Reclaiming the future from the War on the Past | Dr Tiffany Jenkins

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DR TIFFANY JENKINS
writer and broadcaster; author, Strangers and Intimates writer, currently writing her next book, Strangers and Intimates: the rise and fall of private life, which will be published by Picador. She has written and presented several programmes for BBC Radio 4, including the series  A Narrative History of Secrecy

Throughout history, ideas about the past and future have always been intertwined. Whether in ancient views of history as a cycle, the Christian view of history as suffering ending in redemption, or the more modern idea of logical or rational process, the past seemed to make sense of and provide a path to the future. Today, it seems we can no longer assume such a straightforward relationship.

This is not least because we live in times consumed by the idea of a dark past. Today, we seem hostile to the past, more likely to hide it, as in the shutting of galleries in the Wellcome Collection, or try and remove it, as we see in the pulling down of statues. The demand for reparations for historical wrongs also seems to reflect a widespread fatalistic sense that the present is so determined by past events that all we can do is mourn.

The waves of pessimistic and moralising perspectives on the past are entangled with our perceptions of the future. With the past a dark place, we struggle to envision the future. Perhaps this fixation on historical transgressions arises from a present that is uncomfortable with change, evades understanding its catalysts, and fails to conjure a vision of what could lie ahead.

Our discomfort with the past stands as a significant obstacle to envisioning the future. How has this rupture between the past and the future come to be? What are its underlying ideas? Ultimately, how we can forge a renewed connection between past and future, and from past to future?

00:00:30 Past and present
00:04:30 Literature
00:14:25 Museums
00:24:00 Understanding the past
00:35:00 Conclusion