Sergej Kapus
Futur Antérieur
Futur antérieur1, opens up a temporality that challenges the linear time frame. It breaks with causality where the cause precedes the effect. Its fundamental paradox lies in the fact that it works retroactively, articulating a temporal loop in which what is chronologically previous is posited as a retroactive effect of a chronologically later sequence. The imaginary of the future perfect is thus the opposite of linear completeness. It cannot be identified with any chronometer. It is based on a rupture, a break with the existing situation, opening up at the same time the possibility of new sequences precisely through this rupture, this discontinuity, this incision in relation to the existing situation. It is a time that opens a positive place of absence where a direct approach inevitably fails. It predicts a new sequence that cannot be substantiated a priori but, rather, “will have been substantiated.” It is a utopian temporality which, for structural reasons, can never be realized in the present.2
By crossing the boundary traced in the symbolic, by overcoming some point of impossibility, futur antérieur opens up a new possibility, an unmarked space that first needs to be explored. The new sequence it introduces is thus not simply deducible from the existing state. It cannot be expressed with the old parameters of the system, since it surpasses the immanence of the given situation. The possibilities of the new sequence thus cannot be simply assumed with the matrix that understands the future according to the model of a linear past. Futur antérieur implies a temporality that is not deducible from the homology of the past and future. It opens a sequence that is radically contingent, non-deducible from a previous string of deductions. Its consistency can only become apparent retroactively through its inclusion in the unusual logic of always contingent consequences. It will become what it is only when unforeseeable effects become apparent.
Futur antérieur always opens a gap that escapes the register of knowledge of a given state. It points to the extimate, inherent decenterment of the symbolic. It opens a point of the impossible in a given situation, the place of absence in presence, but at the same time already also predicts a new beginning that requires overcoming that place. The prediction of a new sequence requires overcoming uncertainty and anxiety, because it radically breaks with the situational encyclopedia and has no support in the symbolic. It is therefore based on anxiety and is constituted by overcoming anxiety.3 The basic paradox of the prediction of a new series or sequence is in the a priori affirmation of a certainty that is not deducible from the foreseeability of structural relations. The anticipation of certainty is here a wager that explicitly does not have a precise grounding or guarantee in knowledge and also cannot be explained with the immediacy of the situation or the presence of positively determinable images.
The utopia and the anxiety that Boris Groys explores in his concept outline for the 8th Triennial of Contemporary Art U34 are thus constitutive moments that must be thought together. In Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the mission to Jupiter goes smoothly, without a hitch, up to the turning point when the super-computer Hal makes a mistake that undermines the idea of his complete operative capability and infallibility. But just prior to dramatically switching off, while admitting to his fallibility and series of bad decisions, Hal declares his enthusiasm, his certainty about and trust in the mission. Hal’s enthusiasm overcomes the immanence of the situation determined by dysfunction, anomaly, and the slip in regularity. It anticipates certainty, but excludes any positive presentation. This enthusiasm is entangled in a time loop: it signals a new possibility that has no base in knowledge and is not substantiated a priori, but at the same time relies on the fact that “it will have been” substantiated.
The imaginary of futur antérieur arises between anticipation and retroactive reading, between “not yet” and “always already.” It marks a paradoxical relation that evades chronological time. It implies a split or break that introduces an essential non-homogeneity into time. It has no support in the system of foreseeable relations. It makes topical the relation between order and disorder that cannot be determined by some standard measure., Pictorial rules are themselves constantly in a state of becoming, they do not play the roles of cause or final reference, they are in reality only being composed, or, according to Hegel, “the examination is not only an examination of knowledge, but also of the criterion used in the process.”5
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1 Translator's note. The English equivalent of futur antérieur is the future perfect tense.
2 Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? (London & New York: Verso, 2000), p. 31.
3 Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire, livre X: L'angoisse (Pariz: Seuil, 2004), pp. 204-205. In English: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, Anxiety, 1962–1963. Translated by Cormac Gallagher from unedited French typescripts. Pp. 121-122. Available online at http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Seminar-X-Revised-by-Mary-Cherou-Lagreze.pdf; accessed on 24 May 2016.
4 http://www.mg-lj.si/si/dogodki/1122/javni-razpis-za-udelezbo-na-trienalu-sodobne-umetnosti-v-sloveniji-u3/
5 G.W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, translated by J. B. Baillie (Blackmask Online, 2001), p. 32. Available online at http://home.lu.lv/~ruben/Vestures_filozofija/Hegel-The%20Phemenology%20of%20Mind.pdf, accessed on 23 May 2016.
