Future in a Contested Time Regime: Prospects in Documentary Films on Climate Change

The future is up for debate - not only, but particularly in light of climate change. The catastrophic outlook stands in stark contrast to the optimism of progress rooted in Western modernity. Thus, it is not just the prospect but the concept of future itself that must be rethought.
This book explores modern society’s relationship to the future in view of climate change: Through a narratological discourse analysis, it provides an overview of how climate change has been narrated in 21st-century climate documentary films, with particular attention to their final sequences and the prospects they articulate. The study traces how these cinematic anticipations can be read as expressions of a contested time regime and derives novel figurations of future that mirror or confront the ideological conditions of the present.

Florentine Schoog is a sociologist and political educator based in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Schoog´s research focuses on social theory, concepts of time and future, the climate crisis, and documentary film. Schoog has worked as managing editor at a journal on interdisciplinary gender studies and currently coordinates political education at a youth association.