Universität Wien
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240553 SE MM3 The Antelives of Things: An Anthropology of the Unfinished (2025S)

2.50 ECTS (1.00 SWS), SPL 24 - Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Continuous assessment of course work
We 14.05. 13:15-17:00 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Thursday 15.05. 13:15 - 17:00 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Deserted concrete structures, faded billboards, bridges that end in mid-air, over a precipice: In a world left in wrecks by capitalism and held in constant limbo by its speculative practices, traces of the unfinished and the unbuilt have become part and parcel of everyday life. The unfinished is an umbrella term that, in the study of planning and infrastructure can indicate a variety of things: a project “proposed, planned, funded, underway, delayed, failed, abandoned, and so on.” (Carse & Kneas 2019: 13). Though in contrast to ruins left obsolete and discarded after use, the unfinished gives us a sense of futures past – instead of the afterlife, attending to the unfinished gives us insight into what we will explore in this course as the antelives of things.
As a relational condition, the unfinished shapes bonds between communities and their environments both materially and affectively, as it generates hopeful promises of the good life (Ahmed 2010), but also anxiety-inducing threats of danger and decay (Stallone 2024); it catalyzes practices from protest (Kemmer 2019) to repurposing (Amato 2021). In this course, we are going to ask: What are the conditions within which the unfinished emerges? What future trajectories and ecologies of becoming can it help us trace against the grain of accumulation? Departing from the anthropological study of planning and infrastructure, we will critically assess the “unfinished” as a phenomenon inherent to contemporary capitalism, the speculative aspirations formulated therein, and the construction of time as a realm of progress-oriented linear unfolding. By familiarizing ourselves with philosophical, architectural and ethnographic theorizations of the concept, the unfinished will be looked at as a spatial property as well as a temporal and affective condition within which the social is produced in gendered, racialized and otherwise embodied ways. Employing a variety of different methods, including experimental writing exercises and visual analysis, the participants will be expected to engage with their selected empirical example – the plan of an unrealized building, an unused bus stop in their neighborhood, an abandoned website, an unfinished mural in their hometown – throughout the duration of the course, as well as in their final essays.
• By the end of the block course the students will have an overview of central texts from various disciplines – centering the anthropology of planning and the future – that conceptualize “the unfinished”.
• They will be able to critically situate “the unfinished” in sociopolitical discourses surrounding speculation, future-making and the capitalist crisis of care.
• They will have learned to shed light on materializations of the unfinished in their own surroundings with a variety of ethnographic analysis and experimental writing methods.

Assessment and permitted materials

Attendance on both days of the course is obligatory. Active participation in class discussion is expected. A short essay of approximately 1500 words must be submitted within six weeks after the course (exact date to be announced), in which the theory from class will be brought into conversation with an empirical example of the students’ own choice.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Each student has to be present on the two course dates for the whole duration of the class.
Each student has to contribute actively to class discussions, and come prepared on the first day (preparatory readings + short presentation of empirical example).
The required essay has to be submitted in a timely manner.
Each of the above requirements have to be fulfilled in order to pass the class.
Grades:
• 91-100 points - 1 (excellent)
• 81-90 points - 2 (good)
• 71-80 points - 3 (satisfactory)
• 61-70 points - 4 (sufficient)

In order to complete the course, students need to obtain at least 61 points.

Examination topics

The topic of the essay has to be agreed on with the lecturer. Class readings have to be made use of, as well as two additional sources researched by the student.
In a declaration of authorship (example will be provided), the student will have to specify their use of AI text or image generating tools.

Reading list

Amato, Rebecca. 2021. “On Empty Spaces, Silence, and the Pause.” Pp. 247–68 in: Aesthetics of Gentrification. Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City, edited by C. Lindner and G. F. Sandoval. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Arboleda, Pablo. 2019. “Reimagining Unfinished Architectures: Ruin Perspectives between Art and Heritage.” Cultural Geographies 26(2):227–44.
Carse, Ashley and David Kneas. 2020. “Unbuilt and Unfinished: The Temporalities of Infrastructure.” Pp. 9–28 in: Contemporary Megaprojects: Organization, Vision, and Resistance in the 21st Century, edited by S. Schindler, S. Fadaee and D. Brockington. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Kemmer, Laura. 2019. “Promissory Things: How Affective Bonds Stretch along a Tramline.” Distinktion 20(1):58–76.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Th 23.01.2025 13:06