The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Belgrade, Serbia, 2014. Graffitti of Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip who shot prince Franz Ferdinand in 1914 in Sarajevo, triggering WW1. The text reads: 'Our ghosts will wander through Vienna, stroll around the palaces and scare the masters'. Photo: Thomas Brey/ Press Association. All rights reserved.When we look at the past through the eyes of the present, we find huge cemeteries of abandoned futures, struggles that inaugurated new possibilities but were neutralized, silenced, or distorted, futures murdered at birth, or even still-born futures, contingencies that determined the winning choice later ascribed to the course of history.
These abandoned futures are also buried bodies, often bodies committed to wrong or useless futures. We worship or execrate them depending on whether the future they aspired to coincides with what we want for ourselves or not.
