Constructing the Future History: Prefiguration as Historical Epistemology and the Chronopolitics of Archaeology

Abstract

Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The decisions about what to use to create that history is unavoidably political. This political act primarily serves to construct and enforce the power of the state, although it can be used to contest it. Prefiguration, emerging from anarchist theory and parallel social movements, can be understood not simply as a radical practice, but also as an understanding of how history is created. Thus, it can be used to explain how history is constructed from past and contemporary archaeological decisions, as well as what socio-political organizations that future history will naturalize.