Anthropology’s Postapocalyptic Turn: New Temporalities for New Times

A shift in how anthropologists think about the future is underway.Like the moment one becomes aware of a rising tide, the change is subtle at first even as it portends forthcoming saturation.Full inhabitants of the cultural worlds they inhabit, what anthropologists are experiencing and documenting reveals broader societal shifts in futural orientation.Attentive citizens are leaving behind a once-dominant futurity of unfettered progress that now appears increasingly anachronistic.Significantly, many are also bypassing more recent apocalyptic framings of an imperiled future in order to arrive at a postapocalyptic perspective, one that acknowledges the reality of socioecological catastrophe and shifts its gaze to the open future beyond.Echoing Anthropocene rhetoric, postapocalyptic vantages reveal the harsh reality of our planet's irreversible anthropogenic degradation.But while the Anthropocene fixates on humanity's transformed/transformative planetary position, postapocalyptic approaches emphasize what comes next.If the Anthropocene is "the rupture point when now-outdated rubrics must be thrown out" (Wakefield 2025, 3), it is the postapocalypse that brings these new imaginaries to fruition.While anthropology historically neglected the future in favor of traditional pasts and ethnographic presents, the uncertainties of recent decades have made tomorrow a fashionable topic of inquiry (Bryant and Knight 2019)."Deep time" thinking that juxtaposes the recency and magnitude of human dominance has followed from the revelation of our planetary impacts (Irvine 2014).But if comprehending the depth of the past is difficult, humans are even less suited to successfully grasp the vastness of the future.Yet this is exactly what is needed.Aware that human and ecological flourishing will demand intense attention to deep future horizons, Vincent