Dalla temporalità dei moderni alle aspettative di futuro nell’Antropocene. Un itinerario teorico attraverso Koselleck, Latour e Beckert

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss some fundamental dimensions of the entaglement between the changes in the modern understanding of the temporality of the past and the future, the current transformations of the relations between nature and society, as expressed by Anthropocene concept, and some significant developments in the contemporary sociological theory about agency and the change of capitalism. These dimensions are reconstructed in a theoretical itinerary in which is discussed a double contribution of Koselleck to sociological theory: on the one hand, his work on the temporality of moderns, particularly his conceptual reconstruction of the categories of nature and history, focuses connections and developments that go beyond the analysis of the theoretical horizon of modernity. The reinterpretation of these categories in an actor-network perspective allows us to rethink, on the basis of Latour's work, the modern distinction of nature and history in the connection between agency and sociomateriality and assumptions of meaning of interactional situations. On the other hand, the aim is to highlight how the dynamism of the conceptual couple "experience and expectation" that Koselleck identifies as a result of modern temporality, finds in the recent theory of Fictional Expectations by Jens Beckert an original and productive theoretical view for the sociology of capitalism and the study of its change.