things could be different. [...] The hyperspace of Star Wars is the closest a regular cinema-goer gets to realizing that film isn’t just about the visible, but about the invisible, and in particular, the feel of motion, all the liquid celluloid spooling through the projector [...]. It’s a lovely gift that George Lucas gave to ordinary people–something utopian to keep them going.
Yes.
Tomorrow, next week, three months from now, 13 years from now those times have not happened yet. But that by itself does not situate them in the future. Futurality implies a certain kind of relationship to the present. [Does this mean the Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal recurrence is a denial of futurality?]
I put the issue to some of my humanist friends on Twitter and they replied that the future, “as something that can and will be significantly changed by human effort” (my formulation) is the product of the late 18th century. The future is a kind of place that exists at some time other than the present, some time after the present. Maybe it’s some kind of fold in hyperspace.
Now consider this passage from Morton’s last chapter (“Anyone” p. 101):
Stealing the Falcon and playing it like an instrument is a nonverbal image of revolution, like those in Sergei Eisenstein’s film about the Russian Revolution, October.
But unlike in the Russian Revolution, it’s not about some artist-like hero seizing the moment (Lenin). It’s about people from the criminal class whom Marx sometimes calls the enemy! And they’re seizing an instrument and playing it, listening to it, not imposing their will. America is a country that isn’t really one because of slavery. America is (from) the future. If it’s something from the past, it can only be a hotbed of fascism. If America is a weird, junky model of future worlds in which there is planet-scale human collective awareness and action, then ... well the Falcon is the utopian quality of America itself.
It’s this sentence that caught my eye: “America is (from) the future.” Read it both ways, with and without from, at one and the same time. Without it’s saying the future is going to be like America is now. With it’s saying America will be birthed at some date (way) ahead of the present and is heading for us (at warp 9).
But what is America? It’s probably another one of those hyperobjects. So who knows what or where or how it is. But somehow it’s become entangled with the Millennium Falcon.
A final thought: The original Star Wars opens “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...” When and where is that? What happened to the future? Is it lost?
Other posts in this series: https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/Morton-Spacecraft.
I have a different understanding of Star Wars. I was a minion in the Lucas Empire for the summer as a student (on minimum wage).
ReplyDeleteI worked on the art of star wars exhibition.
As far from a utopian vision as you can get. Rigidly hierarchical and controlled from a ranch somewhere in America.
Curated space. Highly regulated. When the 'team' flew in from the ranch at the end to pack up the objects, bizarre.
I watched a team of four forensic ranch works engaged in some form of ritual packing of Darth Vader's light sabre in a custom box, in some form of odd religious ritual.
They arrived from another planet and departed without any interaction.
These are disposable rough and ready theatrical props, working objects. Degree of reverence attached to them I don't get, just the working things of the stage.
Located in the past, the curation of these objects, ownership = power, prestige, wealth.
Everything was regulated, the gifts in the gift shop for example, well beyond what an average working class family could afford.
Rentless exercise in branding. What you see on the screen and the reality of the star wars universe as a worker, very different things.
Worlds apart.
I'd expect nothing less of a control freak like Lucas.
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