Spectral Futures

Bernd Herzogenrath is Professor of American Literature and Culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster (Rodopi, 1999) and An American Body/Politic: A Deleuzian Approach (UPNE, 2010). His other publications include the collections media | matter (Bloomsbury, 2015), Sonic Thinking (Bloomsbury, 2017), Film as Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and Practical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is a main editor of the media-philosophical book series thinking | media with Bloomsbury.

A wonderful volume that brings the colour of philosophy to life and the philosophy of colour to bear on the most pressing issues of our times.

• 01. Introduction: Spectral Futures, Bernd Herzogenrath02. wavelength: 0.001 nm | color: gamma rays | The Spectral Affectivity of Glaciers, Julita Skotarska03. wavelength: 100-400 nm | color: Ultraviolet | Wild Light: Radiant Skin and the Domestication of Ultraviolet Futures, Lisa Yin Han04. wavelength: 380-750 nm | color: Rainbow | Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Claire Colebrook05. wavelength: 400 nm-700 nm+ | color: White | White ? Rot, Amanda Boetzkes06. wavelength: 420-700 nm | color: sodium-silver | Blank Screens and Spectral Skies: Hong Kong as a Postcolonial Locus of Transnational Asian Futures, Dawn Chan07. wavelength: 450 nm low latency (you know, for high speed trading) | color: CME Blue (i.e. the blue that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange uses) | A Brief and Speculative History of Making the Weather an Option, Orit Halpern08. wavelength: 451-488 nm | color: cobalt blue | Afterimage, Mitchell Akiyama09. wavelength: 490 nm | color: supra-blue minor | Meshes of Light and Death, by Oceanic Bacteria, Jeremie Brugidou10. wavelength: 492 nm | color: Infragreen | An Infragreen & Bipolar Tale of the Future, Thierry Bardini11. wavelength: 530 nm | color: Pure Gold | Hyper-Vanguard: The Future of a Thousand Sects, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh12. wavelength: 555 nm | color: chartreuse green | Pale Green Dot, Abelardo Gil-Fournier13. wavelength: 580 mn | color: Yellow| Specters of Solar Futurity: Yellow–Black–Yellow, Asia Bazdyrieva, Adrian Ivakhiv, & Svitlana Matviyenko14. wavelength: 590 nm | color: Amber | Memory of a Stone, Fabien Clouette15. wavelength: 605.34 nm | color: vermillion | Vermillion Times: Memoranda from the Future, Christine Reeh-Peters & Isabel Machado16. wavelength: 680 nm | color: Flesh red | Excoriating Red: A Note on Russian Futurity, Andrey Logutov17. wavelength: none, multiple | color: gray | Dead or Alive? Gray Futures, Franziska Strack18. wavelength: 0 nm – 400 nm – = 700 nm | color: Blackless | Blackless: The Present-absence of Blackness in an African Tomorrow, Babson Ajibade19. wavelength: 595 nm | color: Black Hole Black | Black Hole Black (Disco Ball Lightning), Alison Sperling20. wavelength: 6000°A nm | color: transparent | The Color of Breath, the Color of Air, Bernd Herzogenrath21. wavelength: n/a | color: Luminous Darkness | Exploring the metaphysics of Afrofuturism through Howard Thurman's Luminous Darkness, Reynaldo Anderson’s & Christina Hudson22. wavelength: n/a | color: Iridescence | The future Iridesces, Bronislaw Szerszynski23. wavelength (Khaki) – 575.4 nm 8 wavelength (Dark Gray) – nil | Soliloquies of a Lone Diner and the Specters of Thomas Sankara, Kuti Ezebiro